Christianity says that people are inherently good and that deep down we all want to do the right thing. Video games prove the opposite is true.

This is not a nitpicky point. This is not a quaint theological issue. This is, quite literally, the first point in the Gospel message: people are inherently not good (Romans 3:10, Isaiah 64:6, 1 John 1:8, Isaiah 53:6). This is the very reason we need a savior (Hebrews 9:22, 1 Peter 3:18, Isaiah 53:5) - because we are unable in our own strength to bridge the gap of sin between ourselves and God - even to make motion in that direction (Romans 3:23, Romans 3:11). It is the foundation and purpose of the entire Christian faith that people are totally, though not irreparably, depraved.

This is the difference between Christianity and generic religion. This is the distinguishing feature that must be emphasized above all the self-help masquerading as trite religion, and the failure to communicate this point is the reason first of all that Liberal Protestantism is virtually extinct, and furthermore the reason for the continuing decline in the quality of what now passes in the Church: it makes itself irrelevant without this point. People see Christianity as just another self-help mechanism, and no one is telling them any differently - some false teachers have even exacerbated the problem by broadcasting from within that Christianity is about self-help (you may have culled from previous articles my scarcely concealed contempt for Mr. Osteen).

The Church loves to talk about “cultural relevance” - engaging the culture where it’s at. Unfortunately this misguided attempt at relevance just makes it indistinguishable from all the other voices. The Church must preach not only Jesus, but why Jesus. Relevance - not only cultural but trans-cultural - requires that we be unmistakably clear on the fundamental issue of depravity.

Note that the first and last beatitudes are for those without any claim to prosperity. “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of Heaven” (Matthew 5:2), and “Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 5:10). These are blessings which preclude the rich (one would assume that the persecuted generally forfeit their wealth). Obviously there is a special blessing for the poor, but is that a complement to a blessing of wealth, or is wealth not a blessing at all?

The first thing to realize here is that there is never a shortage of blessing for the elect. “We know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, who are called according to His purpose” (Romans 8:28). We have seen that this promise is not for material means at all, but a promise that any and all circumstances will cause the believer to be in the long run drawn closer to God. Likewise it is not a promise that one will lack material means. Neither richness nor poverty can come between God and His elect.

Essentially we are as Christians called to be completely agnostic to our material circumstances: our behavior and attitudes are constant regardless of our means. Paul makes this point in Phillipians 4:11-12: “I have learned to be content in whatever circumstances I am. I know how to get along with humble means, and I also know how to live in prosperity; in any and every circumstance I have learned the secret of being filled and going hungry, both of having abundance and suffering need”.

There is an important difference between contentedness and thankfulness. There is a sense in which we are told not to be thankful, because it reveals in us a hypocritical heart:

Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee stood and prayed thus with himself, ‘God, I thank Thee that I am not like other men–extortionists, unjust, adulterers, or even as this tax collector. I fast twice a week; I give tithes of all that I possess’. But the tax collector, standing afar off, would not so much as raise his eyes to heaven, but beat his breast, saying, ‘God, be merciful to me a sinner!’ I tell you, this man went down to his house justified rather than the other; for everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted.
-Luke 18.10-14

What is interesting here is that the Pharisee is thankful, and the tax collector, whom we can assume to be relatively wealthy (it was a rather lucrative job), makes no mention of thanks. Yet the Pharisee was condemned, while the tax collector was justified. Why?

Thankfulness is the valuation for something on its own merit. “Thank you that I am not like other men” is thankfulness, but it is also pride. Closer to home, “Thank you for the raise I just got” is thankfulness, but it is also materialism. Truly the pharisee was not like other men, and surely God has given the raise, but these are rather things we are to be content in: thankful for the true blessing that the circumstance provides (Romans 8:28), but with the realization that these things themselves are not the blessing - rather a means to a blessing - as a vehicle by which God works good for His elect. Contentedness is a disconnected thankfulness - being wealthy as if one were not wealthy - “dealing with the world as if you had no dealings with it” (1 Corinthians 7:29-31). This is the spirit of the tax collector: he knew his wealth meant nothing were he to forfeit his own soul as a result (Mark 8:36). God had given him the wealth, but was it a blessing in itself? Or was it a blessing in the sense that it at some point caused him to cry out to God “Be merciful to me, a sinner!”?

This is the sense in which we are to be thankful: not for the circumstance in itself, but for the circumstance in its God-crafted goal, whether or not we know how that goal plays out through the circumstance. We are thus not to pray “Thank you, God, for a good family and plenty to eat” (if these things are true), but “Thank you, God, for a family that has encouraged my faith, and sustenance with which I may devote my energies back to You”. Not “Thank you, God, for placing me in a country with political freedom and free of persecution”, but “Thank you, God, that You have made the Gospel available to me through the means of political freedom”. God works good to those whom He has called both in prosperity and poverty, and over all the things we possess, this is the blessing we are to be thankful for.

