Losing your Soul

Several years before I retired from Missouri State University in 2005, I was so caught up in an active academic career, involved in campus life, community activities, professional activities, and serving in the Army Reserve that I felt like my very soul was at risk. Somewhere between completing a terminal degree (1977) and retiring from Missouri State University (2005), my soul seemed to have gone missing or was so shriveled I could not find it. Souls need attention, special feeding and watering, to flourish. I suspect that I am not the only person to come to this realization.

            You might not think it possible for people to lose their souls, but Jesus thought so. “What is the profit,” he said, “in gaining the world and losing your soul” (Mark 8:36). Charles Dickens also thought so, and in his novel (A Christmas Carol) portrayed Ebenezer Scrooge as a soulless man, who rediscovers his soul at the end of the novel. “Soul” is the essence of being truly human—a quality always pushing us, come hell or high water, toward moral excellence. A man or a woman with no soul has lost the qualitative edge of being human, of keeping life in balance and everything in perspective—in other words, “losing yourself to gain the world” (Luke 9:25) distorts perspective and throws life into serious imbalance. Clearly Scrooge was disoriented. He had fed his soul so much material “stuff” that he had lost touch with humanity—particularly his humanity. In my case, somewhat like Bob Cratchit, I sat in a tiny windowless office cluttered with neglected professional projects (real soul food by the way), and fed my soul unimaginative papers by incurious students, but in the grand scheme of things virtually irrelevant. Souls cannot survive on such an unbalanced diet.

            Can governments lose their souls? Certainly, they can. Government at every level involves people who set a tone for the administration and carry out its policies. National socialism in Hitler’s Germany, at best, was government without conscience or humanity, and its systematic massacre of Jews and other eastern Europeans clearly qualifies it as soulless. The same is true of Saddam Hussein’s Iraqi government, for attempting to annihilate its own citizens, the Kurds. In our own country, the suppressive disfranchisement (and worse!) of black citizens in the deep south for over one hundred years can only be explained by the shriveled souls of white citizens. And what should we say about attempts in various states to eliminate budgetary support for our most vulnerable citizens—the mentally ill, disabled, children, and the elderly? At best, it is not an action that anyone would confuse with moral excellence. And Mr. Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” by congress? The Congressional Budget Office estimates that its passage may cause some 10 million American citizens to lose their health insurance by 2034, with some $900 billion in cuts to Medicare. Only shriveled souls could be pleased at such an inhumane result.¹

            Can a church lose its soul? You wouldn’t think so, but in my religious tradition it has been happening for some time now. For the sake of what some in the tradition regard as “right” theology, Southern Baptist intolerants dismantled a fellowship of, more or less, independent cooperating churches. They centralized their authority and have been, since 1985, purging the denomination of diversity. Shortening the borders of the tent and shallow thinking make for better control but do not encourage the development of healthy souls.

Without a healthy soul, we will never find our way to the moral high road, or as Paul put it, to the more excellent way (1 Cor 12:3–13:13). Without soul one is condemned to sit among the mattresses of the dead (a line from a poem by Wallace Stevens, The Man on the Dump). Allowing a soul to shrivel away is bad enough. Being unaware of the loss altogether is a crisis of epic proportions!²

Charles W. Hedrick
Professor Emeritus
Missouri State University

¹https://www.cbpp.org/research/health/by-the-numbers-republican-reconciliation-law-will-take-health-coverage-away-from#:~:text=as%20their%20employment.-,Medicaid,had%20an%20illness%20or%20disability

²This essay, reedited and updated in part, was first published in the newspaper, the Springfield News Leader, Springfield, MO, before 2009, and republished in my book, House of Faith or Enchanted Forest? American Popular Belief in an Age of Reason (Cascade, 2009), 34-35.

Is Jaywalking a Sin against God?

Jaywalking is the act of pedestrians walking in or crossing a roadway that has traffic, other than at a suitable crossing point, or otherwise in disregard of traffic rules.¹

In 2015 I published a blog entitled “What is sin?”² In the essay I surveyed acts and attitudes in the Bible that were specifically described by Greek and Hebrew words that Bible translators rendered by the English word “sin.” What I discovered was surprising to me. There are very few acts and attitudes in the Bible specifically designated as sin. That made me wonder at the arrogance of contemporary religious leaders who impose on their flocks an expanded and rather modern list of sins. How does anyone know what offends God?

            Some of the early writers of the New Testament encouraged those who shared their faith to present themselves to the Graeco-Roman religious pubic and the civil authorities as positively as possible (1 Thess 4:10-12; 1 Tim 2:2-3; Tit 3:1-2; 1 Pet 2:12-14), so that there would be no cause for criticism of the faith. Paul shared this view, except that he raised the significance of public image by incorporating it into his theological system as a religious obligation. Whether he did or not depends on whether you think Paul wrote Romans 13:1-7, which sets forth theological reasons for the Christian’s obedience to the civil authority and the state.³

            The author of Romans 13:1-7 argues that Christians should be subject to the authority of the state, apparently any state, that is the governing authority under which the Christian lives.⁴ With respect to civil laws (which would include jaywalking) this passage asserts three things.

