Saints and sinners
Over the years, I’ve watched both prominent and unknown Christians make disastrous choices that have put their lives – and the lives of other around them – on the rocks. When a private scandal becomes public knowledge, I’ve frequently heard a deafening sound of tut-tutting, and then amazement at the sordid revelation: ‘How could they do such a thing? I could never do that.’ It’s the latter statement that really troubles me – the notion that we are basically good people who could never venture into anything terribly bad. For one thing, we all share a common humanity, and humanity is fallen. Those who are guilty of both minor and major atrocities are related to us; we all have the same streak of inherent sinfulness as any Nazi, any death-row murderer, any terrorist. When we say, ‘I could never do that’, we place ourselves in great peril. The knowledge that we too are vulnerable should make us ever more vigilant and careful. Perhaps that’s why we are told that we should watch when we stand, lest we fall.
The knowledge of our own sinfulness should make us not only more compassionate to others who fail, but more alert and diligent about our own lives today. Those who are blind to the terrible potential of their fragile humanness are surely more likely to crumble in the face of temptation. Some of us have not committed adultery, but it wasn’t steely moral fortitude that has kept us. Chances are we simply haven’t had the opportunity, and so we remain untested. While we might determine to never fail, we shouldn’t conclude that we never could fail.
The late, great, Charles Colson – himself a man who had known spectacular public failure during the Watergate scandal – records a moment when one man was faced with the potential of his own fallenness. Yehiel Dinur, a survivor of Auschwitz, testified against Adolf Eichmann, the Nazi architect of the Holocaust, during the Nuremberg trials. During the 1961 proceedings, Dinur walked into the courtroom to come face-to-face with the man responsible for his incarceration in that hellish camp 18 years earlier. Suddenly, a dam broke inside Dinur, and he began to sob uncontrollably. Then he fainted, collapsing in a heap on the floor as the judge yelled for order in the packed courtroom. But Dinur was not overcome by hatred, paralysed by fear, or tormented by horrid memories. He was devastated by the awful realisation that Eichmann was not some godlike, superhuman army officer who had sent so many to their deaths. Eichmann was just an ordinary man, the guy next door. ‘I was afraid about myself,’ said Dinur. ‘I saw that I am capable to do this. I am… exactly like him.’
So, as followers of Christ, let’s never forget the stunning potential for beauty that is ours as saints impelled and steadily transformed by the Holy Spirit. But with that, let’s never lose sight of the dark potential of our human fragility either. A sober assessment of ourselves will lead us to affirm that, with God’s help, we won’t – but let’s never say that we never could.