救いようのない存在 2002/04/21
それは、次のように書いてあるとおりです。「義人はいない。ひとりもいない。悟りのある人はいない。神を求める人はいない。すべての人が迷い出て、みな、ともに無益な者となった。善を行なう人はいない。ひとりもいない。」「彼らののどは、開いた墓であり、彼らはその舌で欺く。」「彼らのくちびるの下には、まむしの毒があり、」「彼らの口は、のろいと苦さで満ちている。」「彼らの足は血を流すのに速く、彼らの道には破壊と悲惨がある。また、彼らは平和の道を知らない。」「彼らの目の前には、神に対する恐れがない。」(ローマ人への手紙3:10-18)
今朝、このホームページを見て、朝の礼拝に来られた方がおられた。この方は、去年のニューヨーク・テロをきっかけにして、クリスチャンになったと教えてくださった。私は、「きよきよの部屋」にて、何回か、このテロ事件が、アメリカ人だけではなく、多くの日本人が目をさまして、神に立ち返る機会となってほしいと祈り求めることを書いたが、まさに、神の恵みによって、その通り行なった方が身近におられたのを知って、主をほめたたえた。
今日、彼女から、テロ事件が、どのようなきっかけを与えたのかをお尋ねした。彼女はもともと、ゴスペルのクワイアーに属していて、ゴスペルを歌うことが大好きであったそうである。そして、あのジェット機が世界貿易センターに突っ込む映像を見て、「人間がここまで悪になれるのか」と思われたそうである。もし自分と同じ人間がこんな悪を行なうことができるのであれば、人間は救いようもない存在である。だから、キリストが十字架にかけられて、自分の心にもこの十字架が刻み込まれた、と話してくださった。人間がここまで救いようもないのにも関わらず、自分がこのようにして生き、またゴスペルを歌うことができるのは、神の恵みとしか言いようがないと、教えてくださった。
私は心の中で、本当にうれしくなった。まさに、そうである、この世界が今、福音の真理を明らかにしてくれている。人間がいかに悪であるかを、目で見えるかたちで示してくれている。これは、人間がいかに暗やみの中に生きているかを教えているので、絶望を私たちにもたらすが、と同時に、キリストによってのみ、私たちが救われないことを教えてくれている。救われるのは、私たちに何か良いものがあるからではなく、ただ神の恵みとあわれみによることを教えてくれている。
ゴスペルということで、私もクリスチャンになる前に、黒人指導者であったキング牧師の本を読んだことを思い出し、そのことを分かち合わせていただいた。私が大学の英語サークルでのrecitation contest(朗誦大会)にて、キング牧師の“I Have a Dream.”を選び、それで賞を取った。黒人霊歌が天からの躍動に満ちているように、彼の演説も震え上がるような感動と興奮をもった抑揚のある演説であったことを、覚えている。聖書個所をたくさん使って、そして自分の夢を神に託しているその内容は、人の心を動かさないでいることはない。私はただ朗誦するだけでなく、彼の考えと思想にも触れてみたいと思って、大学図書館の書庫にある洋書を引っ張り出して読んだことがある。そこに、今でも深く納得できる言葉が書かれていた。「キリスト信仰者は、現実主義者であり、かつ理想主義者である。」という言葉だ。キリスト者は、物事をきれいに片付けることはしない。ありのままの姿を見つめ徹底的に現実を追求する、現実主義者である。米同時多発テロも、人間の罪性を如実に現わしているものとして、それを直視できる。しかし、他の現実主義者と異なり、キリスト者は希望を持っていることができる。神の御国が間もなく訪れるという希望に満ちており、私たちはその意味で理想主義者である、ということだ。このことを彼女の分かち合ったら、とても納得しておられた様子だった。
上に引用したパウロの言葉は、そうした救いようのない人間の姿を、写実的に描いている。これが、キリストから離れた私たちの、ありのままの姿なのだ。私たちは自分たちを欺き、その邪悪に満ちた姿から幾分、引き上げたセルフ・イメージを持たせようとする。その典型的な人物として、列王記第二に登場する、ハザエルを挙げることができる。8章にて、ハザエルは、自分の主人であるシリヤ王に委託されて、エリシャのもとに来た。エリシャはハザエルをじっと見て、泣き出した。なぜなら、ハザエルがイスラエルの人々に害を加え、彼らの要塞に火を放ち、若い男たちを剣で殺し、幼子たちを八裂きにし、妊婦たちを切り裂くからだ、とエリシャや言った。ハザエルは、シリヤの王に忠実に仕えていたしもべであり、また何でもないものであることを、認めていた。「しもべは犬にしかすぎないのに、どうして、そんなだいそれたことができましょう。」と言っている。しかし、彼がエリシャのもとを去って、病気のシリヤ王のところに戻ったら、その王を殺して、自分が代わりに王となった。
私たちの希望は、私たち自身の内にはない。キリストのうちにいるからこそ、私たちは神の愛によって人を愛し、善を行なうことができる。大事なのは自分ではなく、キリストなのだ。今の時ほど、キリストの栄光がますます明らかにされて、キリスト中心の説教、キリスト中心の信仰生活と教会生活を強調しなければいけない時代はない。
わたしはぶどうの木で、あなたがたは枝です。人がわたしにとどまり、わたしもその人の中にとどまっているなら、そういう人は多くの実を結びます。わたしを離れては、あなたがたは何もすることができないからです。(ヨハネの福音書15:5)
追記:以上は、先日メールにて送られてきた下のエッセイを参考にして書いたものです。本当はこれを訳そうと思いましたが時間がかかるので、下に英文を掲載させていただきます。
Thoughts on the Fundamental Goodness of Humanity
By Dr. Larry Taylor
April 4, 2002
In the decade of the 1990's, Americans enjoyed
unprecedented prosperity in booming financial
markets, which produced ubiquitous headlines
heralding the latest batch of high tech dot
com millionaires. Even when Japanese markets
slumped, their occidental counterparts soared,
