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In a time when societal consensus, let alone advancement, seems painfully unattainable, the quirky television comedy Ted Lasso <\/em>has struck a chord\u2014as evidenced by its previous<\/a> four Emmy awards and third nomination<\/a> for Outstanding Comedy Series.<\/p>\n This soccer-themed runaway hit, featuring an unwitting Kansas football coach turned British soccer manager, premiered on Apple TV+ in August 2020 in the eerily uncertain early days of the COVID-19 pandemic. Over three seasons, and even with a major drop-off in quality in the third, the show has offered some welcome comic relief and a strong tonic for pessimism.<\/p>\n The series acknowledges how helpless it can feel to be human: \u201cYeah, it might be all that you get. Yeah, I guess this might well be it. Well, heaven knows I\u2019ve tried,\u201d its theme song laments. But at the same time, Ted Lasso<\/em> illustrates the transformation that can result when people resist acquiescence and challenge one another to grow. It resonates with viewers because it probes and, to some extent, gratifies a longing we all have: We want to see things get better.<\/p>\n At the heart of the show is a question one of the characters raises in the series finale. Roy Kent has just experienced a spectacularly abject failure in his efforts to improve himself. Overwhelmed with dejection and remorse, he is tempted to give up. Will he never learn? In despair, he confides his doubts to his friends and poses the question: \u201cCan people change?\u201d<\/p>\n Roy\u2019s confidants do not leave his question hanging, proposing three different answers.<\/p>\n The first comes from the savvy and sardonic reporter Trent Crimm, a man whose profession is dealing in cold facts: \u201cI don\u2019t think we change per se as much as we just learn to accept who we\u2019ve always been.\u201d It is no accident that this perspective finds expression first. It is a foil to the answers that follow, but also expresses a response common these days. If there is such a thing as personal improvement, it is more a matter of authenticity than of alteration.<\/p>\n Holding on to the notion of human progress after the terrors of the 20th century, whether individually or societally, seems like naive hubris at best. At worst, it seems like an excuse to impose one\u2019s ideology on others in the name of advancement. Trent\u2019s reply is the characteristic answer of our age. The quest for change is a fool\u2019s errand; be satisfied with honesty and self-acceptance instead.<\/p>\n But a second voice pipes up with an alternative\u2014a proposal from a character named Nate Shelley.<\/p>\n More than anyone else in the series, Nate demonstrates just how radically and suddenly people can transform, both for better and for worse. \u201cOh no, I think people can change. They can,\u201d he insists. As he speaks, viewers conjure up the metamorphoses of his character and of nearly every other major persona on the show. Yet as the scene continues to develop, no one in the room seems quite satisfied with his response. He makes things sound too easy. In this sense, Nate\u2019s glib \u201cyes\u201d is no more accurate than Trent\u2019s fatalistic \u201cno.\u201d<\/p>\n Leslie Higgins, the club manager and sweetly awkward resident sage, takes the third swing at the question. Higgins rejects neither of the proposals on the table but offers a third approach, incorporating insights from both. \u201cHuman beings are never gonna be perfect, Roy,\u201d he says. \u201cThe best we can do is to keep asking for help and accepting it when you can. And if you keep on doing that, you\u2019ll always be moving towards better.\u201d<\/p>\n In other words: Changing oneself is an uphill battle, where one never reaches the crest of perfection (Trent is right); but incremental advances are <\/em>possible (Nate is right too). The secret to growth is recognizing one\u2019s own neediness and accepting help from friends along the way; but we also can\u2019t demand too much of ourselves.<\/p>\n This conversation illustrates the ethos of collaborative, incremental improvement that the show itself advocates. Like engineers of a fine Japanese car, the interlocutors finesse the machinery of their response to Roy\u2019s question before Ted pronounces the verdict on Leslie\u2019s response: \u201cAdd that right there to our list of perfect stuff. Ding ding ding.\u201d Meaning, this is as good an answer as one can realistically expect\u2014Yeah, I guess this might well be it<\/em>, in other words. But is it?<\/p>\n Roy\u2019s question is a timeless one. Over a millennium and half ago, a debate broke out that lends us some perspective.<\/p>\n The Pelagian Controversy takes its name from an earnest, idealistic ascetic who was persuaded that the primary threat to Christian discipleship was that Christians would give up on change. We still have a letter he wrote to a young noblewoman named Demetrias in which he articulates his philosophy of human potential, issuing dire warnings about the dangers of self-underestimation. \u201cRecognize your own strengths,\u201d he urges.<\/a> Don\u2019t impose false boundaries on yourself. \u201cIt is possible to do anything which one really wants to do.