There’s No Distinction Between “Imperfection” and “Evil”

Bottom line: there’s no distinction between “imperfection” and “evil”: every missing of God’s mark is sin, and in the Old Covenant there were even explicit sacrifices for “unintentional sin”. For the purpose Keyes argues, it makes no difference whether Romney and Obama embrace false religions or embrace white lies to their mothers: they are both committing treason against Christ with each sin and they are both worthy of Hell the instant they turn themselves into idols by replacing God’s standard with their own.

So it should not shock you that I find the conclusion flawed when the inputs are false (“garbage in, garbage out”); it should also not shock you that we children of the Reformation should see this differently from our Catholic brothers.

Romney and Rehoboam, Obama and Jeroboam: the only difference is degree. Friends like Dale Courtney see this as “running off the cliff at different speeds”, but that’s true of every act of sinful man. God supernaturally imposes Himself into history, through both common and special grace, to redeem what is otherwise irretrievably lost. We are rotted corpses when He regenerates us: when Lazarus’ tomb is opened, and when ours is as well, those standing by say “He stinketh!”.

Romney is strongly committed to doing less harm than his opponent. We’re annoyed because we want to positively move the ball in our own direction, and perhaps God will permit that as He did with His servants Nebuchadnezzar, Cyrus, and Pharaoh (Joseph’s, not Moses’s). But what must we really positively achieve? We must restrain evil where we can and give God’s church time to do its Lord’s work as unmolested as possible. Dr. Keyes, by embracing false (though well-meaning) presuppositions, sets up a false dichotomy (one which would leave him in a difficult position were we to ask him to exegete the passages concerning Jeroboam and Rehoboam) and thereby misses the point.