The Seven Deadlies - Anger

Ephesians 4:17-32 (NRSV)
Now this I affirm and insist on in the Lord: you must no longer live as the Gentiles live, in the futility of their minds. They are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of their ignorance and hardness of heart. They have lost all sensitivity and have abandoned themselves to licentiousness, greedy to practice every kind of impurity.
That is not the way you learned Christ! For surely you have heard about him and were taught in him, as truth is in Jesus. You were taught to put away your former way of life, your old self, corrupt and deluded by its lusts, and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and to clothe yourselves with the new self, created according to the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.
So then, putting away falsehood, let all of us speak the truth to our neighbors, for we are members of one another. Be angry but do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger, and do not make room for the devil. Thieves must give up stealing; rather let them labor and work honestly with their own hands, so as to have something to share with the needy. Let no evil talk come out of your mouths, but only what is useful for building up, as there is need, so that your words may give grace to those who hear. And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, with which you were marked with a seal for the day of redemption. Put away from you all bitterness and wrath and anger and wrangling and slander, together with all malice, and be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ has forgiven you.

I don’t know what your experience of this sermon series on the Seven Deadly Sins has been like, but I have found that each week, as I began to explore the sin that is coming up, I have said to myself, “Oh…that’s mine. That’s the one that I’ve got to deal with.” So the first week, I was certain that the besetting problem of my life was pride. But then last week we talked about envy and how insidious it is and how deeply it works into the fabric of our lives and I said, “Oh, no. Envy is definitely my problem.” And now, it’s anger. Anybody want to raise your hand for this one? I’m ready to.

You know there are a lot of folks who feel that this may be our country’s greatest sin. We live in an angry society. When people in the rest of the world think of the United States they think of guns and the largest, best-quipped military in the world. While we pray that these are never used unjustly, to many people these are signs of aggression and unchecked anger. And we know how often we face tragedies like workplace shootings and school shootings where anger spirals out of control. Our sports like football and the swagger of basketball are brash and “in your face.” Our entertainment is built on anger as well. TV shows like Survivor and The Apprentice are built on the drama of people becoming vengeful and trying to “eliminate” the competition. Rap music is full of aggressive and violent images. And our movies like The Patriot, Kill Bill, and any Jean Claude Van Damme film are bloody celebrations of revenge carried out by innocent people who were terribly wronged.

Of course anger can take less obvious forms as well. There is the quiet destruction of anger turned inward. How often have we heard about a long-suffering victim of abuse turning to drugs or alcohol or self-mutilation to try to cope with anger they can’t express? Or perhaps the anger turned inward becomes an ulcer or a heart condition or obesity or depression, which someone once described as anger without enthusiasm. Or maybe we express our anger is some passively aggressive form.

A wife and husband were discussing their anger once as part of a marriage enrichment exercise and the husband said, “You know, when I get mad with you I go chop wood. Somehow, just getting out there with an ax just really helps me let go of my frustrations. How do you deal with your anger?”

The wife said, “I usually clean the toilet.”

“Clean the toilet? How does that help?”

“I use your toothbrush.”

There are some healthy and unhealthy ways to deal with anger, obviously. But some of us have a hard time accessing that anger and I’m one of them. I remember going through my internship and chaplaincy training in seminary and what I heard over and over again was, “Alex, you’ve got to find some way to get in touch with your anger. You never get mad. That’s not healthy. You’ve got to sense when you’re feeling upset and express it.” You know, that really made me…angry. (So I guess it worked.) But I came from a family where it wasn’t O.K. to be angry and it was an emotion I had to come to terms with and learn to at least understand how it was affecting me.

Will Willimon, the United Methodist bishop of the North Alabama Conference, writes about a time when he was talking to woman whose husband had left her with no warning after only two years of marriage. He asked her, “Are you angry that your husband did this to you?”

She said, “No, I’m not really angry just hurt.”

“Not angry?”

“No, just hurt.” She was a bit like me. Didn’t think it was acceptable to be angry.

So Willimon, who was her pastor, said, “You know, I think you’ve got a right to be angry with him. And maybe angry with God, also. After all, God told you to be faithful in your marriage vows and you were. But the other side of the bargain wasn’t kept. I would think you would be angry!”

“No,” she said. “Just hurt.” Willimon said that he decided then and there that anger suppressed and denied could do some devastating things.[i]

But if Christians are confused, it’s because we’re getting some mixed messages about anger. If we go to the Bible, it seems that there is some confusion about what God asks of us. It even seems like God is confused. On the one hand there are some clear indications of how devastating anger is to our relationship with God. Jesus’ teaching about anger in the Sermon on the Mount is so strong that there is no room for questioning. This is from Matthew 5, verses 21 and 22: "You have heard that it was said to those of ancient times, 'You shall not murder'; and 'whoever murders shall be liable to judgment.' [This was from the law we find in the Old Testament.] But I say to you that if you are angry with a brother or sister, you will be liable to judgment; and if you insult a brother or sister, you will be liable to the council; and if you say, 'You fool,' you will be liable to the hell of fire.” [NRSV] Now if you read that in the King James Version of the Bible, you will see that it says, “if you are angry without cause,” but the earliest Greek texts of Matthew don’t have that phrase. It was probably added by people who wanted to soften what Jesus was saying. But there is nothing soft about Jesus’ teachings in the Sermon on the Mount. He wanted us to hear clearly that it wasn’t just adultery but lust, it wasn’t just theft but greed, it wasn’t just murder or hateful acts, but anger itself that was the danger to our souls.

Robert Thurman says, in his book called Anger, that what Jesus seems to say here is that anger is not natural to us as human beings. We have a tendency to view it that way. When my growth group was telling me to get in touch with my anger…when Will Willimon was trying to get his parishioner to ‘fess up to her anger…there is an assumption there that this passion is so natural to us that we need to express it somehow. But that is not what Jesus says here. Thurman says the assumption here is that “the human’s nature is social, made for cooperation and tolerance and gentleness, and anger is therefore a harsh distortion of that nature.”[ii] Anger distorts who we are and makes us less than we are supposed to be.

It’s for the same reason that the Bible tells us that vengeance…do you know the rest of this quote?...it comes in several versions in the Bible, but you most often hear it from Romans…”Vengeance is…mine, says the Lord, I will repay.” [Rom. 12:19, NRSV]. Don’t give into your own anger and desire to harm others. It is God’s role to execute justice because God knows how easy it is for us to have our ideas about what is just perverted by our own anger.