leaving Americans with the distinct impression
that unlimited abundance and even opulence
was a sacred right. The unspoken tenor of
feeling in this country was that nothing
could stop us, that our enormous wealth could
buy all the material goods, health care,
scientific advancements, technological achievement,
and goodwill needed to make the world a happy
place in which to live. Self-absorbed and
self-focused, Americans were shocked by a
new millennium that, so far, has brought
headlines of the child of a marijuana smoking,
wife-swapping San Diego County couple being
kidnapped from her own bed in the middle
of the night and brutally murdered by a neighbor;
of dogs being kept by two San Francisco attorneys
for their incarcerated "three
way marriage partner" mauling a lesbian
neighbor to death; and of the aforementioned
attorneys being convicted of manslaughter
(in his case) and second degree murder (in
her case) in a State that was unable to convict
either O. J. Simpson or the Menendez brothers
of murders they clearly committed. Additionally,
our newspapers are filled with stories of
homosexual Roman Catholic priests sexually
preying on innocent young boys throughout
much of the world, of bishops and archbishops
implicated in homosexual scandal, and of
a New York priest being arrested and charged
with rape in the state of Massachusetts.
Meanwhile, a Superior Court judge in New
Hampshire was recently brutally assaulted
while sleeping by his alcoholic adult son;
two happy-go-lucky teenagers pled guilty
to impersonating college students to gain
access to a home where they brutally murdered
an Ivey League college professor couple;
and a member of one of America's most powerful
political families is on trial for murder
in Connecticut.
Simultaneously, across the sea, emperor worship
and atheistic materialism are threatening
to undue Japanese culture; the People's Republic
of China, home to fully 25% of the world's
population, continues to force abortions
on its citizens and torture and imprison
Christians; and poor believers in Christ
are being sold as slaves for $50 a piece
in the Sudan. The conglomerate of Arab nations
that controls most of the world's petroleum
continues to persecute and execute Jews and
Christians who share their faith with others,
and to teach anti-Semitism and hatred for
Christians in general and western American
Christians in particular, to their children
from the time they can walk. Teenagers and
young men and women, radicalized by Islamic
hatred, are championed as "martyrs"
for blowing themselves up in public places
where innocent people are simultaneously
slaughtered. In America and in Israel, democratic
ideals are assaulted by terrorists bent on
the deliberate destruction of innocent life,
and good people live their lives in fear
and bereavement as a result.
