There are two primal drives that define men and women in this fallen world. There is the thirst for forgiveness and there is the lust to start over. Outside these two groups would be those who are not really paying attention.
Both groups recognize that life as it is . . . is miserable. Both understand that something has gone radically wrong. This is the one thing that Bruce Jenner got right. What he got right was that everything is wrong.
But once you recognize that the world is screwed up, there are always ways to screw it up more. This is where the two groups divide. Those who thirst for forgiveness understand that salvation must come extra nos, from outside us, while the other groups wants to “take personal responsibility” by commandeering our own regeneration. The former receives the virgin birth of Christ so that we might be begotten of imperishable seed, while the other tries to jury-rig its own form of parthenogenesis. The former results in true heart regeneration while the latter results rearranging the furniture.
So while we commend Bruce Jenner for recognizing in his misery that something had to be done, we have to condemn the hubris that treats such pathetic dabbling around the edges as sufficient, given the magnitude of the problem.
Christ makes all things new. If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. And when God gives us a new heart, it is far more real than the old broken one. In regeneration, God is turning us into people. God takes away the heart of stone, and in evangelical conversion He gives a heart of flesh. So what does God give? He gives a living, beating human heart. He gives a genuine heart. All our surgeons can do is give fake boobs.
We live in a broken and fallen world. The world seems to be of the opinion that we are “fundamentally good” at heart. In order to believe this premise we must ignore all the atrocities committed by humanity around the world. The heart of man is deceitful and wicked. We will deceive ourselves in order to make us feel better. Of all God’s creation I believe that only man is capable of lying to himself and actually believe it.
I could never imagine such a provocative topic could be so carefully covered so succinctly. May we take a stab at refining those thirst descriptions a bit? I’m thinking about Adam, even before the fall. He wasn’t hankering for forgiveness, of course. But he knew he was not yet ready for prime-time life without capability or interest in sin — in the thirst to redo everything into his own image. He knew his condition was not what it might be in heaven — what we look forward to. So I’m asking if his (and our) later thirst for forgiveness is… Read more »
In other words — don’t we all thirst for change?
Some for His design, some for our own?
If we somehow succeeded in recreating an un-fallen garden we couldn’t live there because our mere presence would spoil it. Social engineers can’t get at the root of the problem because it lies in their own hearts. But we have a better destiny. We’re to be united with God in an intense and growing intimacy. We are to share in his very being, which we do already in a small way.
Life is miserable? Maybe in Idaho it is.
You know that last line is money. Well done.
You heard it here first. Just wait until some man marries Bruce. That’s when even Doug Wilson will run out of metaphors.
Bruce Jenner doesn’t need a new heart. He’s already a born again Christian. He not only attends an evangelical church, he helped plant it, and has spoken publicly about his faith in Christ.