“And thus I clothe my naked villany
With odd old ends stol’n out of holy writ,
And seem a saint, when most I play the devil.”

King Richard III (I, iii)

Perhaps I should spend less time involved with Internet discussions. There’s something to be said and learned with respect to the stewardship of time. Nevertheless, I’ve invested the time lately, for good, ill, or both, in discussions with a variety of Christians and non-Christians. There’s a disquieting thread woven through the strands of most every discussion, especially when the topic at hand has religious or spiritual application or import. There’s a universal clothed villainy afoot. It’s systemic, foundational, inherent…

The villainy is the sin nature we inherit from Adam, for In Adam we sinned all.Before I sound too preachy, no non-pelagian Christian–which is simply longhand for all Christians–should struggle to acknowledge the universality of the sin nature. The Bible is overtly clear on this point, and a knowledge of sin is the entry point for Christianity. The Christian church is a unique institution: you’re required to be rotten as a prerequisite for membership. Original sin provides the Christian’s dual understanding of the brotherhood of man, it and creation in the image of God.

So far, so good. However, the problem arises when (read as when, not if) we clothe our villainy. Involve yourself in any Christian forum and see how long it takes to detect the presence of the sinful nature, both in yourself and in others. The insincerities, the taunts, the refusal to cross party lines and admit an opponent’s strengths, the know-it-all-ness, the veiled ridicule, or any other of a truckload of sins. Better yet, just take note of your own thoughts in connection with your Christian brethren. Am I the only one who has such thoughts? I doubt it…The heart is deceitful above all things. Who may trust it?

And yet our villainy is so easily clothed by the anonymity of the Internet. It’s easy enough to fool ourselves, deceiving ourselves that we have no sin. God forbid. May I ever enter church as the tax collector and not the Pharisee.

But I do it, and so do you. It’s foolish. I might as well put a blonde wig on my Great Dane and take her out on a date, daring anyone to tell me she’s a dog. Nonetheless, that’s what we do. We dress up our sin nature and pass it off to the world as inner beauty. O wretched man that I am! Who shall deliver me from the body of this death?

In speaking with non-Christians, my experience is that the sin nature represents one of the top two or three stumbling blocks to reasonable communication with the modern non-Christian. The presuppositions from both sides concerning the inner nature of humans are so vastly disparate that it presents an immediate roadblock to discussion about God.  There was presumably a time when non-Christians recognized the sinful nature, but that time is by and large a thing of the past. Today’s non-Christian is a flasher; his villainy is clothed, but he’ll be happy to open his trench coat at any time, because, in his mind, there’s nothing to hide.

Most disturbingly, we as Christians, as King Richards, clothe our villainy with odd old ends stol’n out of holy writ.I tangled recently with some holiness folks preaching sinless perfection. While I appreciate the call and emphasis on living a good Christian life, to say that we are perfect in our sinlessness is the height of clothing our villainy. Unless, of course, we think we are Christ himself, or better than the Apostle Paul:

¹⁴For we know that the law is spiritual: but I am carnal, sold under sin. ¹⁵For that which I do I allow not: for what I would, that do I not; but what I hate, that do I. ¹⁶If then I do that which I would not, I consent unto the law that it is good. ¹⁷Now then it is no more I that do it, but sin that dwelleth in me. ¹⁸For I know that in me (that is, in my flesh,) dwelleth no good thing: for to will is present with me; but how to perform that which is good I find not. ¹⁹For the good that I would I do not: but the evil which I would not, that I do. ²⁰Now if I do that I would not, it is no more I that do it, but sin that dwelleth in me. ²¹I find then a law, that, when I would do good, evil is present with me.²²For I delight in the law of God after the inward man: ²³But I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members. ²⁴O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death? ²⁵I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord. So then with the mind I myself serve the law of God; but with the flesh the law of sin.

Naturally, the forum was overflowing with clothed villainy, and it pains me to think that Christ was watching his followers represent him so. Yes, we so often seem the saint, when most we play the devil. May God have mercy upon us all, giving thanks to Him for 1 John 1:9, and the fact that Romans 8 follows Romans 7.

April 12, 1961: Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin becomes the first person to orbit the earth and the first person in outer space. Gagarin is heralded across the world as an international hero.

It is rumored that Gagarin remarked upon reaching space that he didn’t “see any God up here.” This is probably not the actual case, but, tensions being what they were at the time, embedded in a cold war between a highly generalized Christian west and godless Soviet Union, the story sticks. The legend grows that Gagarin appears in western cities trumpeting boldly that he had entered outer space, looked for God, and found none. As the story goes, at one such press conference a reporter shouted out that had Gagarin opened the capsule door in space, he would have seen God rather quickly and clearly.

Given the American astronauts’ frequent reference to the wonder of God and His creation, taking communion in space, and the like, the space race is postured within the general tenor of the cold war: for right or wrong, true or false, among other things, the godless communists versus the Christian Americans. Things are seldom this simple.

The New Atheists have labored diligently to categorize this phenomenon as a result of the 1950’s red scare in America, and as a deliverance of McCarthyism, often citing 1950’s legislation of the National Motto In God We Trust and the inclusion of the motto on American currency as proof. In this view, America is thought of as largely a deist/enlightenment culture overrun in the 50’s by Christian fundamentalists, leading ultimately to the religious right neo-conservatism we see today. This is a deeply problematic view historically, however, but as I eschew politics, I mention it for the context only.

This is what interests me instead. Keeping in mind that things are ever near infinitely more complex than we imagine, the context of a godless materialism versus Christianity has implications when set within real world consequences. On October 24, 1960, a horrid explosion occurred which has come to be known as the Nedelin disaster. Due to Russian secrecy at the time, no one is certain of the death toll, but estimates put it in excess of one hundred. Perhaps this is footage of the disaster:

At any rate, reading the account of the disaster is difficult. But so is reading the account of the Apollo 1 fire.

What then are we to make of these tragedies within our context? There are two lines I’d like to consider briefly: one from each side of the context.

The response from the materialist/naturalist camp in light of these disasters is that God does not exist, founded on the problem of evil. How could God allow such a thing? Where was he when the fires started? Why didn’t he stop them?  It is a response founded on despair and meaninglessness. No greater force or power exists outside of this natural realm to make sense of the tragedy. What you see is what you get, and these tragedies quickly pass out of history into nothingness, as do their victims. The tragedy is final in its horridness as in its oblivion.

From the other side, a much different picture emerges. In it, there is a force working through the affairs of men. There is hope in the face of despair and tragedy. In this view, all is not lost, nor is a brief moment in history, or its victims, abandoned to the receding and fading tendrils of nothingness.

One is a foundation of sand; the other is a foundation of rock.