Do not wait; the time will never be “just right.”
Start where you stand,
and work with whatever tools you may have at your command,
and better tools will be found as you go along.
Have courage for the great sorrows of life and patience for the small ones; and when you have laboriously accomplished your daily task, go to sleep in peace.
God is awake.
Victor Hugo
My favorite family story of all time is the story of how God brought us all to Him. My favorite re-telling of this story was just after our Elise was born (still). We had all just said good-bye to her — held her, sang her lullabies, admired her perfect features — and my epidural was still wearing off. Dad looked so sad. And that made me terribly sad too. But there in that hospital room, our friend Darrin Hassevoort, clearly following the Spirit’s leading, asked my Dad how he came to know the Lord. Dad brightened and reviewed God’s goodness to our family. It was the best thing for me, too, to remember at that terribly difficult time how much God loved us all.
God protected my parents. He protected Dad in Basic Training. He protected Mom in her rocky start — even in the womb. And that protection has only persisted.
Mom believes that she accepted Christ at age twelve. She was walking home from the candy store with a new comic book she had purchased — a Bible comic book. And she was captivated by all the stories — which all pointed to the Grand Story of Christ. When the book talked about how Jesus had died for the sins of the world, she remembers feeling sadness for her sin and asking God to forgive her in Jesus’ name.
Dad attended a Presbyterian church in college — not because he believed as much as it was respectable. He had fully digested the argumentative, contrarian JW stance as his own. And he liked discussion especially about the Scriptures because he knew it was God’s Word.
Mom and Dad never really saw eye-to-eye on religion and never really had a need to. Until . . . my brother was born. They knew that they had to go somewhere to church for his sake. And Mom wouldn’t set foot in a Kingdom Hall. And Dad certainly wouldn’t be caught dead in a Catholic Mass.
So, whatcha gonna do? They compromised . . . Protestant! And all Protestant churches are alike, right? Dad would interject here, “Now, no self-respecting Pollack would be caught dead in a BAPTIST church! Never!!” Then he laughs wistfully and scratches his head and finger combs his hair.
God had moved my family away from Detroit to a rather lonely place for them — South Bend, Indiana. Mom had never set foot outside of Michigan except for her honeymoon, and she was so sentimental about leaving her home that she would still do her grocery shopping in nearby Niles, Michigan.
They picked a respectable downtown church — mainline Presbyterian. And my dear dad, loving to start a rousing discussion, would stir the pot in Sunday School as much as possible. Here’s how he tells it:
“Well, one morning we were discussing something-er-other. And so I said, ‘Why don’t we find out what the BIBLE says?’ And a lady responded — pillar of the church, mind you — ‘Henry! Don’t be silly!! The Bible is for CHILDREN!’ Can you believe that? . . . Pillar of the church!”
Around the same time, some neighbors invited my brother to Vacation Bible School at a nearby fundamentalist Baptist church. The first day he returned to tell Mom, “Hey Mom! I asked Jesus in my heart today!!” “Oh!” my mom cooed and thought, “What a cute way to put it!!”
Steve loved it all — the competition, the memory work, everything. And he got an award at the end of the week for his memory work. So my parents broke all convention and set foot in a Baptist church (of all places) for the first time in their lives.
It didn’t end there. The same neighbors started an Indian Guides group which they soon after abandoned for a new-fangled thing their Baptist church was starting — Awana.
Steve thrived. And because he wanted to get all the awards he could, he begged to attend Sunday morning church. Mom and Dad didn’t like the idea of him going alone with the neighbors, so they switched off. One week Mom would go with him and the next Dad would go.
“Now when Steve would come back from Sunday School at the Presbyterian church,” Dad remembers, “he would always mumble ‘murmurmur.’ But when he came back from the Baptist church, he was so excited! He wouldn’t stop talking about it! So, of course, we went with him to see what he was so happy about.”
