unpack the Word

For the last several weeks, I’ve been mulling over and idea I first encountered in the lyrics of my favorite band, Demon Hunter. On their album War, there is a song “The Negative” that lays out the philosophy of the lead singer and co-founder, Ryan Clark. I ran into Clark’s explanation of the song on their fan site a while back, and it has been stuck in my head since.

The gist of the philosophy is this: he expects everyone he meets to fail him. He starts with a negative estimation of them, seeing them as flawed beings. When they don’t fail him, he’s allowed to experience joy over that while remaining assured that at their core they will at some point let him down. It’s an odd philosophy on first read, and one that I initially felt a strong aversion to.

I don’t like the idea of seeing others as flawed—I like to think of myself as someone who wants to see the best in others. The idea of seeing others as broken is entirely the opposite of my default impulse, and so this idea of “The Negative” rubbed me wrong. Why would I see the negative, after all.

Over time, I’ve started to reconsider my initial reaction, based on reflections on Scripture as well as a few sermons and lessons I’ve heard lately. So, if you’ll go along with me, I want to reflect on the positive sides of seeing ourselves as flawed.

Within the context of discussing the barriers being broken down between Jew and Gentile, the Apostle Paul writes in his letter to the Romans that “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” Paul is using this failure, this shared failure, to make a point about the silliness of division between Jew and Gentile: we’re all in the same boat. He follows up immediately with the good news that “all are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus.” But, even with that said, the point remains that we all fall short of a divine perfection.

This idea can be found in multiple places throughout the New Testament, though I think the treatment by the Apostle John in 1 John resonates the most with me. There, John writes that “If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us.” At our core, we have a failing within us when we come to Christ, and without admitting that we make ourselves liars.

Sin, in both of these cases, comes from a Greek word that references a few different meanings that center on a central concept. The term, as you may well have heard before, simply means “to miss the mark.” The same term is used by Aristotle when discussing the flaws or defects that lead to the downfall of heroes in Greek tragedies, per Wikipedia. In short, sin is a failing. We have all failed to meet a standard and have flaws.

Now, as Paul notes in Romans 6, this doesn’t mean that we should simply embrace our inner inability to not fail and lean into that. He tells his audience in Romans 6 “What shall we say, then? Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase?” The answer of course is a swift no! We are flawed, but we aren’t to leave ourselves wallowing in that flawed nature. Through devotion, we should seek to follow a better example in Christ.

At this point, I’m reminded of the lyrics from “The Negative,” where Clark writes “I see through deception / Never a soul to trust / All but one / Lead by a heart of lust.” When we come down to the core of it, we tend to fall into the trap of being selfish and giving ourselves exactly what we want, no matter the consequences or impact long term. Only Christ Jesus overcame this. We’re all flawed.

This is the point where I loop back to my reference at the start to the recent lessons and sermons. This last Wednesday night we had a speaker who talked about how we’re broken and that’s okay. HIs point was that many times we tend to see ourselves as better than those around us. We’re the ones with the Truth from God. We’re the ones doing what’s right (or trying to). We’re not the ones who need help--it’s everyone else who does!

He made the point, devastatingly, that such a perspective puts us dangerously close to Jesus’s parable in the Gospel of Luke:

This reminds me of what John writes in 1 John 2 where he says “For everything in the world—the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life—comes not from the Father but from the world.” Now, in this case, I actually prefer the New Living Translation as the wording is much more everyday to me: “For the world offers only a craving for physical pleasure, a craving for everything we see, and pride in our achievements and possessions. These are not from the Father, but are from this world.”

When we look to ourselves and see ourselves as better than those around us, we’re not only deceiving ourselves (all have sinned after all), but we’re building ourselves up in a way that creates barriers and makes us less effective as Christians and generally makes us terrible folks to be around in any case. Who wants to spend time with someone who thinks they’re better than you? No one that I’ve met.

We have to admit our flaws. (And in case you were curious, Ryan Clark has penned a Demon Hunter song about that too titled “I Will Fail You.”). We’re broken people seeking a better path by following Christ, reconciling ourselves to God. To take that example into the realm of metaphor, we’re broken people who found a God who was willing to accept us as broken and offered us His Son as a way to begin rebuilding ourselves, a process that will find completion at the end of the age. We’re here now to share that message—we have a God who promises us more than this broken world, so join us!

For me, after this reflection, there is a lot of wisdom in the approach that Clark sings about in “The Negative.” By accepting that we are flawed and broken within ourselves and that we’re surrounded by others who are also broken in the same way. Accepting that brokenness has a lot positive in our interactions!

How many times have you been let down by someone that let you down after you put them on a pedestal? How many times have you been hurt by someone who you looked up to when they slipped up? I’m sure we all have. Rather than seeing them as better than us, we’re much better off seeing them as a fellow broken traveler on this path of life. That isn’t to say that we accept their flaws and mistreatment as just how things are—we should surround ourselves with those closest to us who are also striving to mend their brokenness through faith. Instead, we’re simply setting realistic expectations. There is, after all, none righteous the Apostle Paul tells us.

By accepting our broken selves and the brokenness of those around us, think about how much better things would go. If I see someone I love fail me and hurt me, I can understand their failure in the same way I understand my own. They have missed the mark because they’re not perfect, no one alive today is. Now, again, they should be trying to be better and to follow a better example in Christ, but they are still going to make mistakes. And so am I.

Perhaps there is some positive in embracing “The Negative” after all.