\u201d<\/p>\n Zealously intoning these inspiring exhortations to any Christians of his day who would listen, Pelagius was the Nate of the early fifth century.<\/p>\n Trent\u2019s conviction would have been Pelagius\u2019s worst fear. To believe that change is impossible was, for Pelagius, the kiss of spiritual death. So desperate was Pelagius to avoid fatalism\u2019s cold embrace that he risked condemnation as a heretic.<\/p>\n At the same time, Pelagius had more in common with Leslie than the stereotypes caricaturing him as the anthropological arch-heretic might suggest. Pelagius did, when push came to shove, acknowledge the necessity of help along the way, and especially the transformative power of forgiveness\u2014which is also a crucial theme of Ted Lasso<\/em>. But, as with Nate, Pelagius\u2019s focus was not the difficulty of positive change. His opinion was that change was easily attainable, if one but believed. Like Nate, Pelagius stressed the possibility of change over its attendant challenges.<\/p>\n The most famous debate partner of Pelagius was Augustine of Hippo, the North African bishop who, more than any other extrabiblical thinker, went on to shape the beliefs and piety of Christians in the West, both Catholic and Protestant. Augustine has a reputation for being a dour pessimist, the grim yin to Pelagius\u2019s sunny yang. If Pelagius was a Nate, so the story goes, Augustine was the ancient Trent, whose bleak theology of sin squelched any hope of meaningful advancement in this life.<\/p>\n Yet just as Pelagius was more complex than his stereotypes suggest, Augustine was more than the inverse of Pelagius. Augustine too thought pursuing change was vital. He vehemently proclaimed the need for change. Christians, he argued in his famous treatise<\/a> On the Trinity<\/em>, should make \u201cdaily advances.\u201d They should grow in justice from spiritual infancy to adulthood, he told<\/a> the faithful. Christians need to pray, but they also need to do more than just<\/em> pray to be made better. They need to get up off their backs and work: \u201cWe too have got to do something. We\u2019ve got to be keen, we\u2019ve got to try hard,\u201d he urged<\/a>.<\/p>\n So Augustine also preached the imperative of change. But in contrast to Pelagius, Augustine stressed the rockiness of the road to growth and transformation. Pelagius\u2019s refrain was It\u2019s easier than you think<\/em>. Augustine insisted, It\u2019s impossible on your own<\/em>. One needs constant help\u2014to consider change, to want to change, to initiate change, and to see a desired change brought to completion. And even then, it won\u2019t be easy.<\/p>\n Augustine, much more than Pelagius, gave an answer in the spirit of Leslie\u2019s. He stuck with chastened realism on the question of how hard it is to improve. And he adopted a maximalist stance on how much assistance from without is required. In these respects, Leslie\u2019s answer and the ethos of the show itself is profoundly Augustinian: Moving forward is hard. One inches along in fits and starts. And it requires help to eke out personal progress.<\/p>\n But Augustine takes the necessity of aid a leap beyond Leslie\u2019s response. Because, for Augustine, self-help alone won\u2019t do\u2014just as all the therapy, friendly encouragement, and camaraderie in the world won\u2019t amount to a lick of good on its own. We need a remedy that runs deeper. In the end, Augustine did not think that lasting\u2014or ultimately satisfying\u2014change would come through the independent operation of any kind of creaturely assistance, as excellent and important as many human forms of help can be.<\/p>\n To change for the better, people need more. They need help that comes from the Lord, the Maker of heaven and earth, from whom every good and perfect gift comes down (James 1:17). Nate says: Yes, people can change. Leslie tells us how: With difficulty, and by getting help. Augustine identifies the kind of help we truly need: The power of a love that is nothing short of divine.<\/p>\n The ultimate change we long for, Augustine believed, is not only a gift from God <\/em>but is the gift of <\/em>God. The giver becomes the gift itself\u2014God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God. Only when God gives the gift of God<\/em>, pouring out God\u2019s very self\u2014God\u2019s Spirit of love\u2014into us, are we set free to change in the radical way we long for.<\/p>\n The fullest embodiment of the change we desire\u2014the goodness, truth, and beauty we hope to taste and see in our own lives and encounter in the lives of others\u2014is, in the end, not any abstract benefit we might receive but an actual person who has walked the earth.<\/p>\n We wait to experience this God face to face with groaning and eager expectation (Rom. 8:19-39), but also with the confidence that our transformation can begin now, through God\u2019s Spirit who is love.<\/p>\n Han-luen Kantzer Komline is Marvin and Jerene DeWitt Professor of Theology and Church History at Western Theological Seminary<\/a> and Theologian in Residence at Pillar Church<\/a> in Holland, Michigan. She is the author of Augustine on the Will<\/a><\/span> and, with Mark Noll and David Komline, co-author of Turning Points: Decisive Moments in the History of Christianity<\/a><\/span>. <\/em><\/p>\n <\/div>\n