I’m forever thankful for those dear friends at Community Baptist Church in South Bend. Pastor Vaughn Sprunger was not intimidated by my dad’s larger-than-life personality and argumentative questions. He seemed to welcome them. The ladies, too, were receptive to my mom and welcomed her to the ladies’ Bible study.
I was born a month premature (40 years ago next month!), and my mom couldn’t leave the house with me. So she offered to open our home to the Bible study. The women were tentative at first, Mom sensed, but they agreed. Because this group was meeting on Mom’s turf, she felt more comfortable to speak up and ask for explanations when she didn’t understand. And there in her own living room, my mom realized her salvation in Christ at 39 years of age.
A brief time later during a Monroe Parker revival service, my dad accepted Christ as His Savior.
Not long after all that, at age four, I was listening to Little Marcie sing “Jesus Knocks, Knocks, Knocks,” and I asked my mom what that meant. She explained that song’s metaphor (as out-of-context from Revelation 3 as it might be) that Jesus wants me to invite Him into my life as He knocks, knocks, knocks at my heart’s door. I remember kneeling by the couch and asking Jesus to be my Savior. That couch is still in the family too, except now it’s in my brother’s living room. In many ways really, I never remember a time that I didn’t know Jesus.
We Kaminskis have continued living our happy lives in Christ for these 39 years. My parents have raised two children who love the Lord and who have spouses who love the Lord too. Their grandchildren are all growing up in Christ as well. My parents have amassed enough commentaries to rival any pastoral library. They have been CEF teachers and board members, Awana commanders, and Camp Good News directors. They’ve taught Sunday School for years.
One of my favorite stories about my parents’ ministry began shortly after they were saved. Dad helped and taught in the Junior High Boys’ Sunday School. I always heard him talk about it: “You just love ‘em. That’s all they need. Somebody to care.” And he did. I know he did. Dad does everything with his whole heart. He is nothing if not earnest. One young boy was from a broken home and especially needed a reliable father-figure to lean on.
Years and years later when I was grown and married, Mom and Dad were attending a Sunday School convention in Detroit. Mom was with some ladies visiting a presentation about the life-long influence of Sunday School teachers. The speaker finished his talk by saying, “I have to tell you about a Sunday School teacher that meant a great deal to me. My parents had divorced, and I had no stable male influence in my life. But my Sunday School teacher cared. I knew that much. And I’m eternally grateful for Mr. Kaminski and how God used him in my life.”
My Mom’s mouth dropped to the floor. The ladies with her gaped and grinned. That meeting led to a happy reunion among old friends in Christ, and everyone left with a vivid object lesson about how God loves His own and how He is best glorified when we love and serve each other.
We Kaminskis all have grown in Christ together, and we all again stand on the threshold of something new but still familiar since God is at the helm.
All this because some neighbors invited a little boy to Vacation Bible School. All this because God continues to gently lead us along.
He will tend his flock like a shepherd;
he will gather the lambs in his arms;
he will carry them in his bosom,
and gently lead those that are with young.
When I first posted this song on October 31 last year, it was my private adieu to fundamentalism. I couldn’t say that overtly at the time. Circumstances were too recent. The pain was too sharp. The wounds were too fresh and confusing.
Grant had found this Janis Ian song in our collection during a Fall Saturday chore of indexing our mp3 files, and it was too spot-on to avoid. We sat listening to it over and over, stunned at how accurately it expressed our deep feelings of sadness and disappointment.
We were being summarily and completely pushed out of our faith community. I personally had left alone, packing up my office by myself in the middle of the night when the kids were asleep and when the shunning eyes were absent. They literally tried to stop my husband’s singing in the middle of his song–just as he and I were learning how free and full-of-grace that song was. They said our study was foolish and selfish and that the darkness of ignorance was best–a blessing in disguise.
So on this on our own Reformation Day, once again but this time openly, adieu. I hate to see a friend go down in flames without a song, so I leave you with this.
Adieu. God help us all.
I’m leaving by night.
I’m leaving alone.
I’m leaving it lie
When you waken I’ll be gone.
