What is Wrong With the World?
Jesus’ followers got themselves into trouble because they were not following the same purity practices that the Pharisees prescribed. This dispute arose because the Pharisees did not like the way some of the disciples washed their hands. I guess hand washing is not exactly a “new” problem. Yet the scribes and Pharisees’ question in verse 5 implicitly criticizes those disciples on distinctly religious grounds. Perhaps unsurprisingly, these Pharisees are also indicting Jesus by association. Even though no Old Testament texts call for anyone to wash hands before eating, by Jesus’ day certain practices had arisen among some Jews.[1] Jesus then cites the Greek translation of the Old Testament, known as the Septuagint. He likens the traditions that these Pharisees are referring to as the human precepts alluded to in Isaiah 29:13 . Jesus does not reject the law or its commandments but rejects how certain interpretations have deviated from the intent of the law.
Today we might be hesitant readers of the Old Testament. We might be concerned about the so-called angry God of the Old Testament and its prohibitive laws. In light of contemporary commentary, these are perfectly valid responses. But let’s look a little deeper. The spirit of the law is captured by the first two tables, which can be summed up as thus: love God and love your neighbor. Jesus exhorts the Pharisees to interpret the law based upon its spirit. Impurity is merely an issue about the way in which the human body is polluted. Impurity is a matter of the heart. And so the passage appropriately ends with a list of those things which can make someone impure. We hear resonance from the Ten Commandments in thou shalt not kill and thou shalt not covet, but we also see those things which regard character and attitude. We are told not to have wickedness, deceit, or envy in our hearts. Some are deeds, others are character traits and attitudes. These deeds and attitudes all originate, in our heart and will. Jesus tells the Pharisees that our issues with the world originate from within. Jesus is not disregarding dietary laws but highlighting the source of defilement. It is more about who we are than about the things that we avoid.
At the beginning of the twentieth century, G.K. Chesterton wrote a letter to the Daily News, a newspaper founded by Charles Dickins. He responded to a paper published on Monday, 14 August, 1905, by a self-proclaimed “Heretic”. This was entitled “What is Wrong?” and was the kind of state-of-the-nation scathing, hypercritical piece so beloved by today’s op-ed writers. It concluded with a string of questions: “What is wrong? Why is the modern person troubled? … Why is his pride in his country a mere pretense or a mere stupidity? … What is wrong? Do you or your readers know?” These are questions that have been uttered often over the last eighteen months. I can imagine all the sensational op-ed headlines now. Fear of Covid, climate change, and the decay of our democracy are just a few of the many legitimate and gripping troubles that we now face in the twenty-first century. When we are looking at what’s wrong with the world it’s easy to point our fingers to something that is outside of ourselves.
G.K. Chesterton’s response on Wednesday, August 16th is pertinent to our passage today. He begins by saying that “One thing, of course, must be said to clear the ground. Political or economic reform will not make us good and happy, but until this odd period nobody ever expected that they would.” How true is this story? We hope that if “x” gets elected than things will get better. If “y” gets elected, we can select chief judges that will restore or change our country into what we want it to be. Presidential candidates are deified. Our hope for change is completely enraptured by the political games of legislators. While we should strive for greater equity, justice, and love in our society and that this project is necessarily political, we must be careful not to place the entirety of our hope, our being, and our identities within this larger political sphere. When we place our hope in the result of an election, our quarterly economic tallies, or the current unemployment rates, or even vaccination and covid rates, we will always find dismay. Politics is the science of humanity, and, if we take Jesus’ words for it, we must recognize the fallibility of our system. Politics and the economy cannot save us from ourselves, they only magnify the woe of our hearts. Our political system, then, has the same human problem that we have on a grander scale.
Chesterton continues, saying,
“If Government could do anything, nothing would exist except government. Men have found the need of other forces… The Church endeavored to institute a machinery of pardon; the State has only a machinery of punishment. The State can only free society from the criminal; the Church sought to free the criminal from the crime.”[2]
There are two important points I want us to pick up from this. First, the state has a necessary role to order and structure our society, but it is unable to do this successfully on its own. For it to be successful it needs active local citizens promoting good will, building sustainable livelihoods, and making their communities better. The success of the whole is dependent on the success of the local. Second, we see that the church continues to have an important role publicly and privately. Publicly, the church is to proclaim liberation to the captive prisoner. Chesterton says as much, noting that the church seeks to free the criminal from the crime. As an institution it has a transformative value of revolutionizing our relationship with one another and critiquing the state when it drowns own corruption and self-interest. The church was established as the public witness to the good news of God with us. This witness gives us eyes to imagine a more loving world and transformative power to enact social change. Privately, the church is to proclaim liberty to the lonely and brokenhearted. It is a renewal movement that transforms our hearts. Seeking mercy, we find God who forgives us. Seeking truth, we find Jesus who reveals that our lives are upside down. Seeking love, we find the Holy Spirit who sustains us in the loving presence of God. When we find ourselves asking what is wrong with the world, we might be asking the wrong question.
