Ideal Standards of Duty
H. Ward Beecher. Romans 3:3-4 For what if some did not believe? shall their unbelief make the faith of God without effect?… The apostle had been showing the Jews that they had utterly failed of becoming truly religious by means of the old law. And the question arose, "What! was the law, then, good for nothing?" The law was good, but man was weak; therefore it did not work out that which its interior spiritual tendency would have wrought out if it had been unchecked. But then God attempted to do what He was unable to do! If the law was dishonoured in the conduct of the Jews, how should the Lawgiver retain honour? The tendency of the Jewish objector was to defend himself by bringing down the character and government of God; and the apostle answered, "Let the justice and goodness of God remain untarnished, however it may affect men's reputation." And the doctrine which we deduce from this passage is — I. THE TENDENCY OF THE HEART TO SEEK TO DIMINISH THE INTENSITY OF SELF-CONDEMNATION BY LOWERING THE STANDARD OF DUTY. All sense of self-condemnation arises from a comparison of one's deeds, character, life and motives, with certain standards of duty. If there had been no law, there could have been no sense of violating law, and none, therefore, of sin. There is one thing which we bear less willingly than any other — namely, a sharp sense of shame in self-condemnation. There is no other feeling that seems to suffocate a man more than to be worried by his own accusing and condemning conscience. While, then, this feeling is so unbearable, it is scarcely surprising that men attempt to get rid of it. They pad their conduct, as it were, that the yoke may not bear so heavily where they feel sore. Therefore, men tell themselves more lies in this direction than in any other. They deliberately fool themselves — and for the same reason that men take opiates. "It is not good," said the physician, "that yon should take opiates to remove that sharp pain. You had better remove the cause, and so get rid of the pain." "But," you say, "I must pursue my business; and, though it may not be the best thing, give me the opiate." Men will not, if they can help it, bear the ache of self-condemnation; and by every means in their power they are perpetually trying to get rid of it. The ordinary method is to impair that rule of conduct, or that ideal of light, which condemns them. They attack that which attacks them. Men plead the force of circumstances for breaking the laws which are most painful to them. They attempt to show that they are not to blame. They plead that breaking the law is not very sinful. That is, to save themselves, they destroy the dignity and the importance of the law. Let us trace this tendency. 1. It begins in early life. (1) A child that will not obey his parents' injunctions begins, after a while, to find fault with the rigour by which he is held in check; and as he gets older he finds fault with, and endeavours to throw off, parental authority. "To be sure," he says, "I have gone forth at untimely hours, had my own way in contravention of express authority; but then, I am not so much to blame. Who could live in a family screwed up as this is? A man must have some room." What is all this but an attempt to excuse his own disobedience, by inveighing against the law under which the obedience takes place? (2) When the young go forth to the training ground of life, they manifest the same tendency. The truant and dullard at school turns against the master, and at last against the school. He declares that it is not his fault. Or, if he admits that it is his fault in part, he pleads the provocation; and so the rebellious boy at school tarnishes the good reputation of the teacher, and inveighs against the school. 2. It runs through industrial forms. (1) If in a trade or profession, a man prefers to sport rather than to work, and is indolent, and unsteady, when the pressure of blame and condemnation begins to come on him, he turns instantly to blame everybody and everything but his own self. Or perhaps the plea is urged that such and such a calling cannot be successfully followed without moral obliquity. What is this but destroying their reputation for the sake of shielding their own? 3. It finds its way into social relations. When men defy the public sentiment which expresses the social conscience of the community, and come under its ban, and begin to smart, they attack that sentiment. If it be a course of impurity that they have pursued, they charge sentiment with prudery; if they have been going in ways in which they have left truth far behind, they charge it with fanaticism. And, more than that, they do not believe there is anything in the community better than they are. 4. It pervades the pleas by which criminals seek to defend themselves. As men begin to violate the laws of the community, as they begin to suffer under the loss of reputation, they seek to excuse themselves from blame, and to fix it upon others. Even when the law cannot get its hand upon them; or when, getting it upon them, it cannot hold them; and when they begin to feel that the unwritten law, which no man can escape, the judgment of good men's thoughts, the wintry blast of good men's indignation round about them, and they are called "sharpers," and are treated as such, they complain that it is an indignity heaped upon them; that it is a wrong done to them, and say, "Society is wrongly organised. If it were better organised, business would be conducted differently, and men would act differently. But how can you expect that a man will be right when everything is organised on wrong principles?" 