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Following Jesus in nonviolent struggle for justice and peace, we love our neighbors and enemies as God loves us all, becoming a peace church to share in God’s work to save the world.

Jesus and World Religions: The Possibility of Change

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JESUS, ANTHROPOLOGY AND WORLD RELIGIONS
Some Good News

by John K. Stoner

6th of 7.

6. The Possibility of Change

   Is it possible for humans to turn from habits of harm toward habits of healing, and from habits of killing to habits of saving life? Can we, in other words, actually replace a culture of violence with a culture of peace?

   The short answer is simple, and I’ll give it first. Whatever is possible for one individual now is possible for a whole society in time.

   But of course, saying it’s true doesn’t prove its true. So, let’s poke around this a little.

   We could start with this obvious but rare bit of honesty: it sounds better to say “I cannot change” than to say “I will not change.” You’ll find a hundred people ready to say “I cannot change this behavior” for every one who will say “I will not change this behavior.” Having stripped the cover from that ubiquitous little piece of self deception, it’s not hard to imagine that a good bit of energy, not to mention creativity, will be put into making things sound better. It is likely, for example, that theological arguments for the total depravity of human nature will be used to undergird the presumption that “I cannot change.” In a similar fashion, elaborate arguments to demonstrate that society is inherently and irretrievably immoral will be used to imply that individuals too cannot change.

   What gives the lie to every argument that people cannot change their behavior is the observation that people do change their behavior. My, how we treasure the stories of people who have changed in dramatic ways! By treasuring these stories we show that we admire change, such as change from habits of harm to habits of healing. But do we also show that we expect such change to be rare, and even imply that it is usually not possible?

   Change, as we’ve said, is another word for repentance. It means to begin seeing things in a different way, and doing things in a different way. The possibility of both seeing and doing differently is there because we’ve seen it happen. But why would anyone want to see or do differently? Stripped of the claim that “I cannot change,” how will a person be moved to say “I will change?”

   We begin to see that the question of change moves less on the plane of possibility than on the plane of incentive. The bottom line is not whether it is possible, but why it would be chosen.

   We choose things either because we think they will be good for us, or good for others. Now, we might add a third motive, or incentive: we choose things because they will be good for God. This is the “to glorify God and enjoy him [sic] forever” argument. And that’s OK, it has its place, but I think we have reason to be careful here, on no less authority than Jesus himself, who cautioned us mightily against thinking we can do things for God which we’re either unwilling or think ourselves unable to do for others. He linked the love of God and the love of neighbor, and any effort to de-link those, for even the highest of motives, is doomed to reap nothing but the basest of results.

   I think Jesus saw us incapable of doing things purely “for God,” and that not simply because we’re sinners, but because we’

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