The work of faith

This from John Piper, via Of First Importance:

Faith is looking away from ourselves to another. Faith is total dependence on another. When faith stands in front of a mirror, the mirror becomes a window with the glory of Christ on the other side. Faith looks to Christ and enjoys him as the sum and judge of all that is true and good and right and beautiful and valuable and satisfying.

Amen to that.  That’s the reason we resist faith, just as it’s the reason we resist grace.  The Reformed tradition emphasizes that salvation is by faith, not by works, and that even faith comes to us as God’s gift, not as the result of our own efforts; but there is one work, of a sort, that is required.  The work of faith, if you want to call it that, is accepting our displacement from the center of our universe; it’s the willingness to look away from ourselves, not only to acknowledge our dependence but to acknowledge our insufficiency and our need to follow rather than to carve our own path, and to find our joy in another rather than in ourselves.

Here’s a noteworthy admission

God bless them. . . .  Over 50 million people voted for me and Sarah Palin—
mostly for Sarah Palin.—John McCain
That, courtesy of CNN’s PoliticalTicker blog, was one of Sen. McCain’s comments today at the Heritage Foundation.  It’s a remarkable comment—remarkably honest, I think, and really remarkably gracious, too; it reminds me again of all the things I really do like about the man, for all the issues I have with him.

What has Christ to do with politics?

What indeed has Athens to do with Jerusalem? What concord is there between the Academy and the Church? what between heretics and Christians?

—Tertullian, The Prescription Against Heretics, 7

This famous rhetorical question of Tertullian’s has been used in many ways—including, by many skeptics, as a tool with which to bash him in particular and Christians in general as arrogant know-nothings who prefer to stay ignorant.  In context, that’s not exactly fair, given the nature of the philosophy he’s rejecting, and the sort of disputations it produced; but the fact remains that most people aren’t satisfied just to wave away all skeptical inquiries and challenges as Tertullian did, declaring,

With our faith, we desire no further belief. For this is our palmary faith, that there is nothing which we ought to believe besides.

I don’t think we should be satisfied thus.  For all that he meant it as a rhetorical question, if we truly believe that all truth is God’s truth and that his common grace is available to all people—which, if we follow Scripture, I think we should—then his question needs to be taken seriously as a question, and addressed accordingly.

The same, I believe, must be said of the relationship between faith and politics.  Consider Tertullian’s description of the philosophical art of his day as

the art of building up and pulling down; an art so evasive in its propositions, so far-fetched in its conjectures, so harsh, in its arguments, so productive of contentions—embarrassing even to itself, retracting everything, and really treating of nothing!

That’s as vivid a description of academic disputation now as it ever was—but at least as much, if not more, it’s also a vivid description of our political scene.  Looking out at a political landscape in which people do things like try to bankrupt their political opponents with an unending stream of frivolous complaints, Tertullian might well have asked, “What has Calvary to do with D.C.?”  And again, though he would undoubtedly have answered “Nothing,” and moved on, we need to stop and consider the question carefully and thoughtfully.  What is the proper connection between these two very different things, the life of faith and the life of politics?

This is a problematic question, and while it has ever been thus—this relationship has never been as clear and easy to understand as many people have assumed—the current polarized state of American politics causes us to feel the problem quite keenly. The negativity and the fearmongering are corrosive to the spirit, and the vehemence with which people disagree is wearying.  To be sure, neither the nature nor the degree of this problem are unique in American history (just think of the 1860s, when the political divisions in this country were so deep, we wound up going to war over them); what is new, however, is the particular role of religion in our political disputes. In the Civil War, as Lincoln noted, it was true that

both read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invokes His aid against the other

(while in the background echoed St. James’ anguished cry, “This should not be!”).  In contemporary America, the situation is very different. In our day, by and large, churchgoers tend to side with one party, while those who have no use for church vote for the other—and in popular perception, the gap is nearly total (to the frustrated fury of liberal Christians, who understandably don’t like being overlooked).

In light of this, many would say that the problem is that religion is mixed up with politics when it shouldn’t be. In this view, religion only serves to exacerbate our differences and drive the wedges between us deeper, and the only solution is for religious folk to keep their faith in their churches and out of the voting booth.  There’s a certain superficial appeal to this suggestion, but a little more thought shows it for the discriminatory idea it really is. Why, after all, should non-religious people be permitted to vote on the basis of their deepest convictions, but religious people be forbidden to do the same? Any attempt to make religion the problem is ultimately an attempt to privilege one mode of thought (the secular) over others, and thus is essentially antithetical to the nature and purpose of the American experiment.

Our current situation is complex, and there is no one step we can take that will make it better; everyone involved in our political system contributes in some way to its problems, and it will take efforts from all sides to improve America’s political health. Those who are Christians need to address the ways in which overtly faith-based political involvement has often been unhelpful; to do this, it will be necessary for us to do a much better job of integrating our theology with our politics.