5. It manifests itself in men's arguments on the subject of vice. (1) Here is a man who says, "I am no more intemperate than anybody else. I am frank and open. I drink, and show it. Just go behind the door and see what these temperance men do." What is this but the plea of a man who, not satisfied with being a drunkard, is destroying the very ideal of temperance? (2) Here is a man who has utterly gone from chastity. That is bad enough; but that is not all. He says, "Impure, am I? Well, I think I have company enough in this world. No one is pure. It is because they cannot, and not because they will not, that they do not run into excesses." Such men stand inveighing against the memory of their very mother, and whelming the reputation of pure and noble sisters, and a man who has lost respect for womanhood in actual life may be considered as given over. (3) There are those who pursue the same course in regard to probity. They are not themselves truth speakers; neither do they believe that any man does speak the truth. "I am a swindler," says one. "But who is not? Every man has his price." And what does he do? He destroys the very ideal of honesty by declaring that nobody is honest. 6. It may also be traced in men's reasonings on the subject of religious truth. Men care very little what theology teaches, provided it does not come home to them, either as a restraint or as a criterion of judgment; but when they begin to be made uncomfortable; when for one or another reason the pulpit is a power, and they find it in the way of their ambition, or gain, or comfort; when theology begins to stir them up, and sit in judgment on them, then there is a strong tendency developed in them to find fault with the truth, and to justify themselves by adopting what they are pleased to call "a more liberal view." And so men find fault with the fundamental principles of a moral government. And under such circumstances they go from church to church to find a more lenient pulpit. II. THE IMPORTANCE OF MAINTAINING OUR IDEAL OF DUTY IN SPITE OF ALL HUMAN IMPERFECTIONS. The destruction of ideal standards is utterly ruinous to our manhood. 1. What is an ideal? A perception of something higher and better than we have reached, either in single actions, or in our life and character. Do I need to ask you what your ideal is, ye that have sought in a thousand ways to reach that very conception? The musician is charmed with the song that he seems to hear angels sing; but when he attempts to write it down with his hands he curses the blundering rudeness of material things, by which he cannot incarnate so spiritual a thing as his thought. The true orator is a man whose unspoken speech is a thousand times better than his utterance. The true artist is a man who says, "Oh! if you could see what I saw when I first tried to make this, you would think this most homely." This excelsior of every soul; this sense of something finer, and nobler, and truer, and better — so long as this lasts a man can scarcely go down to the vulgarism. A man who is satisfied with himself because he is better than his fellow men. You never thought as well as you ought to think. You never planned as nobly as you ought to plan. You never executed as well as you ought to execute. Over every production there ought to hover, perpetually, your blessed ideal, telling you, "Your work is poor — it should be better"; so that every day you should lift yourself higher and higher, with an everlasting pursuit of hope which shall only end in perfection when you reach the land beyond. 2. But what if some mephitic gas shall extinguish this candle of God which casts its light down on our path to guide us, and direct our course up? What if the breath of man, for whom it was sent, should blow it out, and he be left in darkness to sink down toward the beast that perishes? Woe be to that man whose ideal has gone out and left him to the vulgar level of common life without upward motive. And yet, that which our text reveals, and revealing condemns, is universal — namely, the attempt of men to find fault with law, or with God, the fountain of law, with the ideal of rectitude, rather than find fault with themselves. Nay, "Let God be true, but every man a liar." (H. Ward Beecher.) Parallel Verses KJV: For what if some did not believe? shall their unbelief make the faith of God without effect? WEB: For what if some were without faith? Will their lack of faith nullify the faithfulness of God?