In a recent editorial (April 8, 2002; Vol.
132; No. 11), David Gergen, Editor-at-Large
of U.S. News and World Report, referred to
some of these events, and remarked that we
are now "seeing the grisly underbelly
of human nature". Indeed, the news of
this era is convincing evidence that human
nature is not all goodness and light, that
human beings will not, through their own
prosperity and skill, lift themselves into
a new age of utopian tranquility, and that
there is a dark side to us that we would
prefer not to recognize. This is nothing
new. Nearly three millennia ago, God sent
the prophet Elisha to speak a word to a general
in Aram (modern Syria) concerning his ascension
to the throne of that nation. God had previously
predicted through Elijah that Hazael would
be the king of the land, but Hazael was impatient
to assume his role, and murdered the current
king to solidify his power. Later, he used
that position to brutalize the Jews in Israel,
something Elisha saw and predicted with tears:
2 Kings 8:11 Then [Elisha] set his countenance
in a stare until he [Hazael] was ashamed;
and the man of God wept. 12 And Hazael said,
"Why is my lord weeping?" He answered,
"Because I know the evil that you will
do to the children of Israel: Their strongholds
you will set on fire, and their young men
you will kill with the sword; and you will
dash their children, and rip open their women
with child." 13 So Hazael said, "But
what is your servant-a dog, that he should
do this gross thing?" (The New King
James Version, (Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson
Publishers), c1982)
Although Elisha was clear in what he saw,
Hazael refused to believe that he was capable
of such a thing - "But what is your
servant-a dog, that he should do this gross
thing?" "Surely", Hazael reasoned,
"a cultured and educated man like myself
is not capable of the nefarious and treacherous
slaughter of innocent people". Nevertheless,
he not only was capable of murder and terror,
he later practiced it as well, and went to
his own grave with his hands stained with
the blood of innocent women and children.
In a country steeped in the philosophy of
the Enlightenment, which insists as almost
a core value that humanity is fundamentally
good, the headlines of today's world are
a shock. For several centuries many Americans,
and their fellow freedom and democracy loving
counterparts in Europe, Latin America, and
Asia, have insisted that all of humankind's
ills can be cured by education and understanding.
If we will all simply dialogue long enough,
or teach tolerance of others diligently enough,
we can then take our remarkable economic
prosperity and use it to make the world an
almost perfect place. Humanity, we are told,
is fundamentally good, and therefore in need
of enlightenment and education, but certainly
not salvation. A popular conservative talk
show host in America continues to insist
that if everyone is given the opportunity
to be economically free to achieve material
success, evil will disappear. Many people
firmly believe, for example, that if Israelis
and Palestinians would simply talk to each
other with understanding as a goal, and if
dictatorships like the Palestinian Authority
would open their territories to capitalism
and economic opportunity, peace would be
achieved. Conservatives insist that free
markets are the answer to the world's ills,
while liberals insist that understanding
and dialogue will do the trick. Both are
sorely mistaken.
The Rabbi Saul of Tarsus, better known to
Christians as Paul the apostle, strings together
a long list of quotes from the Hebrew Bible,
or Old Testament, saying in the third chapter
of his letter to the believers in Rome:
What then? Are we [i.e., Jews] better than
they [i.e., Gentiles]? Not at all; for we
have already charged that both Jews and Greeks
[i.e., Gentiles] are all under sin; 10 as
it is written, "THERE IS NONE RIGHTEOUS,
NOT EVEN ONE;
11 THERE IS NONE WHO UNDERSTANDS,
THERE IS NONE WHO SEEKS FOR GOD;
12 ALL HAVE TURNED ASIDE, TOGETHER THEY HAVE
BECOME USELESS;
THERE IS NONE WHO DOES GOOD,
THERE IS NOT EVEN ONE."