That might seem counterintuitive to many, who would point to the great many references to the Bible and Christian faith which we already hear from our politicians (and not just Republican politicians, either), but it’s the truth. The problem is that as frequent as such statements may be, most of them aren’t good political theology; while there may be an effort to relate Christian faith to politics, the effort is made in the wrong way and thus does not bear good fruit. Rather than true political theology, what we get instead is mere theologized politics; we get faith used as a tool to advance a political agenda, rather than free to critique and correct that agenda.  This is the point at which things go awry.

The gang that couldn’t govern straight

Never put yourself in a position where your party wins only if your country fails.
—Thomas Friedman
It hasn’t been a good start for the new administration.  In the first couple weeks, we’ve seen them announce standards and then not keep them; we’ve seen two of Barack Obama’s nominees withdraw for legal and ethical reasons (following another nominee who had previously done so, and yet another who should have); we’ve seen the House Democrats running the show on his first big piece of legislation, which consequently has turned into a legislative albatross; we’ve seen him back down on some aspects of that legislation after some complaints from our allies; we’ve seen the response to the big ice storm botched; we’ve seen the appointment of a new ambassador to Iraq botched (which is not to say that Gen. Anthony Zinni would have been a better choice than Christopher Hill—I have no reason to think he would have been—but rather that offering a guy a job, thanking him for accepting it, telling him to get ready to go to work, and then actually hiring someone else behind his back without letting him know you’ve done it is no way to run a railroad); we’ve seen Iran rattling sabers, apparently emboldened by the President’s comments; and unfortunately, we’ve seen all this addressed by a McClellan-esque disaster of a press secretary who isn’t helping his administration at all.  Only two weeks in, and some people are already deeply worried, while others are asking, “Who is Barack Obama?” and others yet are beginning to think that the administration is “on the verge of combining the competency of Carter and the ethics of Nixon.”For my part, I don’t think the most pessimistic talk is warranted—yet.  Granted, no recent administration has gotten off to this bumpy a start, but false starts and missteps aren’t uncommon for new administrations; after all, you can’t really rehearse this.  (Compare this article on the beginning of the Bush 43 administration, which managed the transition much better than the Obama administration has so far—courtesy of Dick Cheney, who had already seen it all and done most of it—but had some similar legislative splats.)  These are bright people, and it’s perfectly reasonable to hope and expect that they’ll figure out what they need to figure out, and do a better job of managing the job as time goes on.  On the other hand, we’ve seen a few troubling trends from the campaign repeating themselves in the early days of the administration, most notably President Obama’s tendency to duck unpleasant conversations—not telling Tom Daschle to withdraw his nomination, not telling Gen. Zinni he wasn’t getting the job after all, not going to Kentucky, not answering questions on William Lynn, and so on.  As such, there’s reason for concern that some of these problems may persist, and that the comparisons to President Carter may ultimately prove out.  That would be a bad thing for the country; and so, as a believer in Thomas Friedman’s dictum, I will be (along with many others I know) praying it doesn’t happen.

Holy dread

I live with the dread of tame, domesticated Christianity. I fear for my students that they will chase after what they want—and therefore miss what God wants.—Dr. Howard HendricksWhat a remarkable statement. My thanks to the Rev. Dr. Ray Ortlund for posting this. It is, I think, far too rare a realization that missing out on what God wants for us is a far greater loss, and far more to be feared, than missing out on what we want. As C. S. Lewis said in perhaps his greatest single work, “The Weight of Glory,”

Indeed, if we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that Our Lord finds our desires, not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.

May God deepen and strengthen our desires, and expand our vision.

The cost of grace

A week or so ago, I posted a quote from Dan Allender:

The cost for the recipient of God’s grace is nothing—and no price could be higher for arrogant people to pay.

Bill over at The Thinklings picked that up and posted it there as well, being kind enough to tip the hat to me; in so doing, he sparked a bit of an objection from Joseph D. Walch, whom Thinklings readers will recognize as the site’s resident Mormon commentator. His concern, as it seems to me, was that Dr. Allender’s quote promotes cheap grace; but though his concern is laudable, I think he misunderstood the quote. Walch wrote,

I do believe there is one (and only one) thing that we can offer God that is truely our own: our will (as C.S. Lewis has so beautifully and repeatedly illustrated). Release man from indebtedness to God by saying we owe God nothing; and Man will find other gods ‘worthy’ of his time.

He’s right, but he’s also talking past Dr. Allender here, I think. The point of Dr. Allender’s quote, it seems to me, is that it’s impossible to earn God’s grace, because we cannot do enough or be good enough to merit God’s approval. This is the truth which is so bitterly hard for the arrogant to accept, that we have nothing to be arrogant about. This is the sense in which grace is absolutely and utterly free.