Think about Star Wars. If you’ve seen the movie series you know that this is the reason Anakin Skywalker becomes the evil villain Darth Vader. He is motivated, initially, by a sense of justice. As a young child taken into the care of wise teachers, we see his promise and potential and the hint that he might be “the One” who will restore balance to the universe. But the more he experiences slights and frustrations the more he gives into dark temptations. The scene in which we know he will go too far comes in Episode II, or, if you are as old as me, Episode V since it’s the 5th movie released. Going back to his home planet he discovers that his mother has been kidnapped by Tusken raiders, these strange sand people of the desert. When he discovers her she is in very poor condition and dies. In his anger Anakin takes vengeance himself and slaughters all of the Tusken people in the camp. He comes back and says, “I killed them. I killed them all. They're dead, every single one of them. And not just the men, but the women and the children, too. They're like animals, and I slaughtered them like animals. I HATE THEM!”[iii] Once Anakin has given in to his hate, there is no question what he will become. The words of Anakin’s wise master Yoda from Episode I haunt him, “Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering.”[iv] Once Anakin becomes Darth Vader, there is suffering for everyone.

But I said that we Christians have some mixed messages about anger. We know how destructive anger is, but we also hear in the Bible that it’s OK to be angry. When Paul writes to the Ephesian Christians in the passage we read this morning he says, “Be angry…but do not sin.” That suggests that there is a kind of anger that is acceptable to God. In fact we are even encouraged to be angry, though Paul is quick to put it in the context of a community where people build one another up. Just a few verses later he tells the Ephesians not to store up bitterness and wrath and anger. It seems that flashes of passion are to be expected, but the Ephesians should temper them with the more important goal of being a faithful community known for its love and truth. This is why Paul gives that famous admonition that we should not let the sun go down on our anger, which is not just good advice for married couples, but for everyone.

It’s not just Paul who gives us these mixed messages, though. It’s Jesus, too. The other passage we read this morning has Jesus going into the Temple and, in a fit of righteous rage, throwing the moneychangers out. This is not the “softly and tenderly, Jesus is calling,” Jesus. This is the Jesus who will not be satisfied until the earth conforms to the vision of God. Here anger is put at the service of the kingdom.

This is the God we know from the Hebrew Scriptures…the God whose anger burns against injustice, who knocks down Babel’s tower and smites Egypt’s firstborn…the God who destroys Sodom and Gomorrah and will not tolerate the prophets of false Gods. This is an angry God and one that we have a hard time reconciling with our understanding of what is just and right. What do we do with a God like this?

When I finally got in touch with my anger, I really related to this vision of God. Looking around me at the injustices I was seeing in the inner-city in Dallas, I discovered a prophetic voice. I was angry at a city that let miles of public housing go unoccupied while homeless people filled the streets. I was angry at neighborhoods that were torn up by internal divisions that sapped their ability to deal with the real issues they faced. I was angry at families that let drugs and violence tear them apart so that children came to me with nowhere else to go and suffered scars that they would carry for the rest of their lives. I was angry at probation officers who called the youth they worked with “throwaway kids” and angry at churches that wouldn’t claim them as their own.

I was really angry and it made me a great student. After a year out serving in the streets of Dallas, I came back to seminary for my last year with what I thought was a clear mind and many an ax to grind. I knew what God wanted and I was ready to fight for it. My papers that year were filled with passion and fire and a desire to change the world to look like God’s kingdom. And I wasn’t wrong. I was right.

Martin Luther, the first Protestant, worked pretty much the same way. He was a volatile guy and he believed that anger was an ally for him. “I never work better than when I am inspired by anger” he said, “for when I am angry I can write, pray, and preach well, for then my whole temperature is quickened, my understanding sharpened, and all mundane vexations and temptations depart.”[v] Have you ever felt like that? Like when you get mad suddenly you can see exactly how things ought to be. But how trustworthy is our vision then? It’s really easy for our vision to be clouded by the anger. It’s really easy for us to justify horrible things. It’s really easy for us to do great damage. As Will Willimon notes about Martin Luther, the same anger that led him to such great work that really did change the face of Europe, also led him to justify horrible actions against the poor and against Jews. I felt that same blindness when I was writing in seminary. Anger, in our hands, is an untrustworthy instrument.

This is the great temptation in righteous anger. We do know it can be dangerous, but it is very easy for us to believe that we can harness it for good. We know that we can use it on behalf of others, on behalf of God, and so bring about the kingdom. But for the same reason that vengeance is God’s, so we need to recognize that what we are really expressing in work on behalf of the kingdom is justice, not anger. Billy Graham says that this is what Jesus means by blessing the meek in that same Sermon on the Mount. “The word ‘meek’,” he says, “actually means that you become controlled by the Spirit of God. As a wild force tamed, so the Spirit of God can tame your tongue and tame the passions of you soul, if you surrender your heart and your life to Jesus Christ.”[vi] It is not about getting rid of the passions but putting them at the service of God and claiming the passions that are from God.

I need to say a word, too, about another way we get distorted by the sin of anger. There is a sense in which our culture has accepted anger as a means of self-expression. The rap singers and the TV shows I mentioned at the beginning of this sermon are really not so much angry at the world as they are saying, “Hey, look at me! If anger is the thing that will tell you who I am and make you look at me, I’m going to use it.” Since we have accepted as a society that anger is unavoidable, that we must be in touch with it, that it is some force that can only be managed but not eliminated, we have accepted that people will use it to express themselves. Used this way, anger is once again another expression of that root sin of pride, which sees the whole world as curved in upon me. Anger is about my frustrations, my hurts, my need to express myself in ways that will make you (and maybe God) know that I will not be ignored.

So what do we do with this anger? How do we release ourselves from its grip? Well, first, by acknowledging that we are in its grips. Whether we express anger by lashing out physically and striking someone else, or by turning it inward in depression, we are in its grip. Secondly, we can follow Jesus’ teaching that leads us beyond acts of anger to the workings of our minds and souls. Hateful acts have their origin in the way our minds work and in the attitude we have toward the world. When we can learn about how we give anger reign over our bodies, our reason, our lives perhaps we can understand the truth that what goes on in our heads can be as damaging to our souls as murder. I don’t think we can do this alone. I think this is the work of prayer and it is the work of community. If we do not have brothers and sisters in Christ with whom we can share these dark struggles of our souls, we will not be able to move beyond the grips of anger. You need a small group. Perhaps this is a Lenten discipline for you!