I would not beg for me
As I would not beg for you
Though I’d like to be
The one to see you through.Every step you have taken
Disappears with the tide.
You’re torn up and shaken
With changing your mind.
You haven’t got the grace
To say you’ll finally decide.
And you haven’t got
The strength to stay to fight.Those people who surround you
Only want to see you weak enough to crawl.
They’ll lie for you, decide for you
And buy up all your rights
And all your wrongs.
And they’ll try to stop your singing
In the middle of your song;
For they do not want you free
And they will not make you strong,
But only drag you down
In the hole they’re coming from.They say you are foolish
In wanting the sun.
Say you are selfish
In learning to run.
Tell you that the darkness
Is a blessing in disguise;
For you never have to notice
If you’re sighted or you’re blind.
And they’ll do their best
To keep you from the light.You’re more than beginning;
You’re learning to fly.
You feel like you’re falling.
But it passes in time.
I hate to see a friend go down
In flames without a song.
So I’m waiting by the doorway
But I will not linger long.And I’m leaving by night.
I’m leaving alone.
I’m leaving it lie.
When you waken I’ll be gone.
I would not beg for me
As I could not beg for you.
But I’d like to be
The one to see you through.
I study metaphor. All language is metaphoric, you know. The map is not the territory, right? The word is not the thing. Some “maps” are productive because they efficiently lead you to your destination without a lot of baggage and detours. Others are lousy.
Metaphors, like maps, select, reflect, and deflect reality. They build our drama of life. Our story. Our metanarrative. The evangelical buzz word for that is “worldview” or Weltanschauung, but that word is generally too passive for the morĂ©s of most rhetoricians. We like to criticize even the metaphor for our metaphors. ;)
So as God continued to teach me about how much He loved me, after I had heard a contradictory sermon on grace and another eisegetic sermon of the Christian life, I turned to the tools I knew best to understand it all. I turned to rhetorical criticism. I looked at metaphor.
So. Put on your rhetorical critic’s hat for a second, and look at this collection of metaphors from Jim Berg’s Changed Into His Image and Created for His Glory. What’s the story here?
There can be little doubt that God sees our independent spirit–the very thing that the world considers a virtue–as the root problem of man. Our heart says, ‘I will make life work my own way!’ It raises a clenched fist toward the heavens and asserts, ‘I will do it my way!’ . . . Here then is the defiance of our flesh. . . . This fleshly nature is perpetually at war with God. It will not be subject. It will not be ruled. It is no wonder, then, that when we begin to submit to the Spirit of God as He works in our lives that our flesh rises up and resists that work of God. We possess within us a clone of Satan’s own nature, and it violently opposes God (Changed Into His Image 36).
Personal separation from those elements of the believer’s environment that feed his flesh is not option; it is critical! The more corrupt our culture becomes, the greater the need for personal separation from the world. Personal separation from the world does not mean isolating ourselves from the world but rather insulating ourselves from its toxic, fleshly effect upon our souls. Let me illustrate it this way.
Today physicians and health-care professionals are more careful about protecting themselves from the AIDS virus because the possibility of exposure to it in their line of work has increased enormously. As a result, they do not reuse needles, and they wear surgical gloves and sometimes masks. They are extremely careful about contact with bodily fluids. They are not less careful because “we live in a modern age.” They are more careful because we live in a “corrupted age.” In the same way, believers who are concerned about their spiritual health will be more careful in this increasingly corrupt culture. There are more dangers to their souls–not fewer. The pagan, sensual, materialistic environment around them is more contaminated with ungodliness. The need for circumspect living is greater today–not less.
When you seem to be susceptible to every fleshly ‘bug’ in the atmosphere, it is probably because your spiritual immune system isn’t functioning. You have been “quenching the Spirit” by indulging the flesh. You can never get “well” until you stop your contact with contaminating elements around you. That may mean your entertainment habits (movies, music, magazines, recreational habits, etc.) or personal friendships must change . Whatever is dragging you down must be ‘put off.’ In addition, your immune system must be built up. Our Lord is serious about our avoidance of fleshly indulgence (Changed Into His Image 103-04).
