Not everything that is natural is good. We see that in natural remedies and natural food. And we especially see it in humans.
The Bible refers to natural human tendencies as carnal tendencies. Human nature is often called “the flesh” (except in a few translations which try to explain what “flesh” means) Following the flesh leads to death; following the Spirit of God leads to life.
There are lots of natural things in all of us that we recognize as bad: anger, jealousy, lust, pride. Galatians 5 has a nice list of them. Then it lists things that are produced by the Spirit: “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.” (Galatians 5:22–23)
To say “that’s just the way I am” is not a good excuse; it’s merely an admission that you need to be transformed by God’s Spirit!
Rather than putting a stamp of approval on natural, let’s call ourselves and others to a higher goal: Spiritual.
It’s also natural to love, to protect our young, to care for one another. Natural is neither good nor bad, it’s just natural. When we elevate ourselves and pursue self centred interests above the good of others is when it becomes bad. I don’t believe there is a dualism between what is natural and what is spiritual. Spiritual is not above the things of the flesh. The flesh is not all bad.
“The Bible refers to natural human tendencies as carnal tendencies. ”
where does it say this?
what about the Imago Dei that every human being possesses?
is that work “nothing”?
is that “worth” nothing
Wendy,
I agree that not all natural tendencies are bad. I may not have clarified that well enough in the post. The title says it best: “Natural doesn’t equal good.”
The point isn’t that the flesh is all bad. The point is that it’s not all good. There are things that are inherent in humans that aren’t good. Just because you are born a certain way, that doesn’t mean it is godly.
Grace and peace,
Tim
Michael,
Like the world itself, we maintain hints of the divine within our fallen nature. But not everything that is natural is good. If we follow human nature and human nature alone, we will find ourselves on a road that leads to death.
Grace and peace,
Tim
Thanks, Tim… for your kind reply.
I assume then (by your response to wendy) that this section:
“The Bible refers to natural human tendencies as carnal tendencies” is overstatement and not true since not all human tendencies are carnal?
Further.. (and I’m not trying to self elevate to be my own God and I know don’t measure up) where does the Bible teach I have “hints of the divine”
do I only have a hint of the Imago Dei?
would then be 98% carnal and 2% Imago Dei?
I’m just trying to understand… I agree that Humans beings can’t act selfishly and we don’t follow ever emotion that we might have. But I’m trying to clarify your wording and where you might be specifically headed, if anywhere?
Michael,
I think we need to see the word “carnal” for what it is: another way to say fleshly. I guess that’s why I put the qualifier “The Bible refers to…” on that, for the world often uses carnal in a different way. The things referred to as “works of the flesh” in Galatians 5 are things that arise from natural human tendencies. I do see how one could read the article and insert the word “all” before natural human tendencies, but that wasn’t my intent. I recognize my failure to be clear on that point.
Paul says there’s nothing good in the flesh [“For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh.” (Romans 7:18)], though I would say that’s a bit of hyperbole. The point is that human nature can not take us where we want to go. We must have God’s Spirit to be spiritual people; that seems obvious, yet it gets overlooked.
For example, when someone says that it’s not natural for people to be monogamous, that doesn’t bother me. It might bother me more if it were natural. The fact that we have to keep our sexual impulses in check fits right in with what the Bible says about flesh versus Spirit.
That’s where I’m trying to go. I’ve touched on this before; here’s a post from several years ago that talks about the same: http://www.timothyarcher.com/kitchen/it’s-natural/
Tim, “Just because you are born a certain way, that doesn’t mean it is godly.” is the kind of teaching that causes LGBTQI kids to suicide.
I do have some sympathy towards that situation, though I think it’s overly simplistic to say that one certain teaching alone leads to suicide. Frankly, I think much of the LGBT activism has contributed greatly as well. Insensitivity on the part of church members is never good; that insensitivity is not a reason to change doctrine. It’s a reason to change hearts.
I’m not willing to give someone a pass on infidelity because they have the gene some scientists have identified as the adultery gene. I’m not willing to forgive habitual drunkenness because someone says they were born with a tendency toward alcoholism. Just because something is “natural,” doesn’t mean that it’s good.
