"And now that you don't have to be perfect, you can be good."
- John Steinbeck, East of Eden
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the symmetry of the bible - generations of foreshadowing and mirrored perspective
a father willing to sacrifice his son for God, a God willing to give up His son for us
David, the king from humble beginnings, willing to die for the son who raised an army against him
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We are obsessed with trying to be good, with trying to cure ourselves - we're constantly taught to cultivate virtue - to keep morality, or at least the appearance of it, to check in on ourselves regularly to make sure we don't break the internal law that tells us at all times what we ought to do, but anyone who has ever tried very hard to be good can tell you that it's an endeavour destined for failure, an exercise in futility.
But if you read carefully, Jesus doesn't command us to 'be good'. He doesn't say, keep these rules and you'll be alright. If you floss ten times and stand on your head you'll be holy and God will bless you.
some a lot of help from the Holy Spirit) to love our neighbours as ourselves.
In Romans 12:9-21, Paul paints a picture of what this would look like - Paul isn't saying 'these are the steps, the tricks, the keys to success, how to please God for dummies - we aren't expected to genuinely possess these sentiments he's listed by sheer incredible force of will. We should, of course, encourage such sentiments wherever possible, but we find that they arise much more naturally and unsolicited if we only commit ourselves to follow that first commandment.
It is much easier to love someone than it is to give up smoking, which is why most ex-smokers tend to give up smoking when they have their first child. They don't do it for themselves, but for someone else. We find that if we try to be patient and polite for our own sake, we don't get very far at all - but if our motivation is elsewhere, if the thing that compels us is the person we love the most, then at last we have a chance at success - not to mention that this person will provide divine assistance. But the aim is never to 'be good'. The ones who manage to be very good aren't thinking of being good at all. They're too busy loving others.
But how do we go about loving others? Some of the others aren't very lovable. The answer is, we're going to need 1. a lot of practise and 2. a lot of help. In fact, a lot of what we believe is ourselves being charitable toward others is actually God being charitable through us.
Jesus says, "Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For My yoke is easy and My burden is light."
He's offering to go the whole nine yards with us, carrying our burdens and baggage on his back, if we will take but one step towards him and hitch our wagon to his cart, and press on as hard as we can. What matters to him is our attitude, not results. He is pleased even with our failures, so long as our aim is to please Him - for if we truly obey Him then we shall get perfection thrown in. Through Him we are no longer dead and susceptible to sin. We no longer have to wrestle with the guilt and condemnation of trying to keep the law - of discovering again and again despite desperate measures and repeated denials that we are afflicted by endless recrudescence of self-loathing and pride and other hideous forms of internal conflict. At last, our demons may be evicted. At last, our weary souls may find peace.
The main exception to this lack of interest in applied ethics comes in religion. Whatever disagreements one might have with their definitions of goodness or the practical implementations of their own creeds, religions do not stop trying to encourage their followers to be good. They give them commandments and rituals, they deliver them sermons and ask them to rehearse lessons in prayers and in songs.
Even for a life-long atheist, there is something interesting about these efforts. Might we learn something from them? The standard answer is that we can’t, because religious morality comes from God, which by definition atheists have no time for. Yet the origins of religious ethics couldn’t of course (for an atheist) have come from God, they lay in the pragmatic need of our earliest communities to control their members’ tendencies towards violence, and to foster in them contrary habits of harmony and forgiveness. Religious codes began as cautionary precepts, which were projected into the sky and reflected back to earth in disembodied and majestic forms. Injunctions to be sympathetic or patient stemmed from an awareness that these were the qualities which could draw societies back from fragmentation and self-destruction. So vital were these rules to our survival that for thousands of years we did not dare to admit that we ourselves had formulated them, lest this expose them to critical scrutiny and irreverent handling. We had to pretend that morality came from the heavens in order to insulate it from our own laziness and disregard.
- Alain de Botton, On Being Good---
We are obsessed with trying to be good, with trying to cure ourselves - we're constantly taught to cultivate virtue - to keep morality, or at least the appearance of it, to check in on ourselves regularly to make sure we don't break the internal law that tells us at all times what we ought to do, but anyone who has ever tried very hard to be good can tell you that it's an endeavour destined for failure, an exercise in futility.
