“¹⁴ For we know that the law is spiritual, but I am of the flesh, sold under sin. ¹⁵ For I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. ¹⁶ Now if I do what I do not want, I agree with the law, that it is good. ¹⁷ So now it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me. ¹⁸ For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh. For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out. ¹⁹ For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing. ²⁰ Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me.

Rom. 7:21   So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand. ²² For I delight in the law of God, in my inner being, ²³ but I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. ²⁴ Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? ²⁵ Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I myself serve the law of God with my mind, but with my flesh I serve the law of sin.” (Romans 7:14-24, English Standard Version)

Some of you are probably wondering about the title of this post. However, if you like old western movies, you immediately recognized my reference to the movie “The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly”. Yes, I do indeed admit that I like old Clint Eastwood shoot-‘em-ups. I’m not saying this is a good thing. I’m just saying that I do enjoy that movie.

However, when it comes to the Bible, I am not so attuned to the good, the bad, and the ugly. And let’s face it. There are all of those things in the Bible. I am currently reading through the book of Judges. There is a lot of evil and ugliness (along with some good) in that book.

Here is the problem, as I see it. The evil and ugliness (along with the occasional good) is not identified with discreet characters, as in the Clint Eastwood movie. The goodness, badness, and ugliness are in God’s own people.

This is not limited to the book of Judges. It is found throughout the Old and New Testaments. David was a man after God’s own heart, yet the Old Testament does not soft-pedal his ugly and evil actions.

In fact, I tend to gravitate toward the bad and the ugly in the Bible. Why is that so, I wonder? I was thinking about that question today when I went to church.

My church tends to put a lot of emphasis on miracles and “victory in Jesus” and such. While I recognize that these are biblical and important, I sometimes feel as if we don’t take seriously enough the bad and ugly. If we say that we believe that the Bible is God’s written word, we need to take seriously the entire Bible, not just the triumphant and miraculous bits.

I was thinking about these things on the way to church. I did not know that it was going to happen, but our pastor preached on Romans 7, the Scripture that leads off this post.

Romans 7 deals with Paul’s struggle with the sinful ugliness within his own heart and mind. Some biblical scholars have argued that Paul is not speaking of his own experience since becoming a Christ-follower, but I respectfully disagree. Paul sounds pretty anguished to me. And he does not speak of his anguish as something that was in his past, pre-Christian life.

So, I was glad to see my pastor balancing the church’s (quite biblical) emphasis upon victory with the ugly badness within Paul. And, as my pastor pointed out, this is a struggle we all have in one form or another.

But I was left with several questions that I need to answer for myself. One of them is this: Why do I gravitate toward the ugly badness in the Bible my own life? Here were some of the thoughts that came to me. Some “reasons” are reasonably good and true, and some of my “reasons” aren’t so good or reasonable or true.

First, for the good reasons for my preoccupation with the bad and the ugly:

• As I’ve already stated, the bad and the ugly is part of the Bible. If I say that I believe the Bible, I need to take it all seriously. Not literally always, but always seriously.
• If I become too enamored by the miraculous and the triumphant, I will be unable to relate to struggling people. And there are a lot of them around.

But there are some bad and ugly reasons for my emphasis (preoccupation?) with the bad and the ugly:

• I don’t think that I deserve the good bits. But then, who says that anyone—including I myself—deserve anything. Perhaps life, in every sense, isn’t about deserving?
• Sometimes, I gravitate toward the bad the ugly because I want to hang on to those things. If I don’t want to give up doing wrong things and taking unhealthy approaches to life, I may want to justify this by saying, “Oh well, even God’s people in the Bible were a pretty flawed bunch.” However, a depiction is not a prescription, and explanations are not excuses for shoddy living.

Paul doesn’t end on a note of anguished defeat, but of grateful triumph. “Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I myself serve the law of God with my mind, but with my flesh I serve the law of sin.”

Considered in my merely human reality, there is lots of badness and ugliness, but God sent Jesus to deal decisively with our uglies and evils, and to free us to be grateful for the victory that God’s love gives us in Christ.