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We Can Do Bad Things

By Pr. Lisa Rygiel

I follow Kate Bowler on Substack, and I thought this Sept. 10 article was worth sharing.

We Can Do Bad Things -- A Reflection on sin, sobriety, and the surprising persistence of grace.

We don’t like to admit it, but all of us do bad things sometimes. We do. Unless that’s just me.

So why, then, do we have so little cultural language left for why?

Over the course of American history, the pendulum has swung back and forth between “YOU ARE BAD…THE WORST, ACTUALLY” (see also: Calvinism) and “YOU ARE SO GREAT THERE SHOULD BE MUSICALS ABOUT YOU” (see also: the 1970s).

For the first few centuries, American Christianity was dominated by a particularly low estimation of our character. (In theological terms, we call that a low anthropology.) One of the most famous rhetorical examples is, of course, the 18th-century sermon, “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.” In it, the preacher (and president of what would become Princeton University) Jonathan Edwards calmly describes us like a spider dangling over hellfire. And all the while, the people in the pews begin to riot and overturn the furniture out of desperation — they were doomed.

Most modern Americans would reject the presuppositions that made low anthropologies plausible. Are we totally depraved? Only a minority of Christian denominations would agree. (Even the Presbyterian Church of the USA, one of the oldest and most established Calvinist denominations in the country, doesn’t actually require pastors to believe in total depravity anymore to be ordained. Which is pretty wild. Yes, that’s how wild Presbyterianism can get.)

To be American is to have a sky-high anthropology. This is the country of Horatio Alger’s rags-to-riches stories and the power of positive thinking. You’re stuck? No problem. Here’s the American gospel: WE CAN DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT. We go up and up and up. You can do anything as long as you set your mind to it. Something about bootstraps!

But in our hearts, we’re not so sure. We’re the worst, but we’re also saved. Who doesn’t love a good paradox? The writer Frederick Buechner said the gospel is a tragedy because we’re all sinners. It’s also a comedy because God loves us anyway. Very often, though, we prefer to stick to comedy.

You don’t have to know me well to know what I think about this idea of limitlessness.

  • Sometimes things break.
  • Sometimes they don’t get better.
  • Sometimes there’s nothing we can do about it.
  • And sometimes we’re the ones who really screwed up.

And I wonder if we’ve lost something with the disappearance of this language of helplessness.

We don’t want to go back to being doomed spiders, but now we can’t account for why we’re doing what we’re doing.

I think that’s partially why the language of recovery has been so effective.

Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) is one of the most significant contributions to American religion. It was born out of a Christian revivalist trend called the Oxford Group in early 20th-century America. Its 12-step programs offer a language of helplessness, of failure, of being at the end of the line. Whether or not you’ve been to any meetings, many of us already know about some of the famous 12 steps, such as #2, “A power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.” Or #3, “Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God, as we understood Him.”

It’s very spiritual language. But there’s more. How about #5: “Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.”

Or #6: “We’re entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.”

I can’t help but notice the way the Protestant language of sinfulness and dependency on God is evident here. And it’s very American — both in the sense that it is about spiritual self-improvement and moral progress, but it’s also traditionally Protestant, because it’s imbued with language of one’s sins and failures and incapacities and one’s complete helplessness aside from God’s rescue and salvation.

That’s what makes recovery language so compelling. It’s a worldview that starts in the muck. It assumes we’re human — and that being human means we are endlessly capable of hurting ourselves and the people we love.

But it also makes room for grace. That is the strange gift of helplessness — that in laying ourselves bare, we make room for a God who meets us in the wreckage and whispers that another life, another way, is still possible.

September 21, 15th Sunday After Pentecost
10 a.m. Sunday Worship

 

Announcements

  • Fellowship: Join us after worship for coffee and conversation.
  • Children’s Choir: Beginning 2 p.m. this coming Sunday (not 3 p.m. like last year) Children’s Choir will resume each Sunday, through Nov. 30, in the Fellowship Hall.
  • October Newsletter Deadline: The deadline for submissions to Zion’s October newsletter is Sept. 23. Please share your contributions or suggestions with Jo Moss.
  • Weekly Studies Resume: Beginning at 10 a.m. on Thursday, Sept. 25, (repeated at 12:30 on Saturday, Sept. 27), Pastor Lisa will lead a Study entitled By What Authority: Rethinking Early Christian History. Presented in a video and study guide format (no books required), the sessions give participants a chance to see how the drama of the early church affects our lives of faith today.
  • Save the Date: Our annual Blessing of the Animals will be at 10 a.m. on Saturday, Oct. 4, in the fenced lawn adjacent to the Fellowship Hall. Brittany Cook will be drawing caricatures of your pets and would like to get a head start on that project. So, if you would like a picture, please share a photo of your pet with Brittany now and she’ll get started.

E-formation – 15th Sunday After Pentecost,

September 21, 2025

The gospel this coming Sunday deals with something that concerns us all: money. Luke calls us “children of light,” and we want to see clearly how to live our lives in Christ. Come to worship, to think and pray about this.

Luke 16:1-13

This Lucan excerpt includes a parable and three separate moralizing comments and thus is similar to some other synoptic parables in that a later moralization has become attached to Jesus’ words. The parable, like others ascribed to Jesus, is somewhat unsettling and full of exaggeration: a hundred jars of oil is 900 gallons, a hundred kors of wheat is more than 1100 bushels. One commentator suggests that the manager is merely adjusting the debt which he had dishonestly raised in the first place. The parable praises the manager for taking necessary steps in view of what the future promises, and so it presents an eschatological picture of the believing community. The first moralization (vv. 8b-9) urges believers to choose what is right and to trust that when this world and its values fail, God will receive them. The second moralization (vv. 10-12) offers advice for daily Christian fidelity. The third moralization (v. 13) simplifies the parable by tying it to the Christian use of money.

Amos 8:4-7

Amos was a farmer, not a member of the prophets’ guild, who was active as a mouthpiece for God’s word during the monarchies of Uzziah (783–742) and Jeroboam (796–746). His primary message, delivered in elegant Hebrew, is that since God’s people are living without justice to the poor and are incorporating pagan practices into their worship, God will punish them. The new moon was the first day of the lunar month, an ancient religious holiday of rest on which sacrifices were to be offered. The Sabbath was a day of rest that the Pentateuch ties to both creation (Exod. 20:11) and the Exodus (Deut. 5:15): its origins are a matter of considerable scholarly controversy. The ephah was a dry measure slightly more than a bushel. The shekel was at this point a unit of weight of about half an ounce.

1 Timothy 2:1-7

The introduction to 1 Timothy completed, the author, likely a late-first-century disciple of Paul, begins the body of the essay. The Christian practice of prayer is to include secular authorities, thus indicating that Christians are not revolutionaries. The author stresses the universality of the gospel message, which is offered to “everyone,” “humankind.”

 

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