What shall we say then? Is the Law sin? May it never be! On the contrary, I would not have come to know sin except through the Law; for I would not have known about coveting if the Law had not said, "YOU SHALL NOT COVET." But sin, taking opportunity through the commandment, produced in me coveting of every kind; for apart from the Law sin is dead. Once I was alive apart from the law; but when the commandment came, sin sprang to life and I died. and this commandment, which was to result in life, proved to result in death for me; for sin, taking occasion by the commandment, seduced me, and by it killed me.
- Romans 7:7-11:It is an experiential truth that the harder you try not to eat junk food the more you want to eat it. Before you started thinking about trying to abstain, the desire was but a flicker, non-existent. Upon deciding to eat healthy however, it becomes suddenly ever-present. You succumb and then give in to shame and feel really bad about yourself, which causes you to eat even more to try and numb the pain. (I mean, not that I've ever done that before... ok, maybe once in my life. or twice. or more.)
But if you read carefully, Jesus doesn't command us to 'be good'. He doesn't say, keep these rules and you'll be alright. If you floss ten times and stand on your head you'll be holy and God will bless you.
"Teacher, which is the great commandment in the law?" Jesus said to him, "'You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.' "This is the first and great commandment. "And the second is like it: 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself.' "On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets."
- Matthew 22:36-40Jesus commands us to love God, which requires us to know Him intimately through His word and through prayer, and to obey Him by acting in faith, which train us in the right ways to eventually enable us (with
In Romans 12:9-21, Paul paints a picture of what this would look like - Paul isn't saying 'these are the steps, the tricks, the keys to success, how to please God for dummies - we aren't expected to genuinely possess these sentiments he's listed by sheer incredible force of will. We should, of course, encourage such sentiments wherever possible, but we find that they arise much more naturally and unsolicited if we only commit ourselves to follow that first commandment.
It is much easier to love someone than it is to give up smoking, which is why most ex-smokers tend to give up smoking when they have their first child. They don't do it for themselves, but for someone else. We find that if we try to be patient and polite for our own sake, we don't get very far at all - but if our motivation is elsewhere, if the thing that compels us is the person we love the most, then at last we have a chance at success - not to mention that this person will provide divine assistance. But the aim is never to 'be good'. The ones who manage to be very good aren't thinking of being good at all. They're too busy loving others.
But how do we go about loving others? Some of the others aren't very lovable. The answer is, we're going to need 1. a lot of practise and 2. a lot of help. In fact, a lot of what we believe is ourselves being charitable toward others is actually God being charitable through us.
Now God has us where he wants us, with all the time in this world and the next to shower grace and kindness upon us in Christ Jesus. Saving is all his idea, and all his work. All we do is trust him enough to let him do it. It’s God’s gift from start to finish! We don’t play the major role. If we did, we’d probably go around bragging that we’d done the whole thing! No, we neither make nor save ourselves. God does both the making and saving. He creates each of us by Christ Jesus to join him in the work he does, the good work he has gotten ready for us to do, work we had better be doing.
- Ephesians 2:8-10 (MSG)So although we can't take credit for any of the goodness we achieve, through Him we can now accomplish what was previously impossible.
Jesus says, "Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For My yoke is easy and My burden is light."
He's offering to go the whole nine yards with us, carrying our burdens and baggage on his back, if we will take but one step towards him and hitch our wagon to his cart, and press on as hard as we can. What matters to him is our attitude, not results. He is pleased even with our failures, so long as our aim is to please Him - for if we truly obey Him then we shall get perfection thrown in. Through Him we are no longer dead and susceptible to sin. We no longer have to wrestle with the guilt and condemnation of trying to keep the law - of discovering again and again despite desperate measures and repeated denials that we are afflicted by endless recrudescence of self-loathing and pride and other hideous forms of internal conflict. At last, our demons may be evicted. At last, our weary souls may find peace.
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