Finally, we have to nurture within ourselves the life which we know in Christ. There was righteous anger in Christ, but there was also compassion, patience and love, even for those who were far from God. He sat with prostitutes, tax collectors, Pharisees and lawyers, all of whom could have led him to righteous anger.

Once when James and John, two of his disciples, faced a crowd that rejected them, they came back to Jesus and said, “Hey, you know when this happened to Elijah, Jesus, he called down fire from heaven on the people who rejected him. Can we do that?” But what did Jesus say to them? “No. You don’t know what manner of Spirit you are of, because I came not to destroy lives but to save them.” [Luke 9:54-55].

Jesus knew how easily our anger turns to violence, hatred and exclusion. God knows how much damage we do to ourselves and others when we don’t confront our anger. And God knows, because God did it, that the answer to the world’s injustice is not anger but forgiveness.
The author Jack Miles says, “To this day, few of God’s creatures, including the vast majority of Christians, treat their enemies as Jesus treated his—allowing them to put him to death while praying only for their forgiveness, never for the defeat or their humiliation. But Christianity has never been able to suppress the scandal of how its version of the epic of God’s wrath ends. It ends when the lion becomes a lamb, and nothing in the Bible, absolutely nothing, is more disturbing than this.”[vii]

It’s disturbing because if we conform to the image of this God that we know in Christ, we have to change. The world has to change. Wrath doesn’t have the last word. Love does. And what would we look like if we stopped nursing our anger and embraced God’s radical love? What would you look like? Maybe there’s a Lenten transformation for you. Thanks be to God.

[i] William Willimon, Sinning Like a Christian: A New Look at the Seven Deadly Sins, Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2005), p. 71.
[ii] Robert A.F. Thurman, Anger, (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), p. 43. Thurman says this in reference to Seneca whom he sees as being in line with Jesus’ thoughts in this passage.
[iii] http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0121765/quotes
[iv] http://www.ericdavid.info/default.asp?id=70&newsaction=newsdetail&articleid=70
[v] Martin Luther, Harper Book of Quotations, 3rd ed., ed. By Robert I. Fitzhenry, (New York: Harper Perennial, 1993), p. 36, quoted in Willimon.
[vi] Billy Graham, Freedom From the Seven Deadly Sins, (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1955), p. 29.
[vii] Jack Miles, “If God Smites, Why Can’t We?”, www.beliefnet.com/story/112/story_11216.html.

The Seven Deadlies: Envy

Titus 3:1-7 [NRSV]
Remind them to be subject to rulers and authorities, to be obedient, to be ready for every good work, to speak evil of no one, to avoid quarreling, to be gentle, and to show every courtesy to everyone. For we ourselves were once foolish, disobedient, led astray, slaves to various passions and pleasures, passing our days in malice and envy, despicable, hating one another. But when the goodness and loving kindness of God our Savior appeared, he saved us, not because of any works of righteousness that we had done, but according to his mercy, through the water of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit. This Spirit he poured out on us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior, so that, having been justified by his grace, we might become heirs according to the hope of eternal life.

At some point we’re supposed to get over it. A mature person is supposed to be able to get it, to realize that the world, despite all of our wishes, does not revolve only around us. In infants it is a forgivable thing. When they cry it is out of frustration that their needs are not being met. They are wet, they’re tired, they’re hungry, they’re sick, they’re uncomfortable, they’re scared and they will not suffer in silence. They will wail until someone responds. We all come into the world thinking, “It’s all about me,” whatever ‘me’ means.

But later, as children, as youth, as adults, at some point, we’re supposed to realize that the world is more than ‘me.’ There are other people with needs of their own. We share our lives and the world with them. One of the first and hardest lessons we have to learn is just that – that we must share.

If we find our lives in Christ, as Christians, we realize something even deeper – that our lives are not, in fact, our own. Jesus comes to say, “Those who find their life will lose it and those who lose their life for my sake will find it.” [Mat 10:39, NRSV] Somewhere in that mystery is the promise that by letting go of the life centered on me we will find the life that is given to us in Christ. As Colossians says, “Set your mind on things that are above, not on things that are on earth, for you have died and your life is hidden with Christ in God.” [Col 3:2-3] It’s not about me anymore. Or perhaps better said: I find myself as I discover my life in Christ. And because I am no longer preoccupied with myself I am free to love God and love others.

As I say, at some point we’re supposed to get over the idea that the world revolves around us, but even for those who realize that Christ came to save us from ourselves, the sin remains. Last week we talked about it under the title of pride, but really all of the seven deadly sins have this problem at their root. It is because we cannot let go of ourselves that we get into trouble.

And so today we move to envy. We think of envy as a sin of comparison. All advertising is built around this notion. You have a plasma TV and I want one, too. You don’t have the latest video game? How are you surviving? That model sure has nice skin and I want it. There’s even a cell phone campaign right now that shows people lusting after a cell phone and the name of the cell phone is Envy. Advertising doesn’t want you to resist the temptation to act on your envy; it encourages you to give in to it! What it seems to say is that we know you have the desire to possess our product. You will feel envious if you see someone else with it. So why hold back? What good is your impulse control?

But envy is more than wanting what other people have. It’s deeper than that. Sin is never just about things or actions. It goes to the soul. And what envy is really about is turning love inward and away from the things towards which it ought to be directed. We are supposed to love God and to love our neighbors as ourselves. That is the great commandment. But when we only love ourselves we find that love cannot be what it is supposed to be.

Envy tells us that what others have should be ours. Not only that, but envy leads us to sorrow at another’s good. That was Thomas Aquinas’ definition of it in the Middle Ages.[i] When we feel injured when someone else succeeds or experiences some blessing…When we take secret joy when someone else fails…we are feeling the effects of envy. And because this is the sin we so rarely admit, it is hard to recognize how much it affects us.

Let me tell you a story. It’s a familiar scene. One we can easily imagine. Two women sharing coffee at a breakfast table. Veronica is visiting her friend, Mary, in the late morning. It has been a while since they had the chance to do this because Veronica is usually caring for her teenaged son who is disabled.

