I’ll always remember the primary time I heard OneRepublic’s hit music “Counting Stars.” I used to be 15 years previous. My style in music was restricted, to say the least. I not often listened to something “mainstream,” and I used to be greater than somewhat inclined to evaluate my friends who crammed their ears with godless pop music.
When “Counting Stars” got here on at a birthday celebration, I couldn’t assist liking the catchy tune. It was a great music, and everybody appeared to take pleasure in it. Individuals had been singing alongside, and I used to be listening in hopes of becoming a member of in.
Then we bought to the pre-chorus.
I really feel so proper doing the improper factor
I really feel so improper doing the appropriate factor
All the pieces that kills me makes me really feel alive.
I used to be shocked. What an terrible message! To my thoughts, this appeared like a main instance of the sort of unrighteous folly that stored me far-off from pop music. Appalled that my mates would sing alongside to such a music, I wrote off OneRepublic as simply one other peddler of anti-Christian nonsense to brainwash the plenty.
A few years later, it was Aristotle who modified my thoughts. The famed Greek thinker helped me understand that OneRepublic was riffing on a remarkably Christian concept—and because it seems, the author of the music is a Christian himself. At the moment, I exploit “Counting Stars” to show college students about Aristotelian ethics and in regards to the Christian doctrine of sanctification. What modified my thoughts, and the way does a pop music from 2013 echo and illustrate historic knowledge and biblical theology?
Aristotle and the Calibration of the Conscience
We’re naturally able to studying to be virtuous, and we develop in advantage by behavior—persistent repetition of virtuous motion.
All of it begins with Aristotle’s understanding of advantage. In his Nicomachean Ethics, the Greek thinker argues that we’re not born with a pure inclination to do good or evil. As an alternative, we domesticate “ethical advantage” in the identical approach that we develop arts like portray, poetry, or pottery. No one is born a musician or a mechanic—we develop these expertise by coaching and observe. Aristotle believed that advantage functioned in the identical approach. “Not one of the ethical virtues arises in us by nature… slightly we’re tailored by nature to obtain them, and are made excellent by behavior.” In different phrases, we’re naturally able to studying to be virtuous, and we develop in advantage by behavior—persistent repetition of virtuous motion.
This virtue-practice is what Aristotle calls “habituation,” which is the method by which virtuous actions flip into virtuous character. “We develop into simply by doing simply acts, temperate by doing temperate acts, courageous by doing courageous acts.”
If people are really “clean slates” by way of character and capability for advantage, then the habits we type from an early age are deeply essential. As we develop into habituated to advantage or to vice, we develop a way of what’s pure, which consequently shapes our senses of enjoyment and ache. Once more, Aristotle makes this specific: “We should take as an indication of states of character the pleasure or ache that ensues on acts… For ethical excellence is worried with pleasures and pains; it’s on account of the pleasure that we do dangerous issues, and on account of the ache that we abstain from noble ones.”
In different phrases, we are inclined to do dangerous issues as a result of they make us really feel good, and we wrestle to do good issues after they make us really feel dangerous. Sound acquainted? Right here within the midst of Aristotle’s Ethics, we discover the lyrics of “Counting Stars” nearly verbatim. Many individuals really do discover that “every thing that kills [them] makes [them] really feel alive.” Aristotle would say that that is the results of dangerous habituation. As a way to keep away from this, Aristotle insists that we should educate younger individuals in advantage from the very begin. “Therefore we should have been introduced up in a specific approach from our very youth… in order each to please in and to be pained by the issues that we ought.”
As soon as the conscience is calibrated, it’s troublesome—however not inconceivable—to change the notion of what conduct feels good and pure.
I wish to name this course of “the calibration of the conscience.” As we’re taught the distinction between proper and improper and given alternatives to train advantage or vice, we calibrate our consciences. If this course of goes awry, we might uncover that we “really feel so proper doing the improper factor” and “really feel so improper doing the appropriate factor,” as OneRepublic astutely noticed. In keeping with Aristotle, this sense is proof of poor ethical training. As soon as the conscience is calibrated, it’s troublesome—however not inconceivable—to change the notion of what conduct feels good and pure.
Whereas studying Aristotle for the primary time, I acknowledged that “Counting Stars” was truly describing a miscalibrated conscience. But there may be much more to the story, because the Aristotelian strategy fails to account for the fullness of the biblical image of sin.
Authentic Sin and the Intuition-Ideally suited Hole
For all he bought proper in regards to the calibration of the conscience, Aristotle’s blank-slate anthropology conflicts with the biblical doctrine of authentic sin and the fallenness of humanity. In keeping with Scripture, we’re not born in a state of ethical neutrality, awaiting habituation into advantage or vice. As an alternative, our nature is tarnished by sin from the very starting. As David laments in Psalm 51, “Behold, I used to be introduced forth in iniquity, and in sin did my mom conceive me.” We’re certainly misled by our needs and our sense of enjoyment and ache, however this can be a characteristic of our nature from the day we’re born. Jeremiah notes that “the center is deceitful above all issues, and desperately sick” (Jer. 17:9). It doesn’t take time and poor training to deprave the human conscience. Quite the opposite, a lifetime of hard-fought advantage can’t overcome our eager for “every thing that kills,” irrespective of how a lot we work to habituate ourselves.
We’re trapped: we appear to be vicious by nature, but we can’t stop believing in advantage. Our instincts are base, however our beliefs are lofty.
