How do we live in the world as it is, without being overwhelmed by evil? How do we keep from being cast down in such a way that we are unable to act? “Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you disquieted within me?” The answer of Psalm 42 is: “Hope in God, for I shall again praise him, my help and my God.”
How do we live in this nation without succumbing to despair, brought low by hostility, cruelty, and apathy and robbed of the ability to act? There is so very much to lament, and therefore we must lament. But lamentation does not mean acquiescing to things as they are. It means grieving as a movement into prayer, acknowledgement of our own sin and helplessness in the face of evil, and our turning to God who forgives, frees, and empowers us for action.
Jesus calls his followers to action. We are to be witnesses. In a world of lies, we are to witness to the truth, which means we must come to the truth and acknowledge the lies. Above all, we are called to live the truth—which engages us in being truthful with ourselves and our brokenness.
In the sixteenth chapter of John, Jesus tells us that he sends the Helper, the Spirit of truth, who comes to “prove the world wrong about sin and righteousness and judgment: about sin, because they do not believe in me; about righteousness, because I am going to the Father, and you will see me no longer; about judgment, because the ruler of this world has been condemned.” (John 16:8-11)
These words are good news for witnesses, who, like Jesus, know they are called to testify to the truth. The Spirit of truth helps us with the truth—the truth of sin, righteousness, and liberation—first within ourselves and then in the world.
We live in a world where massive amounts of information are available to us enhanced by “artificial intelligence” and yet we often remain ignorant of ourselves, our inner life and motivations—and for what builds abiding relationships. We may have all kinds of information at our finger tips but lack knowledge and wisdom regarding ourselves and, as a consequence, we chase after chimeras.
Our problem is spiritual. We need inner truth, the truth of ourselves. We need the Spirit of truth who proves us wrong in our assessments of the world and ourselves. We are “wrong about sin and righteousness and judgment.” We are wrong about the depth of the problem of sin and evil; we downplay it. Without the Spirit, we diminish, in our minds, the depth and extent of sin. We do not believe we need divine help to overcome. We do not believe in the need for liberation. It is the Spirit of truth who comes to convince us of our need, the need for God’s deliverance.
We and the world are wrong about righteousness. The world’s view of what is right is exceedingly superficial. It believes it can know and do the right, while, in truth, it does evil. It is capable of great evil along with great rationalization of evil. The world even finds all manner of ways to convince itself that evil is necessary.
Our deliverence is found in this: the Spirit comes to bring judgment, because “the ruler of this world has been condemned.” With the Spirit there is liberation and victory over the evil that rules the world. It is the work of the Spirit in us that makes possible what has been impossible because of our captivity to sin—our bondage to egotism, arrogance and the manipulation of others.
The central issue of these words from the Gospel of John is this: God does for us what we have been unable to do for ourselves. It is by the power of God’s Spirit that there is true foundational change. As many recovering addcts have realized, as the first step to our healing, is that we come to the place where we “admit we are powerless” to fundamentally change ourselves by our own effort and that “our lives have become unmanageable.”
These words express a broken humanity that comes to the realization that it cannot fix itself. After all, we are all essentially addicts trying to sustain our lives by false dependencies, when in God alone do we have our being and healing and liberation. The good news is that God has not left us to ourselves. God sends the Spirit of truth to convince us of our sin, our false ways of being, and to liberate, empower, and send us out as witnesses. We are set free to witness to life under God’s governance, witnessing to God’s faithfulness, justice and mercy.
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