“I’m so glad you were able to come over this morning,” Mary says. “You have been so faithful to Larry. I’m glad that you have another caregiver who is able to come and give you some relief. Larry really seems to like this new woman.”

Somehow Veronica does not look relieved. She stares down into her coffee cup, lines of worry still crossing her face. She doesn’t respond besides a slight nod.

“Are you all right, Veronica? It is working out with the new caregiver, isn’t it?”

Veronica doesn’t look up, but she responds, “I suppose.”

“You don’t sound too sure. She’s been there, what, three weeks now?”

“Yes, well, I don’t know if she’s really going to be right for him. She doesn’t handle him like I would. The way she feeds him seems a little uncomfortable to me.”

“Wasn’t this one highly recommended to you? You were so happy with her when you interviewed. And I remember the first week you sounded so relieved to have her there.”

“I know,” Veronica says, “and Larry seemed to like her. I just have this uneasy feeling, especially when I’m away, like now. Like I need to be there.”

“So what’s the problem, Veronica?”

“Mary…” She pauses. A long pause. “Mary, the real problem is me. I find myself thinking about this caregiver in terrible ways. I keep wanting her to fail. I look for little mistakes that she makes…little signs that she doesn’t care…little things that I magnify and blow up into major issues. She is doing a great job, but I have a hard time admitting it.”

“Why would you do that?,” Mary asks. “Why would you want her to fail? You’ve been praying for this for a long time. You kept saying how grateful you would be if you found someone to take care of Larry, if only for a few hours at a time.”

“Mary, I’ve had five other caregivers before this one.” She pauses again. “Can I confess something to you? I got rid of all of them. I let them all go. Not because they were bad but because I couldn’t handle them being there.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean I can’t stand the idea that somebody could mean something to Larry...that somebody else might be able to love him, too. I can’t stand the thought that somebody else could be the center of his attention or any part of his attention. I can’t stand the idea that I’m…that I’m not indispensable. That’s what it comes down to. I can’t stand the idea that I might be replaced, if only for a few hours. It doesn’t matter how good this woman is. I’m always going to find fault in her. Because she’s not me.”

“But Veronica, you’re not that way. You’re a saint. You have cared for Larry for so long.”

Finally Veronica looks up at her friend. “Mary, don’t do that. Don’t take away my ability to be a sinner. You don’t know how many times people have told me how good I am. ‘O noble Veronica! She’s taken care of her child all these years and sacrificed so much to be his caregiver. She has to be on a first name basis with God. She has to be a saint!’ But nobody knows what goes on in here, Mary. Somebody’s got to let me confess these feelings of envy. Because that’s what it is. I’m envious of anybody who might have a piece of Larry’s world. I know that’s strange and wrong, but it’s the sin I need to be healed of….the sin I need to confess to a friend.”

Mary puts her hand over Veronica’s and smiles. “O.K., but only if you allow me to confess to you as well. Because I envy the love you have for your son.”

Envy is a theological problem because it stems from a basic lack of trust in God’s blessings for us. When we do not feel at home in the world, when we feel insecure, when our trust in the goodness of life is wounded, we tend to interpret the good things that happen to others as something threatening to us. And when bad things happen to others, something sinister in us smiles in delight. The novelist Walker Percy had a handle on this dark side of ourselves when he wrote in the book Lost in the Cosmos: “the self – though it professes to be loving, caring, to prefer peace to war, concord to discord, life to death; to wish other selves well, not ill – in fact secretly relishes wars and rumors of war, news of plane crashes, assassinations, mass murders, obituaries, to say nothing of local news about acquaintances dropping dead in the streets, gossips about neighbors getting in fights, or being detected in sexual scandals, embezzlements and other disgraces.”[ii]

It is a puzzle as old as humanity. Last week we looked to the story of Adam and Eve to see the origins of pride. You only have to go one chapter further to see the first instance of envy. Cain and Abel were the children of the man and woman. Cain was a tiller of the ground, a farmer, and Abel was a shepherd. They both brought offerings to God, but only Abel’s gift received God’s attention. There is no word about why Cain’s offering wasn’t accepted.

What was Cain’s response? Was he happy for his brother? Was he delighted that God had blessed Abel? Hardly. Cain flew into a violent rage and in his anger killed his brother. Envy and jealousy had led to the worst of crimes so that Abel’s blood cried out to God and Cain was condemned to walk the earth as a marked man, forever known for the result of his crime.

Envy has always been a devastating evil. We don’t feel good about ourselves when we allow ourselves to feel it. Even if we take a perverse delight in other’s misfortune, we know that it is a perversion of what we ought to feel. The community suffers as well. That is why the New Testament book of Titus talks about the new Christian community as a place where the old ways are transformed. The writer remembers that “we ourselves were once foolish, disobedient, led astray, slaves to various passions and pleasures, passing our days in malice and envy, despicable, hating one another.” But that changes when God appears in the form of Jesus the Savior.

Because of Jesus we live by grace and find our lives in him. Because of Jesus we are no longer captive to a life where everything has to revolve around me. Because of Jesus the sin which resides so deep in our souls that most of the time we’re not even aware of it is judged and purged and nailed to a cross. Because of Jesus the desperate attempts we make to prop up our own lives without regard to God are shown up for what they are. Because of Jesus the pretensions fail and the walls we erect to keep ourselves from truly relating to others fall and the barriers we present to God when we turn in on ourselves are useless and ridiculous.

Then we are free to do something we were made to do from the beginning. In Jesus we are free to love. This is what envy prevents us from doing – it prevents us from truly loving and experiencing love. There is no more powerful experience than being so close to someone that we can truly share their joy and share their sorrow. This is the promise that is built into Christian community.

It’s a practice that goes beyond Sunday morning. The business of sharing one another’s lives and of practicing the love of God together is one that takes more than an hour on Sunday morning. It takes regular gathering and regular prayer. It takes confessing the places where we still need healing and accepting the grace that comes through a brother or sister offering us forgiveness. It takes a community.

This place can be that community. Your brothers and sisters are close at hand. Christ has already opened the way for us to God. What he asks is that we be transformed. Thanks be to God.

[i] Summa Theologica, II.ii.,Q.36, A1.
[ii] Walker Percy, Lost in the Cosmos: The Last Self-Help Book (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1983), p. 57.