Tim, how do you believe that LGBTQI activism has contributed to the high suicide rate among LGBTQI youth and adults?
Wendy,
I haven’t answered your comment because I’ve been giving it a lot of thought. I can’t find a way to express my thoughts in a concise manner. I’ll probably write a full post in the not too distant future.
I’ll give a brief answer that won’t fully explain what I want to say. I believe that God, in the Bible, wasn’t arbitrary when it came to making laws. I do recognize that some of the laws don’t make sense to us, but I still believe there was logic behind them. One major consideration was what was better for man (i.e., Sabbath as a rest for man rather than a mere legalistic rule). Redefining what is right and wrong to follow cultural norms doesn’t change what’s best for human beings. Telling a person who is experiencing same sex attraction that those feelings are natural and normal doesn’t magically change what those feelings are, no matter what a certain culture says.
I’ll try to explain that more fully in the not too distant future.
Grace and peace,
Tim
hi Tim,
the title of this blog post caught my eye–not least because this is something I can heartily “amen.” The category of Nature/natural is a culturally, socially constructed one, and it’s fairly easy to track how the concept of what’s “natural” has historically shifted. That makes the equation of natural=good even more suspect! In addition, Nature has frequently been invoked in oppressive ways both politically and theologically, as certain groups have been defined as “naturally” inferior in some way, justifying different moral status and different standards of ethical treatment. The Christian theological tradition, for instance, is full of statements about women (Tertullian, Augustine, Aquinas, Luther, Calvin, just to name a few that come to mind immediately) that justify submission to a patriarchal system on the basis of women’s “natural” spiritual/intellectual inferiority to men. Likewise, justification of the practice of slavery in the United States appealed to the “natural” inferiority of Africans. (This, by the way, is the reason so many appeal to the example of slavery as a parallel to gender injustices within the church, I think–it’s not that the oppressions themselves are similar but that the process of justification that undergirds them is philosophically similar.)
So, absolutely AMEN to natural =/= good. But are we then prepared to take the next step and say that sometimes, “unnatural” can be a good? Or even the halfway step of acknowledging that the “unnatural”–say, a woman who doesn’t embody the category of “Woman” that seems so “natural” (nurturing, emotive, communicative, submissive rather than aggressive, etc.) exists and is just as descriptive of women as the “natural” characteristics we more readily recognize?
I’d like to bring this back around more closely to the content of your original post with regard to “flesh” (sarx) as a “natural” category, also descriptive of human tendencies to immorality. You’ve already gotten some pushback on this with regard to how the notion of creation in imago dei fits in. Of course one way to solve that theological dilemma would be to think of the imago dei as definitively “unnatural” (that is, “supernatural”) and then correspondingly think of the human struggle to be righteous as a struggle against our own natural selves (as sarx). I don’t prefer this solution myself, theologically, and partly this is because Paul himself is more complicated in his anthropology and regard of the body. Though he certainly defines “sarx” as a problematic part of being human, Paul also simultaneously regards the body (as “soma”) in a very positive way–evident not least in the way this becomes his dominant metaphor for the church as the body of Christ, and his very embodied notion of resurrection. So it’s not as simple an opposition as flesh versus soul, or natural versus supernatural–but more of a vision of redeeming nature, including what we mean by human nature. (It would take an actual Pauline scholar to really figure out the way sarx, soma, and imago dei relate in Paul, that’s a bit beyond my expertise and I’ve never had the time to really research it to my satisfaction, though it’s on that mental to-do list for someday.)
One more note, and that is, there’s a really intriguing reversal in Romans with regard to the category of Nature and its relation to the good in chapter 11. There, Paul describes the relationship of the Gentiles and the people of Israel as God’s chosen with the image of the olive tree. Paul describes Israel as the natural root, and the Gentiles as grafted branches onto that root. But, as Paul himself notes, that metaphor is the reverse of actual practice–to cultivate olives (like apple trees), you graft on domesticated branches onto wild roots, not the other way around. So this action of God in grafting on the wild branches of Gentiles is “unnatural”–but righteous, and indeed an act of God.
Sorry for the somewhat unorganized novella of a comment, but this natural =/=good is (I think) a really hugely important and very interesting observation!
thanks :)