Noli Me Tangere

bad

As fate would have it, a dear friend, heretofore known by the cryptic pseudonym Bouncing Innocence, loaned me John Eldredge's book, Waking the Dead. As in his other melodramatically-titled books, Wild at Heart and The Sacred Romance, Eldredge is preoccupied with The Heart. But what is this Heart? These days it can refer to a bloody, pumping muscle, a display of naked emotion, or even the captain of a football team. Such an inexact word around which to write a book.

While I can't fully define it, I do have a Heart consciousness. I know that my inner self loves, hates, and craves. I have a sense that it is more than just my feelings. It interacts with my brain. It is not the burning in my loins, though it can sometimes cause indigestion. I can't say what it is, exactly, but there's something other than emotion, thought, and physiology at work in me. (I'm sure someone more historically astute could provide fascinating insights into how the ancients and other cultures divide up the whole person.)

If you check out Waking the Dead on Amazon.com and browse the customer comments for this book, you will see no shortage of angry reformed christians who have written in to warn of Eldredge's heretical humanist philosophy. The main point of contention: Eldredge says the Heart is good.

To be fair, he means the regenerate heart, not any just any heart. But the calvinist in me still recoils at this, of course, because of point number T of Calvin's TULIP, which has been well-drilled into my head (or is that my heart?) by many well-meaning angry reformed people: the heart is wholly wicked, and incapable of any good. This has always been a troublesome tenet for me, not because I don't believe it, but because I don't really know what it means. Since nobody is as evil as they are capable of being, it seems like a merely academic point. Some will try to explain that it means that even our good deeds and desires are corrupted or soiled somehow. (Like when your even your cleaner is dirty.) But of course this would be "partial depravity" (popularized by that 21st century theologian Oprah).

As I understand it, the use of the word "total" is intended to reflect the absolute language of the scriptures, namely that the unregenerate man is dead in his sins. Not sick, not impaired. Dead. And just as the deceased are incapable of choosing life, the spiritually dead cannot choose to be born again. And so being "born again" into "new life" has new meaning for those formerly dead. It's not an adjustment or re-alignment of our former state of being. It's a new state altogether.

In the past, it made me angry when people say that the distinction between the old and new man is that the old cannot not sin, whereas the new has been given that ability. "But", I retort, waving my hands in frustration, "both have the ability to be less evil than they could be. Common grace falls on all. I don't see a distinction." But maybe what they mean is that the christian has the ability to see the goodness of redemption and choose it. Even so, this faculty is given, not achieved.

The pragmatic outworking of this is that we can never boast in any goodness. No spiritual understanding or rebirth originates in me. This perspective is crucial for any worship. But I suspect that we have taken these ideas and perhaps gotten fuzzy with the boundaries and certainly with our language. Eldredge says our self-deprecation and groveling is often just shame masquerading as humility. I've found myself uneasy leading confession in church because I so easily default to self-flagellation, though I know shaming myself isn't the point. We well-meaning angry reformed folk treat our desires as if they are irredeemable, and I think we short-change God when we do this. Though our flesh remains and battles on, in the war it is losing heart (pun intended). Our inability to do good must carry a caveat: apart from God. And Emmanuel is God with us.