The Seven Deadlies - Pride

Mark 7:14-23
Summoning the crowd again, he said to them, “Listen to me, all of you, and understand. Nothing is outside of a person going into him or her which can defile him or her, but that which is from inside the person going out is what is defiling a person.”

When he had left the crowd and entered the house, his disciples asked him about the parable. He said to them, "Then do you also fail to understand? Do you not see that whatever goes into a person from outside cannot defile, since it enters, not the heart but the stomach, and goes out into the sewer?" (Thus he declared all foods clean.)

And he said, "It is what comes out of a person that defiles. For within, from the heart of people, the evil thoughts come out, fornication, thievery, murder, adulterous acts, greediness, wickedness, treachery, sexual excess, evil eye, blasphemy, pride, and foolishness. All these evils within come out and defile a person.”

One of my favorite folks is Brantley Craig, somebody I got to know at UVA back when I was the Wesley Foundation director and also a fellow grad student with him in the religious studies department. Brantley stuck with the program, is finishing up his PhD work and will one day be recognized as one of our greatest teachers in the area of Christianity and culture. This week I sent him a birthday note and, as I did, mentioned that I was getting ready to do a sermon series on the Seven Deadly Sins, starting with pride. Brantley wrote back with this introduction, (appropriately since he is known for his introductions), which I could not improve on. So I want to start today with this mock response to my proposition to talk about the Seven Deadly Sins:

“Hey, Alex—what gives? I see in the newsletter that you’re going to start a sermon series on the Seven Deadly Sins. Seven Deadly Sins? First of all, I thought you were supposed to preach against sins, not on them. But more than that, this sounds sneakily Catholic to me. And sort of medieval. And we all know from Pulp Fiction what happens when people start getting medieval.
See, I’m no fool. I read your blog; I sat through your sermons. I even checked out some of those theology books you’ve been adding to the media center (yes, I’m the one). I was coming to understand that ‘sin’ was a human condition: brokenness, selfishness, separation from God, radical and unpleasant finitude and mortality. I was on my way to thinking that checklists of particular sins were so last millennium.

But here you come with these Seven Deadlies. That sounds like not only are there individual sins, but some are worse than others. Who ranks them? Church folks? And have we added homosexuality? ‘Cause I’d like to add denying global warming, reckless driving on bridges, and letting your cell phone ring during the emotional moments in plays and movies. Or is it God who ranks them? Well, that’s even worse. Because that sounds petty to me, like God is my mean old fifth-grade teacher who wrote our names on the board and put an ‘X’ by them each time we ‘acted up.’ And a God like that doesn’t sound like the gracious God you’ve been preaching to us. That doesn’t sound like the awesome and unpredictable God who spoke in the hurricane to that guy you like who owned the island (Hardhead Fishnet or whoever). That doesn’t sound like a God who would send Jesus to redeem, as you said, even Nassawadox Creek. That sounds like a God who holds grudges, micromanages, and keeps more stats than a baseball fan. What does something like Seven Deadly Sins have to do with 21st Century Methodists? Did you take one too many rolls in the kayak, or what??”

It’s scary to get an e-mail like that. Shows me for one thing that Brantley has heard and read way too many of my sermons. But as I said, I couldn’t improve on that. He gets right at all the problems with doing what I’m getting ready to do. Why is it that I would go back to this old way of numbering the sins? What value is there in talking about sins as opposed to sin? In the case of pride, why does it register as a sin at all since there are so many ways that we talk about pride as good thing? And what are the Seven Deadly Sins anyway? Why seven and why deadly?

Well, let’s start right there. You may know the Seven Deadly Sins from the mobile phone commercials or maybe from the Brad Pitt movie Seven, which came out a few years ago, but they are a whole lot older. In fact, they go back to the 6th century or earlier. Pope Gregory the Great generally gets credit for putting them in their current order. Pride comes first. (I guess you could say it gets pride of place.) The others are probably familiar to you, too. In no particular order we have to deal with anger, greed, lust, envy, gluttony and, everybody’s favorite – sloth. Why seven? Well, it’s a little bit arbitrary, but seven is a number that has a ring to it since it is a number of perfection and completion in biblical terms. You might say that you get a complete picture of the depth of sin by looking at in these seven dimensions.

Why are they deadly? Well, that goes back to a distinction in Roman Catholic theology between venial sins and mortal sins. Venial sins are offenses that do not threaten a person’s eternal fate. These are considered minor acts against God that are done without thought or intention. This may seem like a slippery slope to those of who know how insidious sin can be. But there is a biblical basis for this division of sins. 1 John says, “If you see your brother or sister committing what is not a mortal sin, you will ask, and God will give life to such a one -- to those whose sin is not mortal. There is sin that is mortal; I do not say that you should pray about that. All wrongdoing is sin, but there is sin that is not mortal.” (1 Jo. 5:16-17, NRSV)

Mortal sins, by contrast, are serious offenses that have the potential to separate us from God and condemn ourselves to damnation unless we confess them and seek absolution for them. In this sense, these sins are deadly because they threaten the life we have from God in this world and in the next. That is the realm we are in when we talk about the Seven Deadlies.

But all of this sounds very strange to Protestant ears. United Methodists are not used to talking about a list of sins that can get you into special trouble. As followers of Luther and Wesley we know that sin is trouble in all of its varieties and it takes hold of us in such powerful ways that the only we can talk about being freed from it is through God’s grace. Whatever list of the Top Seven you give us is going to seem incomplete and a little too tidy. Sin is much deeper and messier than that. Despite Thomas Aquinas’ attempts to put it all together in a nice system in the Middle Ages, we know that no system can capture the darkness of the human heart nor the greatness of God’s love that we know in forgiving grace.

We’re not alone. Those who are growing up without a deep Christian grounding are also suspicious of the list. When the BBC polled the British public on the Deadly Sins recently they found that only one of the traditional seven made the list as one of Britain’s greatest sins. And it wasn’t pride. You know what made the list? Greed. All the rest were out, replaced by things like cruelty, adultery, bigotry, hypocrisy, selfishness, and dishonesty.[i] Do you notice what has happened? Our sense of what constitutes a grave sin is now determined first by what we do to other people. There is no reference to what we do to God, which Christians might say is the root of all those other interpersonal sins.

