Atonement and Mark Twain

I’ve been reading Philip McFarland’s, Mark Twain and the Colonel: Samuel L. Clemens, Theodore Roosevelt, and the Arrival of a New Century. Apart from some contemporary and unnecessary political and social commentary by the author (did he write the book for this reason?) and some redundancy - McFarland repeats things in chapters previously covered in earlier chapters (do we all have short-tem memory loss?) I’ve enjoyed the book. For one thing, I’ve gained some insight into why Clemens was so cynical toward Christianity, something I may explore in a future post, but what I’ve been pondering for the past few days is Clemens’s life-long struggle with guilt over real and imagined sins. From feeling responsible for the death of a younger brother in a Mississippi riverboat explosion (which was not his fault), to regrets over his selfishness (real and imagined?) toward his wife and daughters, Clemens in some respects lived a tortured life – especially so in the last few years of his live after losing his eldest daughter and his wife, and then later losing yet another daughter just when his relationship with her was blossoming. Self reproach and guilt were his responses to losing the first daughter and then his wife, a deadening of conscience via naturalistic rationalization was his remedy when the second daughter died.

As I pondered Clemens’s guilt the words of David in Psalm 32 came to mind: How blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered! How blessed is the man to whom the LORD does not impute iniquity and in whose spirit there is no deceit!...I acknowledged my sin to You, and my iniquity I did not hide; I said, I will confess my transgressions to the LORD; and You forgave the guilt of my sin.”

What do we do with guilt? We can deny it. We can deaden it. We can justify our actions. We can medicate it through any number of actions that serve to divert our attention or alter our consciousness. Or we can acknowledge our sin to God and seek His forgiveness. Anything less than acknowledgement of our sin to God and seeking His forgiveness is to live the delusion that we are the arbiters and judges of our own lives, that we actually have control over our destiny. It is my assessment of my own life, as well as my observations of the state of humanity, which confirms the futility of living with an acknowledgment that many actions of my own life have been wrong, many words hurtful, and many opportunities for doing good left undone – and living with the guilt and remorse that properly attends this acknowledgement. Such a life is futile and can only lead to despair, or to denial, or to behavior that deadens and medicates the guilt. David, in Psalm 32, writes of the only healing and assurance and relief to be found in the vortex of guilt, remorse, and despair – the forgiveness of God found in Jesus Christ. As John writes in his first letter: If we say that we have no sin, we are deceiving ourselves and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

Men and women need not live with guilt for Jesus Christ loves us all so much that He came to give His life for us so that we can receive God’s forgiveness and live in peace with God, with ourselves, and with each other. I’m reminded of Paul’s words: Therefore, having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ…

It is also a delusion to think that if our good works outweigh our bad works that somehow the good works cover the bad works, the bad actions – this is impossible – for we are talking about sin, about transgressions of the Law of God, the moral and ethical law which He placed in the universe. Murder is murder before the court and is judged as murder without regard to whether the defendant has kept all the other laws of the land throughout his life; a theft is a theft and whether I have given many other things away to others in my life does not lessen the act and fact of my theft. The murder stands alone, the theft stands alone, the adultery stands alone, the hoarding of money and goods and talents that would benefit others stands alone. When I stare the action, the undone deed that could have helped others, the thought, the motive, in the eye and do not deny what I see; when I examine my heart, my inner person under the spotlight of truth and do not deny what it reveals – then I know in my heart of hearts that no amount of good deeds can make atonement or wash away my sin – it simply can’t be done – what I’ve done I’ve done and there it is – whether others see it or not, whether others know of it or not it is there, written in the volume of my life. I am a fool to think otherwise.

Thank God for Jesus Christ who loves us and died for us and rose for us and comes again to us in His mercy and grace and forgiveness. How frail we are on our strongest days and how absurd to think that we are anything other than what we are – a race of people who are destined to die no matter what our technology may be; but thank God that those who are destined to die can also be destined to live in a relationship with God through Jesus Christ – that is hope and that is assurance when we surrender the delusion that we are masters of our destiny and trust ourselves to Jesus.

Clemens need not have lived in guilt over his narcissism, and he need not have sought relief from guilt and sorrow through the humanistic rationalization that we are the products of time plus matter plus chance and that the world, at its heart, is materialistic and deterministic. Jesus was there for Mark Twain all of the time, but now Mark Twain has no more time.