Chesterton continues, “In one sense, and that the eternal sense, the thing is plain. The answer to the question, ‘What is Wrong?’ is, or should be, I am wrong. Until a man can give that answer his idealism is only a hobby.”[3] Chesterton knew this Scripture and the heart of Jesus. Although his answer is often misquoted and misrepresented to say, “Dear sirs, I am,” this saying appropriately captures the thesis of Jesus’ point. We are what’s wrong with the world. We are the ones who are guilty for not standing up against climate injustice, we are the one’s guilty for coveting in our hearts, we are the ones who have forgotten our neighbor, we are the ones who have forgotten God. It is us, we are the ones who point fingers at that one who has not washed their hands or followed Covid protocols in the way we think is right. We are all the Pharisees. I am the Pharisee.
Chesterton concludes with a remark about democracy. He says, “We have taken Liberty, because it is fun; we have left Equality and Fraternity, because they are duties and a nuisance.”[4]As Christians we must stay vigilant, lest we find ourselves tangled in the mechanisms and machines that would put us against one another. Our project, individual, church, and nation should be the same to increase in our love of God and love of neighbor. We ere when individuals, communities, and nations seek themselves at all costs. He continues, “Democracy in losing the austerity of youth and its dogmas has lost all; it tends to be a mere debauch of mental self-indulgence, since by a corrupt and loathsome change, Liberalism has become liberality.”[5] Where liberalism becomes our freedom to do what we want, rather than the freedom to love and build-up one another. Where citizenship in one nation precludes superiority over other nations. The world is not right, and we are not as we should be.
In his book “Heretics,” Chesterton goes on to talk about the endemic problem of selfishness.
“[A] permanent possibility of selfishness arises from the mere fact of having a self, and not from any accidents of education or ill-treatment. And the weakness of all Utopias is this, that they take the greatest difficulty of man and assume it to be overcome, and then give an elaborate account of the overcoming of the smaller ones.”[6]
We see that our problem yesterday, today, and tomorrow is not an issue of hand washing, or our exterior actions as these all flow from our interior state. The selfishness of greed found in multinational corporations can be found in our hearts too. We, like the Pharisees and the disciples, are confronted with a choice. We can become debilitated by all the injustice around us, we can become emaciated by our present condition, or we can seek the Kingdom of God. This is a bold decision, it is transformative, and it is freely offered to us in Jesus by the power of the Holy Spirit. We are given the hope that we do not have to remain in despair but can rejoice in the love of God that has come. We are given the freedom to dream about a world more like the Kingdom than our own. We are equipped to make this world a reality. When we look around at rising Covid numbers, frightening super storms and rising temperatures, when we look at those of us who are sick or hurting, when we wonder what’s wrong with the world, we are given the hope of God with us. There is hope, we can indeed make a difference. Our witness as Christians and as the Church is as important today as it was yesterday. Our response to these questions makes a difference. Our choice to consume less meat, our choice to recycle, our choice to social distance, wear a mask, or get vaccinated, is our Holy answer. It is the answer that we will endure, that we will resist the evil in our hearts and the world, it is the answer that Jesus has come to set the captives free, to set me free, to set you free, to bring us all home.
[1] Matt Skinner “Commentary on Mark 7:1-8. 14-15, 21-23,” Working Preacher (Luther Seminary, September 12, 2012), https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/ordinary-22-2/commentary-on-mark-71-8-14-15-21-23-5.
[2] G. K. Chesterton, Letter to the “Daily News”, August 16, 1905, “What is Wrong.”
[3] Chesterton, Letter
[4] Chesterton, Letter.
[5] Chesterton, Letter.
[6] G.K. Chesterton, Heretics: Illustrated Centennial Edition, (Chesterton Books, 2017), 31.