Interestingly, we still keep track of those other sins. Beliefnet is still conducting an online poll asking people which of the Seven Deadly Sins they are guilty of most. Right now, leading by a large margin, lust is winning.[ii]

But again, even as Christians we are confused about this list. What is the point in keeping such a tally and keeping such categories? Actually, even as a Methodist who is used to the language of grace, I think it is helpful to take a look at this list. Aquinas was on to something in the 13th century. He was not just trying to build a handbook for priests to flip through when they got to confession. (“Let’s see here. You coveted your neighbor’s cart? That will be fifteen Hail Mary’s and a nice donation to the bishop’s palace. Next!”) What he was really after was trying to illuminate the human heart in all of its potential and all of its murky depths. He would have called these vices, habits of our heart that lead us away from God. They each had a corresponding virtue, which were habits that would lead us toward God. But if we could really get a handle on what was going on in our vices we might have a better sense of what needed to be transformed within us so that we could truly respond to God’s grace and to live. And not just to live but to live abundantly.

The heart is where we need to go. Jesus talked about sin as holding us in its grip, but he also talked about the place where it took its root. It is in our hearts. Things can be done to us, but it’s when we internalize evil that it takes its greatest toll. Poverty is a sin that attacks us, demeans us, dehumanizes us, but when we internalize that dehumanization it deforms not only our economic circumstances but our souls. Physical abuse, racial injustice, class bias – these things show a deep sin in our society, but when we allow those things to define who we are and what we are in God’s eyes, then the sin has worked its way in deep.

That’s why Jesus also said that there is nothing from without that can defile a person. It is what comes from within that shows our true deformation. Murder, theft, adultery, greediness, lust, evil thoughts, pride – all of these things come forth from our hearts and they reveal who we really are when we have been overcome by sin. So it is right that we spend some time, as we move toward Lent and a season of reflection, it is right that we try to let some grace shine in those dark recesses of our souls. And if the Seven Deadlies can help us uncover those places where we most need to be transformed, then I say, “Lead on!”

So we start with pride. Which seems a strange place to begin. Oh, I know that the Bible speaks often about pride and it is usually in a very negative sense. “Pride goes before destruction,” Proverbs says, “and a haughty spirit before a fall” [Pro. 16:18]. We know that pride has the potential to “set us up.” Sometimes it has tragic consequences, as when a leader ignores the limits and tries to forge ahead with a grand plan or a war believing that they must be vindicated by their ability or foresight – sometimes dragging many others with them to their doom. Sometimes pride plays out as comedy as when we see people deluded by notions of their own grandeur come crashing back to earth. Like all the bad singers on American Idol who finally have their run-in with Simon. As the cartoonist Bernard Baily once said, “When science discovers the center of the universe a lot of people will be disappointed to find they are not it.”[iii]

Yes, we know that pride is at least problematic, but is it all bad? We like to tell folks that they shouldn’t “get above their raisin’” or, if we’re in another generation, that they “ain’t all that,” but there is a kind of pride that we celebrate, too. There is a kind of pride that we want to instill in our children. We talk about taking pride in our work, about pride in our country, and by this we mean a healthy self-confidence. Even the apostle Paul talks about this when he writes to his churches. He says to the Corinthian Christians, “I often boast about you; I have great pride in you.” [2 Co. 7:4] Plus there’s something about this kind of pride that is attractive to us as Americans. As the pitcher Dizzy Dean once said, “It ain’t bragging if you can do it.”[iv]

But the pride that the theologians are talking about is a much deeper recognition of who we are as human beings. The Bible knows that we, as opposed to any of the other creatures of the land and sea, have an infinite capacity for self-delusion. We sometimes forget who we are and what we are supposed to be. We can think we are doing something noble, but end up doing something disastrous. We can think we are doing right, but end up doing wrong. We can think we are saving the world, but in the end we find that we are incapable of saving even ourselves.

It was all inscribed there from the beginning. The story of Adam and Eve in the Garden is often where theologians go to explain the nature of human pride and it is a good place to start. You remember Eden? It was a place where all that was needed was provided. It was a place where the man and woman lived is communion with God, with the rest of creation and with each other. It was place that from the beginning was good. How do we know this? Because that is the blessing God pronounced over it. “This is good. This is very good.”

The desires of the humans were good as well. They were created with a love for beauty, truth, goodness, and communion with God. But something happens. It’s not that Adam and Eve went out looking to sin. They had no need to do that. They had no inner compulsion to do that. But their natural desires led them to the tree – the tree in the middle of the garden – the one that God had told them not to eat from.

Now there was a serpent and he had a role to play. But the voice was already there, dancing in their heads. “God has given us all this and it is good. God has given us all these trees. There must be some more good to be had from that tree. We won’t die. We will become like God. We will know good and evil and be able to determine for ourselves what we ought to do and not do.”
Then what happened? Eve looked at the tree and she saw that its fruit was good for food, that it was a delight to the eyes, that it was desirable to make her wise…what possible reason was there not to follow those desires? And Adam must have felt the same. So they ate. The sin was not that they had chosen evil. The sin was that they had chosen to determine happiness for themselves with no reference to their natural limits, with no reference to God. Once that step was taken, who was there to tell us when we go astray?

We bought the illusion that we could determine our own course. And we’ve bought it ever since. It seems so natural. As Karl Barth put it, “When [a person] desires the enjoyment and use of his [or her] freedom is he [or she] desiring anything more or other than the most obvious and natural thing in the world?...Where is the wrong in this?...It does not look as though [the person] is wanting to be as God, to be God, and in that way becoming a sinner. It looks rather as though [the person] is modestly doing that which is obvious and right, fulfilling his [or her] true humanity and in that way the will of God as rightly understood.”[v]

But you know and I know how we use our freedom. Left to our own devices we can be pretty immature, pretty nasty, pretty destructive to ourselves and others. Most of the time we don’t even recognize it until too late. We look back at the decisions we made…decisions that seemed so good at the time…so right…and we wonder how did we make that wrong turn? I thought I knew better than the rules that time. I thought I was mature enough to handle it on my own. I thought my friends were wrong. I thought the people who cared about me were naïve. I thought I could get by without prayer, without listening to God, without any visible means of support. And look where it got me!

