Predicament of Human Incompetence 13
structure of life. We are not confronted by either an income
or an income tax but by both an income and an income tax;
just as we are not faced with either a wife or a mother-in-
law, but both a wife and a mother-in-law, for better or worse.
The prophet of old surveyed the chosen people and de-
clared “none is righteous, no not one,” which does not deny
that some of them surely had their good points. A Biblical
parable with a sly sense of humor put the whole problem
in the story of two boys on a farm who were told to work
in the vineyard. One said, “I won’t go,” and that was
wrong; then he changed his mind and went, and that was
right. The other said he would go (in just a minute), and
that was right; but then he never got around to it, and that
was wrong. Nobody was all right. Pascal once summed up
the pros and cons with the conclusion that there are only two
classes of people, sinners who think themselves righteous,
and righteous who think themselves sinners ; which is an-
other way of saying that the nearest thing to goodness in
this world is a repentant sinner who “hungers and thirsts
after righteousness,” a searcher for truth who is convinced
of his ignorance and “cannot bear not to know what there
is to be known.”
It is a serious predicament—imperfect people all tangled
in the consequences of unlimited relations in an inexhaus-
tible universe, dealing with titanic forces of cosmic ma-
chinery and responsible to universal laws, so few of which
we know. This state of things is not our choice, nor entirely
our fault, but our permanent condition. It is like being born
in Texas—you never get over it.
★
Now what type of person is found best fitted to live in
the midst of this lasting predicament? There are at least
four types that force themselves upon our attention today.
First there is the perfectionist—the super-conscientious