This is a great question from my daughter Zoe because it will eventually creep up on all of us to challenge us.. So watch out!
Your question, whether you know it or not, has a ‘bookcase of morality‘ way of seeing the world built into it, which I want to challenge. Let me explain what I mean.
Imagine for a moment that you’re looking at one of my many bookcases, but rather than them storing books, the different shelf levels are actually an indication of someone’s morality or how much good (or evil) they’ve done. So if I was then to ask you to think about the very top shelf, who would you put on it? When I’ve asked people in the past, names such as Mother Teresa, Mahatma Gandhi or Florence Nightingale have come up. Now, you don’t need to necessarily agree with these particular names, but you get the picture. Who would you put on that top shelf?
Then think about the next shelf down. This is for those who are just unbelievably kind. This might be a neighbour who, without asking, puts away everyone’s wheelie bin, does the shopping for a housebound resident or uses their car as an informal taxi for some of the older members of the community. You can probably imagine someone who fits into this category. I think my granny (your great granny, Zoe) makes this shelf. She always had a pocket of dog biscuits and another pocket of mints. She was loved by the dogs of Cambridge and just as much, the bus drivers, as they all got a treat (hopefully from the right pocket!)
The next shelf down is for ordinary people (like me… I guess).
Then we move to the bottom shelf. Who would sit there? This is for the worst of the worst. I’ve heard names such as Hitler, Pol Pot, Stalin and other leaders who inflicted unspeakable misery upon the masses. Then the next shelf up is for your regular murderers (if there is such a thing). The shelf above that is for your petty criminals. You get the picture. In fact, if you took an hour you could probably come up with a pretty complex bookcase of morality with lots of examples for each shelf. Then come two critical questions: Where does the line between good and evil sit? As I’ve asked this question in countless groups, most people normally indicate essentially that the line between good and evil runs horizontally just below their own feet. Whichever shelf they place themselves on, evil is below them and good is above them. This is how we want to see the world around us. We want to be assured that there are better people than us, but there are also worse people than us and we’re kinda ok. However, this leads to the second question: How does God see the world? Does God have some cosmic bookcase of morality that he spends his time putting people on?
‘for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God’ (Romans 3:23)
In Romans 3:23 we seem to get a very different picture to that of a cosmic bookcase? In fact, the line between good and evil seems to run through every human heart (running vertically not horizontally). Even those people we place on the very top shelf of our bookcase of morality have the line between good and evil running through their hearts. And, more pressing for you and me, is that this line, this ‘sinning’ and ‘falling short’ cuts right through the centre of our hearts (ouch!). Another way of looking at this is that every human sits on the same shelf with a simple label: in need of a saviour! Now, this does not mean we are diminishing the horror of Hitler or Stalin’s actions. It also does not mean that we are saying the beauty of Mother Terasa’s actions mean nothing, it’s just that the sin of humanity, the robbing God of his rightful glory, the choosing to live as a rebellious antichrist kingdom, is far more serious than we want to think. In fact, for some of us, we don’t think about how sin is primarily an offence against God. Sin is sticking two fingers up at God and saying that we don’t want his ways in our life! In fact, we don’t even want to acknowledge who He is, instead, we want to try and create an alternative kingdom, an anti-God kingdom that has us at the centre. This is what sin is (at its core), and that’s why, according to Romans 3:23, there is actually one shelf… the shelf of all humanity because all humanity are in need of the gracious rescue of God! That’s why salvation is so utterly stunning. We’ve been saved from a rebellious kingdom that we were attempting to create and welcomed into God’s kingdom that we were trying so hard to overthrow. In fact, we have been welcomed into God’s family. Rebels who have become not only friends but … family. You can’t get much better than that!
So, let me finish this response with one final question: if all of this is true, how should this extravagant grace-filled change that we’ve received alter the way we live?
Note 1: Let me be very clear, I’m in no way diminishing the horror of Hilter’s actions, for example his systematic extermination of 6 million Jews. No, this is a horror beyond horrors! However, I want to attempt to show that there is also a horror beyond horror which is called sin and this infects every human heart meaning that every human is in need of a saviour!
Note 2: If you want to explore in a little more depth the idea of original sin, then can I encourage you to sign up for our GO Foundations Course and go to the final article (appendix 1) – https://www.wearekingsgate.org/grow/courses/