We never think we’re the ones who are trying to play God. It’s always somebody else. But it’s because we can’t see ourselves as we are that God must come. It’s because we can’t understand how helpless we are to see who we really are that God comes as a helpless one. You see who went to the cross? That helpless man who is at the mercy of soldiers, thieves and traitorous crowds? That is God taking the form of you and me. That is God revealing who we really are. That is God letting us see beyond a shadow of a doubt how deeply sin has deformed us and how ridiculous we look when we go about the work of saving the world or saving ourselves. That Jesus on the cross? He’s taking your place. He’s showing you up for all of your pretensions. There is hope for you and me. It’s in him and it’s in the work God does to resurrect even those made dead by sin. Even us.

Frederica Mathewes-Green tells the story of how she feels about Christmas letters describing the accomplishments of another year. You know the kind she’s talking about. The one’s that say, “It’s been a great year for the Lamplighters! Greg had been hoping for a promotion, but what a surprise when the CEO came to his desk and begged him to take over the company. The whole office chipped in and gave the family a week in Paris to celebrate. Wasn’t that nice?”
We get letters like that and we think – yes, pride is a terrible thing. How could those Lamplighters be so prideful, so self-promoting, so vain? We think, “They should have been more humble.”

But then she says she looks back at the letter and realizes they weren’t really showing off. They were just sharing what happened. “They’re telling you these things because they thought you were their friend. If you are, you’re happy for them and rejoice for them…Their success does not make you a failure.” As it turns out, Frederica says, they weren’t exhibiting pride, we were. It was our bitterness that wanted to see them brought low.

This, she says, is why we need a Savior. “We look so nice on the outside, but in the caverns of the heart vicious Pride is always brooding, ready to spring. Humility smashes our defenses, enables us to admit these dark emotions that frighten us, and admit that we need help to be the people we long to be.”[vi]

Pride is only the beginning of the thorny mess we often find ourselves in. But it is the start of so much more. If we are to know ourselves, truly know ourselves, we have to start with the ways pride has messed us up. As long as we believe we can help ourselves we will not understand the cross and we will not understand why it is that Jesus makes all the difference in the world. Humility is what brought God to the cross. Humility is what can bring us to ourselves.

We are not beyond redemption. We are in God’s hands. If only we can recognize it. Thanks be to God.

[i] Heaven and Earth Show, BBC, www.bbc.co.uk/religion/programmes/heavenandearth/features/sins/sins.shtml, survey conducted 10-13 Dec 2004.
[ii] www.beliefnet.com/polls
[iii] http://www.quotationsbook.com/quotes/32325/view
[iv] http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=503362
[v] Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics IV.1., p. 420.
[vi] Frederica Mathewes-Green, “Pride: The Anti-Self-Esteem”, www.beliefnet.com/story/110/story_11056.html

Unnaturally Born

1 Corinthians 15:1-11
Now I would remind you, brothers and sisters, of the good news which I preached to you and which you also received, in which you also stand, through which you are also being saved if you hold fast to the message which I proclaimed to you - unless you have come to believe to no purpose.
For I handed on to you as something of primary importance what I also received - that Christ died on behalf of our sins according to the scriptures, and that he was buried and that he was raised on the third day according to the scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. Then he appeared to more than five hundred brothers and sisters at one time, a majority of whom remain alive even now, though some have died. Then he appeared to James and then to all the apostles.
Last of all, as though to one untimely born, he also appeared to me. For I am the least of the apostles, not worthy to be called 'apostle', because I persecuted the church of God. But by God's grace I am what I am, and God's grace toward me has not been given in vain, but rather I worked harder than any of them - not I, but the grace of God which is with me. So then whether it was I or they, so we proclaim and so you have come to believe.

"Oh, Lord, it's hard to be humble when you're perfect in every way.” Do you remember this song? “Oh, Lord, it’s hard to be humble when you’re perfect in every way. I can't wait to look in the mirror, 'cause I get better looking each day. To know me is to love me. I must be one heck of a man. Oh, Lord it's hard to be humble, but I'm doing the best that I can."[1]

Forgive the singing, but here’s my question for today: Why is it that the more we point at ourselves, the emptier we feel? Now, by today’s standards that song is pretty tame stuff. When Mac Davis sang that song twenty-five years ago it was before Terrell Owens, Kevin Federline, Paris Hilton and all the folks who have made a career out of self-promotion. But it points us right back to an American and a human frailty – the more we point at ourselves, the emptier we feel.

Next week I’m going to start a series on the seven deadly sin and we’ll make our first stop at pride. But today it might help to talk about our humility problem. The problem is we don't have much of it and it’s not making us any happier. The columnist Donna Britt once wrote that we are in the midst of a "Hey, look at me" era where people compete to see how much attention they can draw to themselves. From sports figures to celebrities to the people around us at school or work, it seems that the greatest aspiration we have is no longer to do our best but to be “in your face.”

The interesting thing about all of this, Britt says, is that there has probably never been a time in the nation's history when we had less self-esteem than we now have. We may talk big but we feel small. Acting tough and pointing to ourselves as number one is really only a compensation for our sense that we really don't matter in a cold, impersonal, technological society. But it's also a reflection of our inability to seriously face the sin and brokenness in our lives. It's just too scary to admit that we're really not all we're cracked up to be.

So then there’s Paul. The apostle Paul has never been a great model of humility for me. He was involved in too many struggles in the early days of the Christian Church to be too modest about his work. But in the passage we have from First Corinthians today, Paul does help us think through what might be behind the “Hey, look at me” tendency which is there in the depths of our souls.

In chapter 15 of this first letter to the church in Corinth, Paul is once again trying to reestablish his authority to talk to the church about theological issues. It’s something he does throughout this letter. He seems to be responding to critics in this Corinthian church who want to compare his message with that of other apostles and to choose up sides as if each apostle represented some different faith. And over and over again Paul makes a plea for unity in this troubled church.

He starts the letter by saying, "I appeal to you, brothers and sisters, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you agree and that there be no dissensions among you" [1 Co. 1:10]. He warns them about their boasting about spiritual gifts like the ability to speak in tongues. In chapter 12 he gives them the image of the body of Christ as a model for how the Church should understand itself - all members connected and united in Christ. Chapter 13 is the famous love chapter which we associate with weddings but which Paul used to urge the Corinthians to care for one another.

