Saving
Wretches Like You
Of
wretches and worms
It
is hard to sing some songs the way they were written. They just go against our grain. Few folk today want
to sing John Newton’s Amazing Grace the way he wrote it: God “saved a
wretch like me.” Or, how about Isaac Watts’ hymn, Alas! and did my savior bleed “for such a worm as I.” It isn’t nice to call people wretches or
worms. It’s not good for their self
esteem.
This
is why we change the lyrics to make songs more palatable in our culture of
self-esteem. We substitute “that saved and set me
free” or “for such a one as I” for the outdated
wretch-and-worm references. We have
removed the wretches and worms from our theology. While we might agree that the
whoring-raping-slaver, John Newton was a wretch, none of us will volunteer for
wretchedness ourselves, and we know for sure we’re better than worms. To be quite honest we don’t believe we were ever
wretches—even before getting saved.
Basically we think of ourselves as fairly nice people who became
Christians and added meaning to our lives. We were told “God has a wonderful
plan for your life.” So we signed up for
this wonderful plan. Sure, we had
sinned, but we had done no sins that God didn’t “understand” or that are not
done by church folk now. Our sins were
mostly sins of ignorance or immaturity—nothing that deserves the label wretch
or worm.
We
Christians believe we were basically fairly good when we found God. And we’re even better now. Salvation is “all about
me.” We like to say, “If I were the only person on earth, Christ would have
come to die for just me.” This beefs up
our self-esteem. To be quite frank, we
actually think God needs us, and is actually quite lucky to have us.
That’s how we see our devotions, for instance. We imagine a lonely God who is
hungry for our company. When we don’t show up for devotions
some day, God mournfully walks away singing Larnelle
Harris’ song, “I miss my time with you.”
If we were totally honest we’d change the lyrics of another sing to, “He
needs me every hour, evr’y hour He needs me.”
This
approach though, makes confession really hard for us. Confess what? Why confess when we really don’t think
ourselves as really that bad after all? This reminds me of the student who
insisted, “I sin every day in thought, word and deed.” I asked, “OK, name some sins you committed in
the last 24 hours.” She screwed up her
face, thought awhile, and then responded, “Well, nothing I can think of, but
I’m sure I have.” I didn’t give up. I
followed with, “OK, name one sin you committed during this last whole
But
that’s not all. Self-esteem theology teaches us we’re deserving. Being basically good we expect basically good
things to happen to us. We expect God to provide money for our new house,
college tuition, and funds for our latest adventure in missionary tourism. We
expect good health and a fulfilling life and good grades and pretty girlfriends
and a husband that meets the criteria on the list we made at youth camp. We are entitled to these things. So why be grateful when we get
them? We abhor sacrifice and suffering
for ourselves and only love the idea when the stories are about people far in
the past or far away on the planet. Being fairly good people we think we
deserve a fairly good life. Even heaven is nothing to get excited about—after
all, God has such a crush on us—where else could he send us? This is why we
tune in to preachers who will tell us how good we are and how much God is
totally absorbed with blessing us with material possessions, fulfillment in our
careers and really great sex lives. Is
the reason Christ died—for cars and promotions and good sex?
Of
course, there are occasional sour notes in the choir. They usually
come from some reformed person reminding us of our total depravity. These guys take Romans
The
rest of us just sing louder and drown out these sour notes. There are far
more choir members singing songs of self-esteem than Reformers singing songs of
total depravity. Since we’ve already
rejected their “worm theology” we just ignore their warnings. We continue to preach a happy face doctrine
of self esteem. People
to like it. Which is why so many last Sunday changed
the lyrics of Amazing Grace.” We might think John Newton was a wretches and
worm, but not us, thank you very much. We’re far better than that.
So what do you think? Are we as good and deserving as we think we are…or have we gone too far?
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Keith
Drury