The best strategy for any cancer treatment is early detection and treatment. The same is true of the soul. Early detection of the flesh’s activity and early treatment are the surest remedy (Changed Into His Image 108).
When I think of my position as a servant of God, I think of how my service is so primitive when compared to His own capabilities. I can ‘fetch his paper,’ but I get saliva on the rolled-up newsprint and may even tear a portion of a page with my fangs in the process. When I come into the house, I track mud on His carpet before I know what I’m doing. Yet He still says, ‘well done, thou good and faithful servant.’ That amazes me! Somehow my eagerness to obey Him and my attempt to do His bidding to the best of my ‘canine’ ability is pleasing to Him, though my efforts are so flawed. When I think of these things, I can only look up at His face and say to Him, ‘What a wonderful Master You are! No one compares to You. I’m so delighted to be Your pet.’ When He hears that eager praise from me, He is particularly delighted because I see Him as He really is–first of all! in this small way, I glorify Him by finding my greatest delight in Him. . . . It is in this way that we were created for His glory. We can glorify Him as one of His ‘pets’–beings created for His pleasure–as we acknowledge and enjoy His ‘firstness’ (Created for His Glory 34-35).
Now, collect all those together. The redeemed are inhabited both by Satan’s clone and God’s Spirit, and these bitter enemies are at war inside us. “The world” joins the battle and attacks us with a sort of biochemical warfare where even casual and unprotected contact puts us at risk. Spiritual “surgical gloves” are necessary to protect our spiritual lives. Adding to the crisis, even in childhood the flesh/sin is a cancer eating away at our souls so that we need spiritual chemotherapy very early if God will use us at all. And if all goes well–if the clone gets resisted, the gloves are regularly used, and the chemotherapy works–ideally, we’ll become God’s submissive pet.
Now, in contrast, look at Paul’s metaphors:
God knew what he was doing from the very beginning. He decided from the outset to shape the lives of those who love him along the same lines as the life of his Son. The Son stands first in the line of humanity he restored. We see the original and intended shape of our lives there in him. After God made that decision of what his children should be like, he followed it up by calling people by name. After he called them by name, he set them on a solid basis with himself. And then, after getting them established, he stayed with them to the end, gloriously completing what he had begun.
So, what do you think? With God on our side like this, how can we lose? If God didn’t hesitate to put everything on the line for us, embracing our condition and exposing himself to the worst by sending his own Son, is there anything else he wouldn’t gladly and freely do for us? And who would dare tangle with God by messing with one of God’s chosen? Who would dare even to point a finger? The One who died for us—who was raised to life for us!—is in the presence of God at this very moment sticking up for us. Do you think anyone is going to be able to drive a wedge between us and Christ’s love for us? There is no way! Not trouble, not hard times, not hatred, not hunger, not homelessness, not bullying threats, not backstabbing, not even the worst sins listed in Scripture:
They kill us in cold blood because they hate you.
We’re sitting ducks; they pick us off one by one.None of this fazes us because Jesus loves us. I’m absolutely convinced that nothing—nothing living or dead, angelic or demonic, today or tomorrow, high or low, thinkable or unthinkable—absolutely nothing can get between us and God’s love because of the way that Jesus our Master has embraced us.
No ifs, ands, or buts. No “if you do this, then you get God’s grace.” The battle was over at the cross, and we’re just cleaning up the damage now. We’re through and through God’s children, not His pets! He doesn’t withhold His love waiting for us to act like we should. No father would! He loves us first just because He’s chosen to.
When I’ve talked with fundamentalists about Berg’s metaphors, every one of them has disagreed with them. Even Jim Berg himself has dismissed the “clone” metaphor to me as just “literary flourish.” The general consensus among his readers is, “Well, he goes too far.” And that’s fair enough. But that is the problem. That is the definition of a “Hedge around the Torah”–another metaphor used to describe the Pharisees’ fear of breaking the law and adding a protective “hedge” or barrier around it. And in constructing the “hedge” they were obscuring the fulfillment of the Torah–Christ.