Finally in chapter 15, as he prepares to answer a debate about what happens after we die, Paul comes back to why it is that he dares to preach to them. Because you know that it is a pretty audacious thing to preach. To speak the word of God? You might think that’s just another way of saying, “Hey, look at me!” But Paul sets the stage. He reminds the Corinthian of the good news which first brought them into a relationship with Jesus Christ. Then he questions whether or not their belief has been in vain. “I want to remind you of the good news I preached to you,” he says. “This is what you’re standing on. It’s the basis of your salvation. I told you about this. Or maybe you’ve forgotten?” It’s a fair question since they don't seem to be getting along with each other or with him at the moment.

Then Paul goes on to outline the story he told them about Jesus and this is one of the most important passages in the New Testament. It sounds like a creed, like the Apostle's Creed, a statement of faith. For Paul this is what is essential to know about the faith. It is one of the oldest accounts we have of the story of Jesus. Paul was writing at a time only 20-30 years after Jesus' death. The gospels weren't written down until probably a decade or so after that. So Paul is giving us the heart of the faith as it was understood by the earliest Christian communities.

It went something like this: First, Christ died. There is no getting around it. This is where faith begins. Christ came to die for and with people who were broken by sin. Christ came to die to free us from the power of sin. This is what the scriptures pointed to. This is why we have the cross as a central symbol of our faith. Paul starts this message by pointing to the cross.

Then Christ was buried. This wasn't just some symbolic death; it was a real death - a human tragedy. Something that we would see as irreversible. First there was the cross, then there was the grave.

Then Christ was raised from the dead on the third day. What humanity had seen as impossible God saw as possible. The expectations of the world were reversed and God brought life from the midst of death. Again the scriptures pointed to this as the inevitable result of God's action. God continually says the "yes" of life over the "no" of death. Resurrection is what it’s all about and it’s what makes us an Easter people. The cross, the grave, the empty tomb.

Then, Paul says, Christ appeared to Cephas - the Greek name for Peter. Once again, this wasn't a symbolic resurrection it was real resurrection, witnessed by those who knew and loved him. And not only did Peter see Jesus, but then the rest of the twelve disciples. Then about 500 disciples saw him at one time, and Paul notes that most of them are still alive and can affirm what he is saying. Then Jesus appeared to James and the other apostles. You can’t tell this story without the revelation of Jesus as the living Christ.

Then Paul does an interesting thing with this statement of faith - he includes himself in it. We sometimes say the Apostles' Creed as if it is something that does not include us. We say "we believe" that all of this has occurred - that Jesus did die and was buried - that he did rise again on the third day and did appear to the disciples - but Paul is not content to leave it at that. He goes on to complete the story. "Last of all, as if it happened even to someone not born at the right time, to someone unnaturally born, Christ appeared to me" [1 Co. 15:8].

Christ appeared to me. What a way to finish a creed! Suddenly all that has gone before is not a stale creed from the early centuries of the Church; it is a living, breathing story that includes me! Paul knew that the story was not complete until we became a part of it. That's what makes this whole religion business more than just a storytelling exercise - because it moves us to seeing ourselves as a part of something larger than ourselves. And what does this do to the "Hey, look at me" tendency? It is swallowed up in the saying: "Hey, look at Christ. I'm a part of that story!"

One of the most popular movies of the 90s was a film called Forrest Gump and the genius of the movie was that it took the whole of modern American history and put a likeable American like us in the picture. Alabama goes to the national championship game in the Orange Bowl and Forrest Gump is there. America goes to war in Vietnam and Forrest Gump is there. America goes into outer space and Forrest Gump is there. I think one of the appealing things about the movie was that it allowed us to make the story of this huge, vibrant country our story. It's more manageable and real if we can somehow see an ordinary person like ourselves in it.

That's what Paul urges us to do - to see ourselves in the story of Christ and to recognize that it changes the whole world because we are a part of it. Two thousand years later Christ is no less real because of the witness born by people like Paul generation after generation.

To be a part of this story, however, we must be realistic about who we are. We're not a part of the story of salvation because we earned our way there. We're not a part of it because we somehow deserve it. We're a part of it only because we don't deserve it.

Paul knew that very well. He had been a Jewish leader. He had persecuted the Church. When Stephen, the first Christian martyr, was stoned, he was holding the cloaks of the stone throwers. He was heading off to persecute Christians himself when he was struck blind by a vision of Christ on the road to Damascus. Paul says to the Corinthian Christians, "I'm the last one who should be called an apostle. I'm not worthy of the title. But by God's grace I am what I am. God gave me the same message of hope and life that he gave to Peter and the twelve disciples. I didn't deserve it, but God called me anyway. And now I'm part of the story."

You and I can be a part of the story, too. Not because we deserve it, because we don't. Not because we can earn it, because we can't. We can be a part of the story because despite our flaws and weaknesses, despite our sins and shortcomings, Christ calls us. Christ saves us! And we get to join the line of witnesses that stretches back to the first visitors to the empty tomb. All it requires is a little humility - recognizing who we really are and who God says we can be.

Our other scripture passage today is the story of Jesus calling the fishermen from their nets and their work on the sea. “Come, follow me,” Jesus says, “and you will learn how to fish for people.” And those disciples do something absolutely incomprehensible. They drop their nets and follow him. What were they thinking? To leave the security of what they knew? To leave friends and family, kith and kin, and traipse through the land with this itinerant teacher? What were they thinking? It’s just not natural.

This is the point. We may sometimes assume that because we grow up in land that is sometimes called a Christian nation that being a Christian is the most natural thing to be. But there is nothing natural about it. It’s natural to remain where we are and to resist the transformations that will require us to change. It’s natural to believe that there is no one else who is for us and it’s all up to us to make a difference. It’s natural to hold on to things rather than to let them go. It’s natural to define ourselves on our terms. It is unnatural to respond to the living Christ who says, “Come, follow me.” It is the call that creates the conditions for change. It is the call that changes the world. It is the call that leads us to be unnaturally born…born into a family that was not our own…born into a way of life that we could not have conceived of…unnaturally born as children of God.

Here’s the good news: There is an answer to the emptiness that lies behind our lack of humility. Like Forrest Gump, we can make it into the picture. Not to say, "Hey, look at me" but to say, "Hey, look at that cross. Look at that empty tomb. Look at that bread and wine on that table. I'm a part of that. That's my story. I am God’s.” Thanks be to God.

[1] Mac Davis