13 "THEIR THROAT IS AN OPEN GRAVE,
WITH THEIR TONGUES THEY KEEP DECEIVING,"
"THE POISON OF ASPS IS UNDER THEIR LIPS";
14 "WHOSE MOUTH IS FULL OF CURSING AND
BITTERNESS"; 15 "THEIR FEET ARE
SWIFT TO SHED BLOOD, 16 DESTRUCTION AND MISERY
ARE IN THEIR PATHS, 17 AND THE PATH OF PEACE
HAVE THEY NOT KNOWN." 18 "THERE
IS NO FEAR OF GOD BEFORE THEIR EYES."
(The New American Standard Bible, (La Habra,
California: The Lockman Foundation) 1977)
Paul's point is that humanity is far from
basically good - conversely, the Bible insists
that we are fundamentally evil, capable of
gross sin of all sorts whenever we disconnect
ourselves from the only universal source
of goodness, godliness, and altruistic, sacrificial
love - the true and living God, the God of
Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, who created the
universe. Any human being disconnected from
God is morally depraved by a nature inherited
from our primeval ancestors in Eden. Yet,
like Hazael, we cannot imagine that we are
capable of real evil, and we are surprised
to learn of an Osama bin Laden or a Yassar
Arafat who is. Clinging to our unbiblical
Enlightenment philosophic roots, we continue
to insist that the pedophile priests, wife-swapping
parents, terrorists, and teenage killers
we read about in our newspapers are an anomaly,
exceptions to the otherwise sound rule of
thumb that humanity is good at its core.
In so doing, we not only deceive ourselves,
we set ourselves up to be victimized repeatedly
in the future.
In the speech that Abraham Lincoln himself
considered to be his greatest (his second
inaugural), President Lincoln did something
no president had ever done before and none
has done since - he courageously insisted
that the scourge of a terrible civil war
that cost 600,000 American lives was the
fault of both North and South for the practice
of slavery in the Confederate States, and
the benefiting from and allowing of slavery
in the North. Lincoln pointed to a malady,
an essential sin, that lay at the heart of
the American family - he saw slavery as sinful
evil, and the war as God's judgment on all
of America for that sin. As the pastor of
the nation, he declared the holiness of God,
the depravity and evil of humanity, the resultant
judgment of God in the form of civil war,
and exhorted the nation to genuine repentance,
which would produce a new kind of hope and
forgiveness that was unprecedented, where
victor and vanquished would forgive and embrace
one another without malice or hatred. That
forgiveness never occurred. Instead, Lincoln
was assassinated and the nation was plunged
into an aftermath of reprisal in which the
northern states sought to punish their southern
counterparts without taking responsibility
for their own part in the national sin. Had
Lincoln lived, the civil rights movement
of the 1960's might never have been necessary,
for he envisioned the kind of equality and
opportunity of which Martin Luther King,
Jr. dreamed and spoke eloquently.
Today we are confronted with an entire world
that has become as Sodom and Gomorrah - a
world filled in every corner with hatred,
violence, terrorism, persecution, licentiousness,
debauchery, and perversion; a world in which
all that is good, moral, decent and right
is undermined and cast aside, while all that
is evil and depraved is openly embraced.
We live in a world where the majority of
our race are rejecting God and all He stands
for, refusing to be under His authority or
obey His directives. The result is international
chaos. Rather than self-righteously pointing
the finger at those obviously engaged in
outright evil whose lives fill our news media
on a daily basis, it behooves us to heed
Lincoln's counsel and ask God to search our
own hearts and purge away any sin found therein.
It behooves us, like a teenage Daniel of
old, to purpose purity in our individual
lives, families and communities, embrace
responsibility for our individual and national
sinfulness and depravity of nature, recognize
that we as individuals are capable of gross
sin and kept from it only by the grace of
God, and cry out to God for healing. Only
when humanity returns to God and embraces
Him in His way, will righteousness cover
the earth as the waters cover the sea.
***************************
ORA PRO NOBIS
*****************************************
The Jesus prayer: Lord Jesus Christ, Son
of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.
********************************************
© 2002 by Lawrence Russell Taylor, Ph.D.
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