My True Self, Universalism

In George MacDonald's The Baron's Apprenticeship, a bookbinder named Richard discovers he's the son of a baron. The baron is a sordid fellow, who embraces Richard just to make his second wife mad by disowning her children as potential heirs.

Near the end of the book, the baron dies, and we get some insight into George MacDonald's view on life after death. It's expressed through Thomas Wingfold, the local minister.

Richard exclaims, "[O]h, how I wish I would have loved him if he would have let me!"

Wingfold responds: "And how you will love him!...[A]nd he will love you. They are getting him ready now. He had begun to love you before he went. But he was the slave of the nature he had enfeebled and corrupted. I hope for him--though God only knows how long it may take, even after the change is begun, to bring men like him back to their true selves" (209).

This is an example of MacDonald's universalism, which affirms that God will purify people in the afterlife.

The part about the true self reminds me of C.S. Lewis. According to Lewis, Christianity is not about making us something we're not, or forcing us to become Christian clones. Rather, it alone enables us to be our authentic selves.

Do I buy this? Does Christianity exemplify the real me? On some level, yes, for underneath this lustful, bitter, shy, introverted bunch of nerves is someone who wants to love and help others, but does not know how. I can tell you one thing: I'm actually quite extroverted in my dreams!

I'm not sure if that idea squares with the Bible, though. According to Romans 8, "[T]he carnal mind is enmity against God: for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be" (KJV). And Colossians 3 talks about Christians putting off the old self of sin as they clothe themselves with a new self of righteousness. Those passages seem to indicate that our true selves are hostile to good. And I can't entirely deny that, for much of what Colossians 3 attributes to the "old self" (e.g., malice, lust, etc.) is present in me.

At the same time, isn't there something abnormal about evil--in the sense that it's outside of the mainstream? There are a lot of people who love their wives, their kids, and their fellow man, albeit not perfectly. But in the case of the baron, how can someone become so jaded and cynical, that he embraces his long lost son specifically to hurt his wife? Was he born that way? Did he become that way through bad experiences?

I'm reminded of an article I read on N.T. Wright and hell. N.T. Wright defended the existence of hell by appealing to humanity's worst specimens: sex traffickers, child rapists, mass murderers, etc. The article responds:

"Wright, I think, is too quick to demonise the humanity of the Other in these examples. I don't know if he has spent much time with such people, but I wonder how that might change his views. You see, because I have had the opportunity to personally journey alongside of many of these people, I have had a chance to see that most of them had little or no chance to be something other than what they are. Some were born broken, others were so broken when they were young that they never had a chance to develop into anything else (remember most of those who sexually abuse kids, were sexually abused as children -- this is not to suggest that all those who are sexually abused as kids go on to abuse others, but it is a large factor, and I think other circumstances in one's life go a long way to determining whether or not one goes on to abuse others or not). Ultimately, contra Wright, I don't think that it is the human Other that becomes ex-human and is damned. Rather, I think it is the forces that dehumanise the Other -- forces of sickness, of structural evil, and so on -- that are damned, while the person is restored to their fully human status in Christ" (see here).

My problem with this article is that it seems to absolve evildoers of moral responsibility, but it still raises a valuable point: are people who do wrong truly evil? Many of them are people, like you and me. And some of them have had hard lives.

I'm reminded of a character from Lost: Mr. Eko. Eko's life of crime began in his childhood, when he stole bread to feed himself and his brother, and when he killed someone so his brother wouldn't have to (a bunch of thugs were telling him to do so). He became involved in the drug trade so that the drugs wouldn't be in his own country, Nigeria. On the island, he's asked if he is sorry for his sins, and he replies that he did what he could to survive, according to the options that were available to him.

What am I saying here? I don't know. Maybe this blog should be called James' Thoughts and Ramblings! I acknowledge that all humans have selfishness and sin, yet I also see some goodness within them. As one lady from AA told me, "There's bad in the best of us, and good in the worst of us." Yet, we can't excuse wrongdoing, since evil must be punished. Otherwise, we'd have chaos.

I also wonder this about MacDonald's universalism: how will God disciplining a person in the afterlife restore him to his true self? How does getting a long spanking make someone a better person?