1. All governing authority is instituted by God (Rom 13:1-2).
2. Civil servants are God’s servants and instituted by God for the purpose of governing the state (Rom 13:4, 6).
3. If one rebels against civil authority, one will incur God’s judgment (13:2), for God punishes the law breaker though the civil authority (Rom 13:4).

In other words, civil laws are God’s laws. Therefore, one would have to conclude that the author of Romans 13:1-7 might have understood jaywalking to be a sin against God, for jaywalking defies laws instituted by the civil authorities, who are God’s servants for the good of the state.

            Such reasoning seems patently absurd to me. While it is plausible that God may have endorsed the concept of governing authority in general, it is absurd to think that God endorses every government. For that would make God responsible for approving repressive, incompetent, and inhumane regimes. Further, it is rather obvious that civil servants are not God’s servants but are appointed to their positions by flawed leaders, who (at bottom) have their own or party interests at heart. Consider only our democratic system of government. How many elected officials in congress think of themselves as “servants of God” and consider themselves “appointed by God” to the task of governing?

            But, perhaps, I am simply too disillusioned from following the news closely these past ten years or so. I find it difficult to think of jaywalking as a sin that offends God. If God “thinks” about jaywalking at all, God would likely consider it as most of us do, foolhardy and an unnecessary risk (unless the streets were empty of traffic and the jaywalker had looked both ways to determine their emptiness). Would this hold true, do you suppose, about all minor infractions of the civil code?

Charles W. Hedrick
Professor Emeritus
Missouri State University

¹ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jaywalking#United_States

² http://blog.charleshedrick.com/search?q=what+is+sin

³Romans 13:1-7 is likely an interpolation into the letter and not by Paul: for the argument, see Dewey, et al., The Authentic Letters of Paul (Polebridge, 2010), 253-54.

⁴The major governing authority in the first century CE Mediterranean area was the Roman State.

Democracy and the Bible

On July 4th I began pondering American democracy (our Republic)—I suppose it is appropriate to ponder our fragile experiment in democracy on Independence Day. An experiment in democracy, lasting just a short 343 years, is fragile by definition because its success depends on an educated electorate¹ that regularly participates in the democratic process, which includes voting in elections and monitoring of elected officials.²

The Bible offers little positive guidance on a democratic government, and what little it says about governmental rule actually presents a problem for readers. Only two extensive descriptions of a political state are to be found in the New Testament, and both of them present contradictory views on that state (the Roman Empire), which was the dominant political power in the New Testament world (from about 31 BCE [ascension of Augustus] to 410 CE [the sack of Rome by the Visigoths]).

The author of Revelation (chapters 13, 17-18) portrays the Roman Empire in ghastly terms as the evil Empire of the Antichrist (Rev12:1-17). Paul on the other hand has a surprisingly naïve view of the governing authorities (Rom 13:1-7). His view is that the governing authorities of the Empire are “appointed by God” (13:1-2), and anyone who resists them will incur judgment (13:2). Oddly he makes no distinction between types of governments—apparently even repressive, ruthless, and autocratic governments are likewise appointed by God. Rulers are God’s servants “for your good” (13:3-4), he writes. Thus, one must be subject to them or else suffer God’s wrath (13:5). He concludes this short section directing that taxes must be paid and that citizens of the state should give respect and honor to the authorities, for they are “ministers of God” (13:6-7).

Both writers are clearly mistaken in their views. The Roman domination of the Mediterranean basin while difficult for the Roman Provinces nevertheless provided them with the pax romana (Roman Peace); it provided the provinces with “security and safety made possible travel, trade, and renewed economic development and prosperity.”³ So Roman governance under the Empire was not as terrible as John had imagined it. Paul’s view on the other hand is simply uninformed. That all governing authorities are appointed by God could not possibly be true—if we assume that God has a conscience. In any case, Paul’s views about the Empire clearly conflict with our democratic system of which we find no trace in the New Testament.

It seems fairly clear (at least to me) that Mr. Trump was not “appointed by God” (but then neither was Mr. Obama). Mr Trump was appointed by the Electoral College after he lost the popular vote of the country. His administration (and that of Mr. Obama as well) is plagued by gridlock. That is because governance in a representative democracy (a republic) is often messy and inefficient; it is all too frequently partisan, rather than bipartisan. A democratic form of government should probably be avoided except for the fact that all other forms of government are worse.

The Bible offers no specific advice about government. Except that here and there the Bible’s ethical ideas might be inculcated into government. For specific ideas about how government should function we are left to our own imaginations. It is more than disconcerting to see Mr. Trump employ in his presidency ideas and values different from the positive ethical ideas of the Bible (or even conventional American values) , and nevertheless still receive strong evangelical support.

Charles W. Hedrick

Professor Emeritus

Missouri State University

¹National Center for Education: In 2016-17 85% of Americans had graduated High School; 21% had a Bachelor’s degree; 9.3% had a Master’s Degree; less than 2% held a Doctorate.

²In the 2016 Presidential election 58.1% of the voting-eligible population voted: https://guides.libraries.psu.edu/post-election-2016/voter-turnout

³E. Ferguson, Backgrounds of Early Christianity (3rd ed.; Eerdmans, 2003), p. 29.