Avoiding the Sad Religion of Benjamin Franklin

Benjamin Franklin was undoubtedly one of the most accomplished and celebrated men of his time. The world still echoes with the impact he made on science, time management, and politics. I have been listening to his autobiography and am stunned by the wealth of knowledge and experience he acquired (To listen to his autobiography on LibriVox for free, click here). When I arrived in chapter 9 of the autobiography, I was suddenly struck with a sadness for this man. In that chapter, he relays his "Plan for Attaining Moral Perfection." His deep conviction was that every religion contains a requirement for moral correctness and therefore God's chief desire is for people to treat each other well. Being no ordinary slouch, he created a very detailed system in which he selected 13 morals or virtues which he would work to perfection in himself.

There is no doubt that this effort improved Franklin as a human being and gave him many of the characteristics which lead to him being so successful and well liked. However, one of his statements gave a sour light to the whole proceeding: “And that God will certainly reward virtue and punish vice, either here or hereafter." This sentence and several others in that chapter reveal Franklin's view of God that states that if we are good and do good things, we will be loved and accepted by God; if we are evil and do evil things, we will be hated and rejected by God. Therefore, we must do good things and avoid bad things. This view is widely accepted and I believe it to be true, but it is not the whole truth. This part of the truth will bring despair or resignation if it is taken by itself. After all, we all recognize our own inability to do anything genuinely good, so therefore our efforts becomes futile.

The idea that we can negate our evil nature and actions by working on ourselves and doing nice things is fundamentally flawed. How can imperfection please perfection when perfection must be the response? God most certainly desires that we live righteous lives in which we continually move towards perfection, but that cannot be the starting place. The starting place for our journey to moral perfection is through grace. This grace was given to us through Jesus' death and can be freely received. Instead of being judged based on the good we do minus the bad we do, we are judged based on Jesus' perfection.

What I Would Say to Franklin

This effort is ultimately useless if we do not embrace God's plan for moral perfection. One of the editor's footnotes in chapter 9 of Benjamin Franklin's autobiography commends us to look to Galatians chapter 5 for the Christian answer to a life lived in endless pursuit of moral perfection without grace.

Here is an excerpt of Galatians 5 (the chapter of the Bible mentioned in the footnote) that deals directly with this issue: "For freedom Christ has set us free; stand firm therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery... walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. For the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh, for these are opposed to each other, to keep you from doing the things you want to do" (Galatians 5:1, 16-17 ESV). Click here for the entirety of Galatians 5.

In other words: We should work on ourselves and become more like Jesus, but never so Jesus will like us more.

Question:

What are some of the ways you would find helpful in avoiding religion that doesn't have grace at the center?