Mark Twain was a quite a celebrated man in his lifetime. He was often the guest of honor at receptions and “society” meetings, and he was a much–sought–after speaker for after dinner engagements. And time after time, Twain would be introduced by the chairmen of these events in the most glowing terms.

On November 15, 1900, Twain found himself being introduced in that very familiar and very complimentary manner again.  The man introducing the “virtuous” Mr. Twain this time was Judge Rastus S. Ransom.  After the introduction, Twain began his speech this way…

“Mr. Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen… It seems a most difficult thing for any man to say anything about me that is not complimentary.  I don’t know what the charm is about me which makes it impossible for a person to say a harsh thing about me and say it heartily, as if he was glad to say it.

“I am constructed like everybody else, and enjoy a compliment as well as any other fool*, but I do like to have the other side presented. And there is another side. I have a wicked side. Estimable friends who know all about it would tell you and take a certain delight in telling you things I have done, and things further that I have not repented. The real life that I live, and the real life that I suppose all of you live, is a life of interior sin.”

[…later on in the same speech…] “Judge Ransom seems to have all the virtues that he ascribes to me. But oh my! If you could throw an x–ray through him! We are a pair! I have made a life–study of trying to appear to be what he seems to think I am. Everybody believes that I am a monument of all the virtues, but it is nothing of the sort. I am living two lives — and it keeps me pretty busy. I have more personal vanity than modesty.”

Now, it seems as if Twain is honestly confessing his sinful, fallen nature, in a very striking and sincere (even profound) manner. But before you get the wrong idea about where Twain was headed with all of this, let me go back and finish that part of the paragraph I left out earlier… “The real life that I live, and the real life that I suppose all of you live, is a life of interior sin. That is what makes life valuable and pleasant! To lead a life of undiscovered sin! That is true joy!”

Twain concludes this speech (entitled “My Real Self”) with this line:  “I thank everybody for their compliments, but I don’t think I am praised any more than I am entitled to be.”

In the end, Mark Twain had a very flippant attitude toward the concept of sin.

But according to his Word, the Maker of heaven and earth does not.

For a while now our studies in the Faith category of our blog have been about the three most basic doctrines and most central themes of the Bible:  Creation, the Fall, and Redemption.

Most recently we’ve been looking at the effects of the Fall upon God’s good creation. Now we’ll begin to consider the effects of the Fall upon humanity in particular. Is it true that the “real life” we live is a life of “interior sin”? 

And if it is, is that really the definition of true joy… as Twain suggests?  Or is it a shame and misery from which God would have us redeemed?

*later on in the speech, Twain said: “I like compliments. I like to go home and tell them all over again to the members of my family. They don’t believe them, but I like to tell them in the home circle, all the same. I like to dream of them if I can.”

In our faith studies, we’ve been considering different aspects of the fall into sin.  One biblical way of thinking about sin is summed up in the word bondage. In the Bible (see Romans 8, for example) sin brings bondage. 

“For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God.”
—Romans 8.20,21

But what does this bondage mean?  To whom are we in bondage?

In the Bible, from Genesis 3 onward, to sin is to serve Satan.  And to serve Satan is to be enslaved to Satan.  Here’s the deal:  Outside of service to the Lord God, there is only bondage.  When we refuse to find our freedom in obeying God, we enter into bondage/slavery to Satan… with the rest of the world.

And that’s the primary way the word “world” is used in the Bible.  To be “worldly” is to be in the power of sin.  It is to be distorted and perverted along with the rest of the sin–infested creation. 

Whenever human sinfulness bends and distorts God’s good creation, it is there that we find “the world.” As we’ve said a few different ways in this series, “worldliness” is the spoiledness, the rottenness, the caricature, the distortion of God’s good creation. 

John 18:  My kingdom [Christ says] is not of this world.
Romans 12:  Do not be conformed any longer to the pattern of this world.
James 1:  Religion is this: to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.
2nd Peter:  people only escape the corruption of the world by knowing our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ
James 4:  Don’t you know that friendship with the world is hatred toward God?

To be in the “world” is to be in the power of the parasite of sin (see the June 23 blog post) that is distorting and perverting and spoiling God’s good creation.

But follow me on this — because this is where many of us need to sharpen our thinking so that we might think more Christianly and Biblically…

Christians have a dangerous tendency to think and speak of “worldliness” as a compartment for the “secular” things in life, over against the “sacred” things in life.

So… officework, newspapers, sports, business, yardwork, shopping, politics, playing cards, reading a novel, watching a movie, dancing, and so forth… these things are all “worldly.” While going to church, praying, doing theology, witnessing, and fellowshipping with other believers is NOT “worldly.”

But this is exactly wrong.

We can (and often do!) engage in all of those “Christian” things in a worldly manner.  And through Christ we can engage in all of those “secular” things in a holy manner.

The question that divides the two is this:  Are you in the power of the parasite (sin)?  Are in you in bondage to Satan?  Are you ensnared by these perversions and distortions of God’s good creation?

Or, through Jesus Christ, have you been freed to enjoy and serve God appropriately in all of his wide, good creation?

You‘re probably somewhat familiar with the idea behind the yin and the yang symbol.  Part of the idea is that good and evil necessarily coexist.  They always have coexisted, still do coexist, and always will coexist. 

The Bible teaches something radically different.

Ponder these words from a Christian theologian:  “Nothing about sin is its own; all its power, persistence, and plausibility are stolen goods.  Sin is not really an entity but a spoiler of entities, not an organism but a leech on organisms.”

That‘s right.  The message of the Bible is that sin is not necessarily inherent in this world.  Nor is sin necessarily inherent in the human condition.  Prior to the rebellion we read about in Genesis 3 there was no corruption, no stain, and no sin in all of creation. 