I’m not questioning anyone’s sincerity or earnestness or salvation. But these metaphors are mistaken–gravely mistaken.
And I had to say something.
“Well, that makes it just a Law-Life.” No, it doesn’t. You . . . you try to keep this Law, and it crushes you, and you go to God for Grace. But you minimize the Law, and you think you can do it on your own. And you can go days without asking Him to help you obey or anything else (20:55+).
Folks, I can’t do this. This crushes me when I read this. I need divine grace to do this because I’ve got a heart that wants just to do the externals and get by. And so do you. But Jesus doesn’t let us off the hook with externals. He said, “You can’t just be like Pharisees and comply on the outside. I’ve defined what it’s like in the heart, and you can’t do that without Me.” And that’s exactly where He wants us (32:00+).
Jim Berg, “Measuring Kingdom Usefulness”
I found the sermon that pushed me over from apathetic, half-lidded shrugging to resolved action. You need to listen to it.
It was from the first week of February, 2006. And I couldn’t blog about it specifically at the time, of course, so here’s what I tried to say.
Preached in BJU campus Sunday Morning church on February 6, 2006 by Jim Berg, its title “Measuring Kingdom Usefulness” really says it all. Here’s the handout he references. Because so many “campus leaders” were absent for the Sunday morning service due to extension responsibilities, Berg repeated the sermon the next Thursday for an APC/PC meeting. That’s how significant he judged his message for campus life. This is the philosophy behind BJU student life at Bob Jones University.
This sermon is gravely in error.
Here’s what Berg argues in a nutshell:
If you’re incredulous at that reasoning, listen to it for yourself. That’s the message. And that. is. not. the. Gospel. At all. Christ is not even mentioned in that schema. Christ is not our Atonement here. He’s not the fulfillment of the Law. He simply communicates its requirements. And in this mistelling of the Gospel, Christ’s sacrifice is proof that we can do it!!–not our substitution for our doing it.
It doesn’t matter if you’re Reformed, Dispensationalist, Wesleyan, Lutheran, or Anglican. Any believing Protestant would take issue with that message.
To ignore that error, you’d have either agree with it or dismiss it as unimportant. Fundamentalism has so dulled the discernment of its followers–myself included!!–by overwhelming them with the quantity of messages that they can’t hear the quality anymore. When I woke up and listened and then dug deeper, I realized that this was not the set of fundamentals I agreed to uphold. And I was just enough of a fundamentalist that I knew I had to speak up. . . even if it was within the organization that trained me to do so.
Does that title startle you? It should.
“Getting Grace from God” by Jim Berg, BJU Dean of Students, was the formal title of the sermon that made the rounds on campus when the Spirit started poking me awake way back when.
Again — listen. Don’t take my word for it. Just look at these words carefully. And get out your Bible and read what it really says. It isn’t this.
There is even a more pointed definition [of grace] that we could, we could take, and that is from Philippians 2:13 even though this verse does not even mention grace. But Philippians 2:13 talks to us about the work of God in our lives–this divine help. And, and broadly speaking we could call grace divine help, divine enablement. But Philippians 2:13 kinda gives us a little better window into a working definition of what it is like when God is enabling us and working in us.
And Philippians 2:13 says, “for it is God that worketh in you both to will”–creating a willingness, a desire–and giving us the power, He says, “to do of His good pleasure.” So when God is working in us, He’s doing two things He says here: #1 — He’s giving us, He’s creating desire in us to do His will and He’s giving us power to do His will. And I think that’s about the best definition I’ve ever heard of grace. It is that God is working in us, creating in us a desire and a power to do His will. When God is working in us, giving us his grace, we have desire to do things we normally wouldn’t want to do. And we also have the ability to carry out those things that seem impossible to us.
