Do, or do not

I’m watching “Selling God” on Netflix Instant, on a whim this morning. It’s only half an hour in so far, and it’s all right. It’s no “God Who Wasn’t There,” which I go back to now and again, but it’s definitely aiming for a similar tone and format, with a focus instead on how religion, and Christianity in particular, markets and spreads itself.

But that’s not really what I wanted to talk about. I wanted to talk about Romans 7:15-20, which just got quoted in the film. Read through this:

I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do. And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good. As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me. For I know that good itself does not dwell in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For I do not do the good I want to do, but the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it.

I get that the passage is talking about man’s sinful nature causing him to make bad choices, and I suspect that it’s a lot less tongue-twistery in Greek, but holy cow, look at that. I don’t know if anyone else remembers the slapstick comedy New Testament I proposed way back when, but this passage put me in mind of it again. Can’t you just hear that passage being read by Jackie Mason or John Moschitta or the late Rodney Dangerfield? It’d be hilarious.