Proclaimer Blog
The ambiguity of the world
There is a sense in which the world is unambiguous in its hostility to Christ. We should not be surprised at this, nor clutch at straws when people say that they do things out of some kind of loyalty to “god” (whoever he may be for them). No, confronted with Christ, he becomes a stumbling block to those refuse to believe.
Nevertheless, we also believe in common grace so that the world is not as bad as it could be and individuals, though steeped in sin which affects every part of them, sometimes do good things. God is good. Dealing with this ambiguity – seeing God working good in those who are not good in relation to them – is not always straightforward.
Broadly speaking, some of us are far too accommodating of such moral “niceness”. Others (and perhaps this is more likely to be an evangelical trait) are far too critical and dismissive. We struggle to hold, in other words, the tension between common grace and saving grace.
I was thinking about this as I watched the BBC adaptation of The Night Manager. It was a very classy affair, and at £3m an episode, deserved to be. But what struck me most was the happy ending – everything resolved cleanly. I like John le Carre books (from which this is adapted). And one of the things I like most is he manages to maintain something of this ambiguity – his books are very thoughtful. The original ending to The Night Manager was much less clean (and, ironically, more redemptive, as one person sacrificed career to save another’s life).
Perhaps it’s because evangelicals live in Hollywood land that we expect everything to be so black and white. At one (spiritual) level they are. You are saved or you are not. But at the moral level at which the world operates, because of common grace, things are a lot greyer. That may make you frustrated, but in the end it is a good thing, for a world without common grace would be desperate indeed.