And there are a lot of times in my life when I’ve looked at what I have to do, and I had no desire to do it. I’ve looked at it all and said, “I just want to close the door and leave the office and not come back for a week.” And you’ve had situations like that. There just is no desire. I just don’t want to do this right now. and I have no power to carry it out.
Well, that’s because I’m lacking God’s grace at that time. And we’ll talk in a minute about how to get it (2:38+).
And you know, your life and my life ought to have the stamp of the Supernatural on it. That somebody looks at that and says, “How on earth does all that get done?” And we ought to stand back with them and say, “I don’t know either. Except for one thing, God is doing something amazing here. It’s supernatural desire and power to do His will” (5:50+)
There is Grace for everything. And God says I will give you the divine help to do whatever you have in front of you. . . . if you’ll turn on the faucet. And we’ll talk about that (12:46+).
We have to do right and be sweet about it anyway, and we can with the Grace of God!
The reason you’re so bitter is because you don’t have Grace.
It’s not a problem with the rules, it’s the problem that we don’t have grace. It’s not a problem that WorkBrain has changed our life. [laughter] It really isn’t, folks. Nah, I mean there’s some bugs that have to worked out occasionally in any kind of new thing. But anybody who’s sitting around griping about that, whether it’s in a faculty lounge or in a room, and complaining doesn’t have the grace of God! I mean, again we may as well wear a t-shirt that says “I don’t have the grace of God right now” because that’s exactly what we’re saying to everyone that’s watching. “I’m in a hard situation that I don’t like and I don’t have the grace of God and I’m upset.” I tell you what, if our Lord was on this earth and had to use Workbrain, He wouldn’t be fussing at it like some of us have. He wouldn’t do that . . . because He has the grace of God (18:46+).
The fact that we’re so frustrated and so upset shows that we don’t have the Grace of God because He’s promised that He will make all grace abound toward us (19:43).
If you’re losing the moral battle, folks, you have no Grace from God (21:39+).
Stubborn people have no grace. The faucet does not come on. That’s why all kinds of little things and big things irritate the fire out of them. There is no grace. . . . God says, “if you wanna go down My path, I will give you all the grace you need. But if you wanna go down your path, I’ll let you go down that path. I will take away all the desire to do My will. I will take away all the power to do my will. And furthermore, while you’re going down that path, I’m gonna shoot at you! I will give grace only to the humble. The one who says ‘God can be God in my life!’” (28:19+)
The gospel of justifying faith means that while Christians are, in themselves still sinful and sinning, yet in Christ, in God’s sight, they are accepted and righteous. So we can say that we are more wicked than we ever dared believe, but more loved and accepted in Christ than we ever dared hope — at the very same time. This creates a radical new dynamic for personal growth. It means that the more you see your own flaws and sins, the more precious, electrifying, and amazing God’s grace appears to you. But on the other hand, the more aware you are of God’s grace and acceptance in Christ, the more able you are to drop your denials and self-defenses and admit the true dimensions and character of your sin.
Timothy Keller, Paul’s Letter to the Galatians: Living in Line with the Truth of the Gospel
It’s weird to go back and see what God was doing in our lives a year ago. To see the questions I was wrestling with. Go back and look. Look how many of those things He’s ironed out.
It’s been a good year since the ultimatum exactly a year ago today. A very, very good year.
Maybe it’s because it’s all in the same month, but I can’t help but compare the grief and mourning over losing Elise to this latest, now-one-year-old loss. The comparison is revealing, and it helps me understand and express what needles me about the way conservative Evangelicals at large talk about ourselves, our trials, our humanity, and our God.
“They” say that losing a child is so hard because our culture lacks the words to express the grief. When you lose a parent, you’re an orphan. When you lose a spouse, you’re a widow(er). But there is no word to describe you when you lose a child. The tragedy is that unthinkable.
I’ll say it again — we as (former) fundamentalists don’t have a way to talk about leaving. We’re told to simply shut up. “Get over it. There’s nothing you can do about it anyway! You’re gonna get bitter if you keep talking about it.” It’s another kind of denial of the problem. And if you deny the problem–the sadness, the loss–exists, it simply stalls your healing.