But regardless of the crookedness of the human conscience, we additionally can’t persuade ourselves that this wickedness is “pure.” We can’t escape from the sense that there actually is such a factor as “proper” and “improper,” and we can’t outrun the sense of guilt that haunts our steps. Even essentially the most vicious individuals should discover methods to justify themselves with the intention to stay with themselves. We’re trapped: we appear to be vicious by nature, but we can’t stop believing in advantage. Our instincts are base, however our beliefs are lofty. That is what I name the “Intuition-Ideally suited Hole”—that haunting characteristic of human nature which leaves us incapable of saving ourselves however deeply and desperately conscious that we should be saved.
The famed French absurdist Camus, although removed from a Christian himself, made exactly this statement in his novel The Fall. By means of the mouth of his protagonist—a person who spends his complete life doing good deeds solely to comprehend at some point simply how corrupt his personal motives could possibly be—Camus bemoans this inescapable lure. “Not sufficient cynicism and never sufficient advantage. We lack the vitality of evil in addition to the vitality of fine.” This place between two poles appears to Camus like a sort of jail, akin to the Limbo of Dante’s impartial angels and virtuous pagans.
This can be a more true image of the human situation, and as soon as once more, “Counting Stars” echoes the sentiment. I do “really feel so proper doing the improper factor,” however I can even inform that I shouldn’t. I lengthy for a recalibrated conscience, however opposite to Aristotle’s recommendation, I can’t appear to make it occur. No one can. All of the virtuous training on this planet can’t produce a person or girl with perfectly-aligned instincts and beliefs. No quantity of virtuous motion can produce a totally virtuous character.
Romans and the “Wretched Man”
“Counting Stars” is a lament slightly than a celebration of human depravity.
The Apostle Paul shares the lament of the prophets and the pop stars. In his letter to the Romans, Paul additionally speaks of the function of conscience, noting the way it leaves us feeling trapped between a information of the great and a want for evil. We now have “the work of the legislation written on [our] hearts” and but our “conflicting ideas accuse and even excuse” us (Rom. 2:15). Habituation, it appears, isn’t any answer—we’re trapped. In Romans 7, Paul points a stirring lament over this imprisonment: “I do what I hate and I hate what I do… I discover it to be a legislation that once I need to do proper, evil lies shut at hand… Wretched man that I’m! Who will ship me from this physique of dying?” (Rom. 7:15-25)
Paul’s voice joins that of Aristotle, Camus, and OneRepublic: we’re trapped between advantage and vice, and we can’t resolve this pressure ourselves. “All the pieces that kills me makes me really feel alive.” In gentle of all these different voices, it appears clear that “Counting Stars” is a lament slightly than a celebration of human depravity.
Luckily, the Bible does extra than simply diagnose our depravity—it gives an answer. The entire of Romans is devoted to the excellent news of a “righteousness of God that’s by religion.” Paul’s plea above—“Who will save me?”—is answered definitively within the very subsequent verse: “Thanks be to God by means of Jesus Christ our Lord!” (Rom. 7:25)
That is the very coronary heart of the gospel. Although “all have sinned and fall wanting the glory of God,” we will rejoice as a result of we could also be “justified by His grace as a present, by means of the redemption that’s in Christ Jesus” (Rom. 3:23-24). Discovering ourselves totally incapable of creating our personal righteousness, we will as a substitute be clothed within the righteousness of Christ. Instantly after his lament in Romans 7, Paul joyously declares that “There may be due to this fact now no condemnation for many who are in Christ Jesus. For the legislation of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the legislation of sin and dying.” (Rom. 8:1-2)
Sanctification and the Hope of Renewal
The Bible teaches that justification—by which God declares us harmless in his sight—is adopted by lifelong sanctification. That is the highway that leads us out of the Intuition-Ideally suited Hole and into wholeness and righteousness. Sanctification, which is powered by the Holy Spirit, transforms the corrupt and divided coronary heart and recalibrates the conscience.
Day-to-day, second by second, the Spirit “habituates” us to the way in which of the dominion of God.
Paul speaks to exactly this hope when he urges Christians to “be remodeled by the renewal of your thoughts” (Rom. 12:2). By the facility of the Holy Spirit, the perverse polarity of our crooked consciences could be reversed, and as we endure sanctification, the pleasures and pains of our hearts could be recalibrated. Solely on this approach can we really expertise what Aristotle described: a life by which advantage feels really pure and vice feels really improper. That’s what sanctification looks like. Day-to-day, second by second, the Spirit “habituates” us to the way in which of the dominion of God. We should spend somewhat time on this fallen body, however we’re trying ahead to the recreation of all issues, and we have now the privilege of bringing a glimpse of that superb day to life in our personal communities.
All this brings us again to “Counting Stars.” Understood rightly, this music joins the refrain of voices all through historical past which have mourned the perplexing human situation. If I know that it kills me, then why does it make me “really feel alive”? Why does the improper factor really feel proper? That is life within the Intuition-Ideally suited Hole, and it feels unfair. Aristotle described the issue effectively, however he couldn’t remedy it. Camus groaned within the lure, however he couldn’t escape from it. There is just one approach out: “He saved us, not due to works completed by us in righteousness, however in accordance with his personal mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit” (Titus 3:5).
Now I salute you, OneRepublic. Thanks for drawing our eyes to this painful and perplexing drawback. You might be proper to level out simply how backwards it feels. Thank God that He doesn’t depart us on this pit we have now dug for ourselves.
That’s the hopeful message of sanctification—that not by willful re-habituation however by the facility of God, our hearts could be recalibrated till we enjoyment of what is actually good—and study to “really feel so proper… doing the appropriate factor.”
