Noah began to be a man of the soil, and he planted a vineyard. He drank of the wine and became drunk and lay uncovered in his tent. And Ham, the father of Canaan, saw the nakedness of his father and told his two brothers outside. | Genesis 9:20–22
Over the last month, we have been looking at the story of Noah and the ark. We are introduced to Noah in Genesis 6:8–9, where it tells us:
But Noah found favor in the eyes of the LORD. These are the generations of Noah. Noah was a righteous man, blameless in his generation. Noah walked with God.
The rest of the story treats Noah as the favored one of God and a man who lives out righteousness in a twisted world. UNTIL we get to the end of chapter 9. After God reestablishes Noah and his family and promises that He will never again destroy the world, we get this story of Noah getting drunk and passing out naked.
Ultimately, this story becomes about his sons and how they respond to their father’s error. It is followed by a genealogy that lays out the descendants of the honorable sons and the dishonorable one. Right up front, we have Noah taking the fruit that God has given him to steward and using it to fulfill his own desires – to the point of letting go of self-control and creating shame. For all of the good that we have seen him do, we also have this story of him in a moment of weakness.
The Bible seems to go out of its way to make sure that we don’t have an overly positive view of ANY of the Biblical heroes. It points out the issues of the patriarchs, Moses, Joshua, the Judges and Kings. The Apostles certainly don’t come off looking perfect, some of them even lay out their issues for us. While they are pointed out as examples to us, in places like Hebrews 11, it is their faith that we are called to follow. We should trust God, as they did, but we must remember that they are sinful human beings. In the same way that the Bible is very honest about their sin and shortcomings, we should maintain a balanced view of those we look up to in the Christian faith.
I am writing this at the end of a Summer where a number of celebrity Christians have died. While it is said that you should not speak ill of the dead, it seems that many Christians have taken this to an extreme. There is a tendency to idolize some of these people to the point of defending them against any and all critiques. In order to keep our heroes on their pedestal, we can end up looking past (or even explaining away) their flaws. We think defending them is an issue of honor, but allowing their weaknesses to be put on display is what elevates the glory of God. We must decrease so that He may increase. We must view those we respect as sinners saved by grace and used by God for His glory. The fact that the Bible does this so consistently should help us not to elevate people to the point of celebrity.
The other side of the coin is: the fact that someone’s sin and weakness is on display does not undo all of the good that they have done. Samson is mentioned as an example of faith and his life leaves much to be desired. I am not saying that we should not hold Christian leaders to a high standard, the Bible makes it clear that we should. We need to recognize that God’s good being poured out through people is more about God than it is about them. He is doing the work through them. The work is still His, even if the person is not perfect (and no one is). As Paul makes clear in Philippians 1:15–18:
Some indeed preach Christ from envy and rivalry, but others from good will. The latter do it out of love, knowing that I am put here for the defense of the gospel. The former proclaim Christ out of selfish ambition, not sincerely but thinking to afflict me in my imprisonment. What then? Only that in every way, whether in pretense or in truth, Christ is proclaimed, and in that I rejoice.
We can choose to rejoice in what God is doing, even when it happens through people who have flaws that we struggle with. The point of this whole blog is: let people be people and let God be God. People are not a saint or a villain, but are some complex mix of good and bad. As Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn put it in The Gulag Archipeligo:
Gradually it was disclosed to me that the line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either—but right through every human heart—and through all human hearts.
When we recognize this it does not just change the way that we look at our heroes and enemies, but how we see ourselves. Instead of seeing ourselves as members of team good (along with a carefully cultivated group) against team evil, we can recognize that we have a battle between good and evil going on inside of us, just like everyone else. What we all share is that we are all recipients of God’s grace on a regular basis.
If we turn our eyes to His grace, it helps us to have a more accurate reading of all of these other human beings that we share this life with. It keeps us from allowing people to receive the glory that is rightfully His. It helps us to see His good in people who may not even know that they are serving the Creator.