I firmly believe that the Spirit is working here in Greenville. I can feel it. I told a friend awhile back that it feels like pre-term labor around here. That the contractions get closer and closer and closer, but . . . they . . . stop. Practice labor. Getting the Body ready for something, but we just don’t know what yet.
But it’s coming.
I believe like a child that suffering will be healed and made up for, that all the humiliating absurdity of human contradictions will vanish like a pitiful mirage, like the despicable fabrication of the impotent and infinitely small Euclidean mind of man, that in the world’s finale, at the moment of eternal harmony, something so precious will come to pass that it will suffice for all hearts, for the comforting of all resentments, of the atonement of all the crimes of humanity, of all the blood that they’ve shed; and it will make it not only possible to forgive but to justify what has happened.
Fyodor Dostoevsky, Brothers Karamazov
I know so many people who are sad right now. And if you’re sad, please, please stop and take some time to listen to this podcast on suffering by Tim Keller. He is one of the few I’ve heard talk about suffering in a comedic, grace-filled way. You will be blessed.
Happy Birthday, my little lady. You are missed. Your brother Isaac wants to come see you. He is sure that your house smells like grapes.
The bottom line on your ‘fast days’ is profit.
You drive your employees much too hard.
You fast, but at the same time you bicker and fight.
You fast, but you swing a mean fist.
The kind of fasting you do
won’t get your prayers off the ground.
Do you think this is the kind of fast day I’m after:
a day to show off humility?
To put on a pious long face
and parade around solemnly in black?
Do you call that fasting,
a fast day that I, God, would like?
So fundamentalism is no different than any other ‘-ism’ really. It’s just more. And in the moralism game, the one who dies with the most rules wins! There are no people on the planet more disciplined than those in fundamentalism. It’s like the Marines of religions — stunning but dated uniforms, terrific defense and offense, and the cultivated knee-jerk response to comply without hesitation.
In fundamentalism you’ve got the haves and the have-nots — with the currency being not property, of course, but rules. As with any system, this bifurcation morphs into a spectrum. There are two poles–rules vs. no rules or law vs. license–and everybody actually lives somewhere in the middle. So conversations about a particular rule develop like this: “Pants on women are WRONG! Haven’t you read your Bible?” “Well, I actually like wearing skirts. It makes me feel more feminine.” “Well, I wear modest pants and never shorts.” “Huh? Pants are wrong? Says who?” Bring up any lifestyle rule among fundamentalists, and a similar spectrum will develop from the it’s-clearly-biblical position to the rules?-what-rules? position.
The stock resolution in these conflicts is always the same: balance. It’s not that you should not have any rules or that you should have too many. Instead you need to find that delicate, subjective balance between neo- and anti-nomianism.
The problem with the metaphor of balance is that it completely ignores the real problem. The problem is with the human scale that’s doing the weighing. It isn’t just. It isn’t sufficient. It’s flawed. We all have our fingers on the scale making sure that our side comes out ahead. “Well,” we think, “I don’t have as many rules as so-n-so. But at least I have more rules than they do! And I have a good reason for my rules!” And for those who wield more cultural power than another, judging and punishing those in our care is easier if we don’t communicate our standard of “balance” too explicitly. That way, those whom we serve can maintain themselves in fear a la Foucault.
On the same day that Isaac and I played War and “Little People,” I discovered another little gem from my childhood–If Jesus Came to My House. Isaac was captivated by the little sing-songy text, and so was Mommy by the end:
I know the little Jesus
can never call on me
in the way that I’ve imagined
like coming in to tea.But though He may not occupy
my cozy rocking chair,
a lot of other people
would be happy sitting there.And I can make Him welcome
as He Himself has said,
by doing all I would for Him
for other folk instead.