The goodness of creation preceded (and is therefore distinct from) the fall into sin and all of its effects.  Evil can in no way be blamed on creation.  Evil can only be blamed on the fall.

Think about what this mean… No matter how closely sin and “the stuff of creation” may be intertwined in human experience, sin is never to be identified with the stuff of creation.  Sin always remains distinct from the stuff of creation.

Let’s consider some examples:  Prostitution (and other sexual aberrations) do not eliminate the goodness of sexuality.  Political abusiveness cannot wipe out the God–ordained character of government and the state.  Blasphemous art cannot obliterate the creational legitimacy of beauty and art itself.

Do you see what sin is doing in each of those examples?  Sin is something like a parasite.  Sin cannot exist by itself; it has to feed off of something good in God’s creation.  Sin is an uninvited guest that has to keep tapping its host for sustenance. 

In C.S. Lewis’ wonderful book The Screwtape Letters, the demon Screwtape admits that “Pleasure is God’s invention, not ours.  He made the pleasures — all our research so far has not enabled us to produce one.  All we can do is encourage the humans to take the pleasures which God has produced at times, in ways or in degrees which he has forbidden.”

In another place Lewis wrote this:  “Goodness is, so to speak, itself.” What he means by this is that goodness is original, independent, and constructive while sin is derivative, dependent, and destructive.  “Goodness is, so to speak, itself:  badness is only spoiled goodness.  And there must be something good first before it can be spoiled.”

That’s the scenario… sin is a parasite on the goodness of creation.  It is not itself a part of creation.  Evil is a completely other entity that introduces itself to creation and feeds off of it.  It doesn’t naturally fit or belong there!

This is an incredibly important point if you want to properly understand the Bible and Christian thought.  Every other religion / philosophy / worldview will in some way fall into the trap of identifying some aspect of creation as THE VILLAIN.  (And sometimes even as THE SAVIOR.)

The Bible is utterly unique in rejecting that view.  Only the Bible keeps creation and sin distinct.

Only the Bible shows us that sin is really just the ugly distortion and perversion of something God created to be good.  Sin is a caricature of the good.

Human beings after the fall — though they are now travesties of humanity, as God originally created humanity — are still human beings, which God originally pronounced as “Very Good!” Now we are just spoiled human beings.

A humanistic school that utterly rejects God is still a school.  Knowledge and education are still good.  But it’s a “spoiled good” now.

A hurtful relationship (say, with your mother or father) is still a relationship, and relationships are good.  But this one, sadly, is a spoiled good.

A crooked business is still a business.  Atheistic culture is still culture.  Ungodly thinking is still thinking.

In every case, what something “still is” points to the remaining goodness of creation.  But it’s now been spoiled by the fall.  It’s been twisted and warped by the parasite of sin.

We need Someone to attach the parasite to Himself and take it all away from us.

The Bible teaches us that Adam and Eve’s fall into sin was not just an isolated act of disobedience.  Rather, it was an event of catastrophic significance for the whole of creation.

Romans 8 describes all of creation as “groaning” under the corrosive effects of the Fall.  Not just human beings, but all of God’s good handiwork has now been drawn into the sphere of our mutiny against a good God. 

Look around you and consider the scope of the Fall…

Marriage… marriage is a good creation of God, designed for our benefit.  But can you think of even one marriage that is not distorted and violated in some way by sin? 

Family… families fall apart all the time.  And even the best of families are often severely strained by our fallen tendencies — like the materialistic bent which encourages parents to neglect the children for the sake of other things.

The State… the state is a good ordinance of God, but one that is now often twisted and distorted by outright tyranny in many places in the world.  And even the most democratic of countries cultivate political systems that form government policies as a response to pressure from special interest groups, rather than as a response to the demands of justice, mercy, and faithfulness.

We could go on.  Art, technology, work, sexuality, eating, drinking… everywhere you look in the wide scope of creation you’ll see the same sort of distortions.  The good possibilities of God’s creation are being misused, warped, and exploited for sinful ends.  Everything has now been caught up in the train of Adam’s failure to obey God.

But perhaps the distortion is most obviously found in the mirror.

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“It was a dark and stormy night…”

Many of you will recognize these as the immortal words of Snoopy, that aspiring novelist.  Snoopy often sat on top of his dog house, hunched over his typewriter, trying to get the rest of his great novel to flow out of that opening sentence.

But what you may not know is that Snoopy actually borrowed those words from Edward George Bulwer–Lytton, a Victorian novelist who died in the 1800’s.

Bulwer–Lytton used those words to begin his novel, Paul Clifford.  And every year, in July, the “Bulwer–Lytton Award” is given to the novel that is distinguished by having the absolutely WORST opening sentence of any novel published the previous year.

Now, I don’t know what Bulwer–Lytton’s novel Paul Clifford was all about, but we all know this much about it, don’t we?  We know that in the first chapter something BAD is going to happen.

“It was a dark and stormy night…”

The reader is just waiting for the story to start off with some accident or crime that will become the problem that has to be resolved throughout the rest of the narrative.

In literature (and in movies) what’s happening in nature often reflects what’s happening at the center of the story. 

There’s a reason why it’s “always winter and never Christmas” in Narnia at the beginning of The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe.  And there’s also a reason why that long winter starts rapidly thawing into a beautiful spring in the middle of that story.  Aslan is on the move.

Or — if you’re more of a Tolkien person — compare the beauty of the Shire with the dark gloom of Mordor. 

Beauty (or the lack of beauty) in the surrounding environment reflects what’s happening at the center of the story. 

Well, the same is true in God’s story.

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