You cannot sever the saint from the sinner. Christians remain both simultaneously.
Have you ever been watching television or a movie when a character suddenly mentions Jesus explicitly and sincerely? In the rare instances that this happens, I always hold my breath, hoping that something true and beautiful might be expressed, while also waiting for the other shoe to drop when such a mention almost inevitably turns to caricature or an out-and-out misrepresentation of the faith. This posture towards Christianity doesn't always come from a place of malice. Such misrepresentations could easily come down to sheer ignorance in our current culture. (I read an article a few years ago about how Biblical illiteracy was making the study of classic literature very difficult for students because they consistently missed or misunderstood Biblical references that the authors assumed were common knowledge.) Either way, such untruths can wear on good-intentioned, evangelistically-minded people of faith.
This most recently happened when my wife and I watched the latest season of AppleTV's hit show, Severance. Before I dive into why this lapse was particularly disappointing for me, a little background information on the show may help. The titular "Severance" refers to an operation in the world of the show that splits a person's psyche in two. This essentially creates two distinct "selves" with their own distinct memories: an "innie," the person they are when at work for the ominous cult-like Lumon corporation, and an "outie," the person they are when they go home at night to be with their families and friends. This is, in part, the darkly funny logical endpoint to our obsession with a work-life balance.
In the first season, however, we learn that there is an experimental process that a rogue scientist/former Lumon employee is attempting called "reintegration," which undoes the severance process, reintegrating innies and outies into one cohesive self, mainly because some employees end up regretting their decision to be severed. The show gets into the different reasons characters initially choose to undergo the procedure, whether that be grief, loneliness, desperation, etc. Such reasons and their resulting effects on both the lives of the innies and outies open many doors for potential theological analysis.
In this recent episode, my ears pricked up when a secondary character said that he "was guided to Lumon's door by Jesus." I immediately sat up a little straighter. The character continued, "We'd been attending the Lutheran church for some years…" My mind started excitedly considering where this line of conversation could go: Are they about to get into Luther's doctrine of vocation? Just think about it in the context of this show: a robust alternative to the compartmentalized and ultimately illusory way our society talks about career and personal life! And that's just the tip of the iceberg as far as how Lutheran theology could add an extra "oomph!" to the philosophical underpinnings of the show!
Of course, I'd gotten ahead of myself. The character continued, "I should mention that I'd been what you might call a scoundrel in my younger days." He then went on to talk about how, when asked before church one morning if he thought he was going to heaven, he realized that because of his past indiscretions, he "knew" the answer was no. My hopes started to deflate, but I still wondered if maybe they'd find a way to bring grace into it. They did specifically say a Lutheran church after all. The characters continued, stating that the sermon preached that day was about severance, with the pastor noting the church's stance "that innies are complete individuals, with souls, that can be judged separately from their outie." This means that "an innie can go to heaven, whilst the outie burns," as long as the innie isn't also "a scoundrel." In other words, when the character said Jesus guided him to Lumon's door, what he really meant was he believed he was given a second chance to prove he was worthy of heaven on his own. *Wump-wuh…*
This scene and conversation revealed a religion based on works righteousness and completely devoid of unmerited grace.
This TV "Lutheranism" didn't represent any actual form of Lutheranism, nor Christianity at all. This scene and conversation revealed a religion based on works righteousness and completely devoid of unmerited grace. I couldn't help but grieve what might have been. Even more than vocation, I think there's another key insight of Luther's that could help the writers of Severance get at the root of the deep existential and spiritual questions and longings presented in the show: the Simul.
Simul Iustus et Peccator, or the Simul, translates into English as "simultaneously justified and sinner." It's a confession that Luther articulated as follows in his Romans commentary: "The saints in being righteous are at the same time sinners; they are righteous because they believe in Christ whose righteousness covers them and is imputed to them, but they are sinners because they do not fulfill the law and are not without sinful desires. They are like sick people in the care of a physician: they are really sick but healthy only in the hope and insofar as they begin to be better, healed, i.e., they will become healthy. Nothing can harm them so much as the presumption that they are, in fact, healthy, for it will cause a bad relapse."
When we convince ourselves that we are - or can become - healthy on our own, we fall into self-righteousness, and we fail to recognize the perpetual work of God in our lives on our behalf. Such a confession also curves us inward as we become distracted by our projects to get better, so we fail to see the needs of our neighbors and the ways God is asking us to be his hands and feet for them. Instead, while we can and should recognize that we are sick because of our sin, we have to remember that it's only in and on account of Christ that we are made righteous.
Everyone wants redemption, but if a person feels forgiveness is off the table (as seems to be the case for the church portrayed in Severance), what options are left?
Luther - in line with Scripture - makes it clear that you cannot sever the saint from the sinner. Christians remain both simultaneously. Between birth and death, we are never truly anything but integrated wholes, all the good AND bad, the dross AND the silver, the wheat AND the chaff, as much as we try to downplay or hide our imperfections. One of the sad things about the denial of this reality is that we miss where God is working in us. It is in the places of our limitation where he heals us and renews us by showing us that we can't heal or renew ourselves.
Everyone wants redemption, but if a person feels forgiveness is off the table (as seems to be the case for the church portrayed in Severance), what options are left? If they see the Christian faith solely as a moralizing religion with rewards and punishments doled out according to one's deeds, all they can do is try harder or give up. This Severance character, convinced he was "brought to Lumon's door by Jesus," seems to believe Jesus is nothing more than a doorman ushering him into another attempt to cut out the bad and "do better next time."
In this life, we are always an amalgamation of everything we've ever been, every feeling we've ever felt, our complete histories, and in many ways, the complete histories of those who came before us. God doesn't save us by pretending the past never happened, by downplaying our sin, or by severing the unpalatable parts of us from the good. Instead, he saves us by taking on all of our very real sin, redeeming the things that really did happen, and re-making us into comprehensively healed, integrated, fully righteous wholes.
.webp?width=36&height=36&name=1517headshots-141-Edit%20(1).webp){kind=small}