That’s it. That’s the Rule. God’s Rule. Not keeping a clean house per se or finishing a knitting project. And it’s the Extreme Golden Rule. It’s showing kindness to others because you are showing kindness to Christ when you do so. Since Luther would say, God is masked in our neighbors.
And it’s not a reserved, throw-a-couple-of-bucks-in-the-offering-plate kind of giving. It’s not as simple or as reactive as not chewing gum in church or wearing a skirt to class. It’s way, way more than that. It’s a feast. It’s anything but balanced! Lavish, a little too-too. Like buying the best perfume and washing Another’s feet with your hair. Or serving cailles en sarcophages to elderly rustics.
Martin Luther calls this serving our “vocation.” We all have vocations, and their purpose is not serving God as much as serving others. “God does not need our good works, but our neighbor does” Gustaf Wingren concludes. Gene Veith says it like this:
The person who has been justified by faith, who realizes the forgiveness of Christ and who is thereby changed by the Holy Spirit, is motivated by love, not by the rules and regulations and threats of the Law. The good works which follow, however, are not done, as is often piously said, “for God,” but for other people. Strictly speaking, we do not “serve God”–rather, He is always the one serving us; instead we serve our neighbors.
I always have to read that several times. Go ahead–read Veith’s article a few times too just to see how different it is from your fundamentalist background. Fundamentalism taught me to do everything for God. And if I wasn’t doing everything and I wasn’t doing everything for God, then I was guilty of sin and God didn’t want any part of it. That leads to an independent (cum solipsistic) kind of living as the most holy. Luther wouldn’t recognize this as Christian piety at all:
If you find yourself in a work by which you accomplish something good for God, or the holy, or yourself, but not for your neighbor alone, then you should know that that work is not a good work. For each one ought to live, speak, act, hear, suffer, and die in love and service for another, even for one’s enemies, a husband for his wife and children, a wife for her husband, children for their parents, servants for their masters, masters for their servants, rulers for their subjects and subjects for their rulers, so that one’s hand, mouth, eye, foot, heart and desire is for others; these are Christian works, good in nature.
Babette lived that. She served generously–so extravagantly that the pious she served didn’t even recognize her feast as a gift from God. They assumed it was nothing but carnality–sin. And it took a doubting General–a man not at all versed in their peculiar living–to point out the beauty they were missing.
Then there’s Tim Keller’s sermon on breaking the yoke of injustice. I’ve listened to that sermon three times now, and what Keller describes is the exact opposite of the fundamentalist ethic. Honestly, it’s one of the best antidotes to my own life as a Pharisee. I haven’t even digested it all. He talks about Shalom which is not just complying with authority, but a well-running, interdependent, healthy web of life that mirrors Luther on vocation. He describes the wicked not as simply sexual deviants, but as those who use their resources selfishly for only themselves (think Judas!) rather than for others (think Mary Magdalene!). Just hearing the introductory Scripture reading from Isaiah 58 alone has me scraping my jaw off the floor.
Babette demonstrates Keller’s ideal as well as Luther’s. Even when the far-from-peaceful pious are determined not to enjoy her gift, they can’t help themselves! That’s how well Babette serves. Her gracious dinner breaks down their walls. By the fruit course, they start to relish their meal, and over coffee they begin to forgive.
God calls us to a generous kindness. Doing good, loving mercy, and walking humbly. Shalom. As I face the very sentimentally heavy month of July, I’m praying that my part in this righteous Shalom will become obvious. May the chains of injustice be finally broken.
This is the kind of fast day I’m after:
to break the chains of injustice,
get rid of exploitation in the workplace,
free the oppressed,
cancel debts.
What I’m interested in seeing you do is:
sharing your food with the hungry,
inviting the homeless poor into your homes,
putting clothes on the shivering ill-clad,
being available to your own families.
Do this and the lights will turn on,
and your lives will turn around at once.
Your righteousness will pave your way.
The God of glory will secure your passage.
Then when you pray, God will answer.
You’ll call out for help and I’ll say, ‘Here I am.’
Amen.