The prosperity gospel as preached by such luminaries as Joel Osteen and the aptly named Creflo Dollar is often criticized by orthodox Christianity for emphasizing the material as God’s means of blessing the faithful. It’s easy enough to renounce blatant Prosperitism as materialistic and fair-weather faith, but how often do the rest of us fall, more subtly, into the same trap?

I cannot count how many times I’ve heard prayers thanking God for placing us in a country where we are free to worship Him. It’s a favorite theme of Patriotic Evangelicalism. But what is this saying? Thank you, God, for a comfortable life where I don’t have to make a real stand for my faith? Jesus says in Luke 6:22, Blessed are you when men hate you, and ostracize you, and insult you, and scorn your name as evil, for the sake of the Son of Man. Is living in America really a blessing in this light? Why would we thank God for withholding the blessing of persecution?

There is none good but one, that is, God.
-Mark 10:18

Many times we read a verse like Romans 8:28 without an understanding of what “good” truly is. And without that understanding, we substitute our fleshly understanding of good. What is good then? Our pleasure. Our comfort. Circumstances. Materials. The eternal might be good too, but what use is that to me now? We thank God for indulging our misconceptions of our own interests, all the while consciously avoiding any sort of more painful but infinitely higher and more profitable blessing that may otherwise be bestowed.

The Bible leaves no room for duality here. The entire rest of Romans 8 sets up a dichotomy between the spirit and the flesh, and the valuation of the self and its comfort is unmistakably fleshly living. What good is suffering if comfort is our good? What good is mourning if a perpetual emotional high is our good? No, good is so much higher than that. Suffering does not bring about our comfort; it destroys it. Mourning does not bring about happiness; it is the very opposite thereof. But suffering and mourning bring about a much higher good than either of these things: drawing nearer to God.

This then is the promise of Romans 8:28: not that Christians will prosper, not even that we will be comfortable - It is not in any respect a material guarantee. Rather it is that for anyone who loves God, any and all circumstances can only serve to bring him closer to God. This, more than any thing or circumstance, is the ultimate blessing.

The explanation for why God created the human race that I always heard growing up hinges on choice. First the question is posed, would you want a spouse to love you because she had to - a robot, if you will - or because she wanted to? The argument then goes on to contrast our worship with that of the angels: the angels are simply programmed to worship God and can do no other, the reasoning goes, while we can choose to love God - therefore our praise is preferable to that of the angels because ours is voluntary.

So God loves us because we have choice? This runs into several problems (we’ll even ignore the fact that Lucifer and a third of the angels didn’t adhere to their “programming”). First, our choice is constrained by sin. In the flesh - in our own effort - we cannot choose God (Romans 8:7-8). We have no capability in ourselves to love God. He enables us to love Him by the Holy Spirit for the very reason that we cannot by ourselves do so.

Second, this reasoning would imply that God loves us because of some innate good within us, namely, choice. There is nothing good within us that would commend us to God (Isaiah 64:6, Jeremiah 17:9), and we are certainly not in an inherently better position before Him than the angels. The belief that God loves us because we are made in His image - because we have some “spark of the divine” - even so far as to say that God loves us because we (can) choose Him, is to say that at some level we deserve God’s love, and this is fundamentally no different from the pride of Lucifer.

But God obviously loves us, as we see throughout the Bible (John 3:16). Why then, if we have nothing to commend ourselves to God, does He still pursue us? The answer is not within us, but in God. God does not love us because of who we are, but because of who He is. One thing I am indebted to John Piper for is the proof and justification of a selfish God (Deuteronomy 6:15): If God, being at the same time omniscient and the highest good in the universe, had as His ultimate aim anything other than the highest good in the universe, He would no longer be a good or perfect God. Therefore God’s ultimate goal can only be His own glory. His duty is not to us, but to Himself.

So how does mankind factor into God’s glory? God’s love of and offer of salvation to mankind is not so He can enjoy the pleasure of our company, but in order to demonstrate His power to redeem that which had nothing good of its own to boast. Paul tells us that salvation is entirely the work of God for this very purpose: “Not of works, lest any man should boast” (Ephesians 2:9). The glory is entirely God’s.

With this in mind, our focus shifts away from ourselves and towards God. Prayer becomes less of our will and more “Your will be done”, in faith that God makes all things to work together for the good of those that love Him (Romans 8:28). Father, forgive me, not because I’m coming to You, but because You have brought me to Yourself. This is a humble spirit before God: unpretentious gratitude that while we were yet sinners, while we were enemies of God with nothing worthy of love about us, Christ still died for us.