The distinction between cheap grace and costly grace, drawn so well by Dietrich Bonhöffer, deals with what you might call the other side of salvation: not how we’re saved, but what our salvation means for how we are to live (in technical terms, not justification but sanctification). The latter aspect, I think, is what Walch is concerned about here. The key is, though, that to say that grace is a free gift which we can do nothing to earn is not to say anything about whether we owe God anything in return. Indeed, I think it underscores what we do owe God, which is a debt universally acknowledged to anyone who sincerely gives a gift: gratitude to the giver appropriate to the gift (remembering always that “it’s the thought that counts”). What Bonhöffer calls cheap grace is, I believe, a matter of insufficient gratitude—of gratitude which doesn’t understand (or care about) the magnitude and meaning of the gift God has given us. When once we begin to understand, dimly, how great that gift is, and how much reason we have to give thanks, we end up in the same place as Isaac Watts:

But drops of grief can ne’er repay the debt of love I owe;
Here, Lord, I give myself away—’tis all that I can do.

In this sense, as Bonhöffer says, grace is costly indeed; but this doesn’t contradict Allender’s point. If anything, it reinforces it. The greatest cost of grace is the cost to our ego of accepting that it’s free.

Relevance, busyness, and fruit

Speaking of quotes, I got out of the habit of checking the Rev. Dr. Ray Ortlund’s blog, Christ Is Deeper Still, when he took a couple weeks off to go hunting; which means I have a lot to catch up with, since he puts up a lot of great material.  In his recent posts, I particularly appreciate two, which seem to me to stand in striking juxtaposition (though no one seems to have commented on this).  The first is this quote from Thomas Oden:

I am doggedly sworn to irrelevance, insofar as relevance implies a corrupt indebtedness to modernity. . . .  My deepest desire as a theologian is to be permitted to study the unchanging God without some pragmatic reason.  I simply want to enjoy the study of God—not write about it, not view it in relation to its political residue, or pretentiously imagine it will have some social effect.  The joy of inquiry into God is a sufficient end in itself. . . .

I relish those times when there are no responsibilities but to engage in this quiet dialogue that is my vocation.  Then, I readpray, studypray, workpray, thinkpray, because there is nothing I more want to do.

So when old activist friends ask why I’m not out there on the street working to change the world, I answer that I am out on the street in the most serious way by being here with my books, and if you see no connection there, you have not understood my vocation.  I do not love the suffering poor less by offering them what they need more.

The second is this one, from the next day:

In this provocative blog post, C. J. Mahaney helps me ask a change-conducive question:  “Am I deploying my daily life fruitfully or just racing through it busily?”  I am drawn back to Psalm 1.

The psalm bristles with contrasts.  Not nuances.  Stark contrasts.  And not because the psalm is simplistic but because it is so profound.  In this world’s Gadarene rush of ever-expanding options we need that blunt clarity.  Psalm 1 calls us back to the one choice we all face every day:  good versus evil.  It’s that profound. It’s a choice between simple confidence in the Spirit-filled ways of God versus nervous, hyper-active, carnal worldliness. . . .

It’s a picture of impotent restlessness versus fruitful quietness.  Wasn’t it Pascal who said that all the world’s troubles are due to men’s inability to sit quietly in a room and read a book?  Couldn’t we make that case for The Book?

Busyness can be a drug. It makes us feel important and needed. Fruitfulness is another matter. It is a miracle of God’s grace through his Word, imparted to a heart that stays quiet and low before him, set upon doing his will only.

It seems to me that there’s an important truth here:  often, fruitfulness only comes by setting aside the activity that the world deems relevant.  True fruitfulness comes from being rooted in God, and that requires time spent, not “doing something,” but sitting quietly in his presence.  It requires time given over to “readpray, studypray, workpray, thinkpray,” that we may come to better know our God and draw more deeply from his life.

This means two things.  First, as Mahaney says in the post Ortlund references, it’s very easy to avoid the truly important things by keeping ourselves very busy with the urgent things, because the world around us will see our busyness and approve; indeed, one difficulty in seeking to do the opposite can be that people will think we’re unproductive, and judge us accordingly.  (Of course, that’s not without some reason, since one can always fall off into laziness this way as well, and actually become unproductive.)  To be fruitful requires us to buckle down and identify what really matters, and then to focus on that; and thus it requires most of all that we devote ourselves to seeking God’s face, which we cannot effectively do in the midst of our busyness (though he can always interrupt our busyness, if he wills).  For that, we need the spiritual disciplines of solitude and silence, “unproductive” though they may seem to be; and we need to be open to confront all the things about ourselves and our lives that we do not wish to confront.

Second, this means that we have to accept that our fruitfulness does not in the end arise out of our own strength.  Certainly, we won’t be fruitful if we truly do nothing, but the sheer expenditure of energy won’t produce any fruit, either, if it’s merely our own.  As Psalm 1 points out, the tree produces fruit not by frantic effort, but because it’s planted in good soil beside a river; it has sent its roots deep and is drinking deeply of the water, and drawing out the nutrients from that good soil.  That is the effort from which the fruit comes, and no other.

Grace is free . . . that’s precisely the problem

There’s a change in the blogroll, under the heading “Theoblogians,” that I think is worth noting. I’ve regretfully taken Doug Hagler’s blog Prog(ressive)nostications off, since he’s shutting it down (given that it’s been over a month since he posted, I can’t be accused of being hasty in that respect) and added in the blog Of First Importance, a quote blog to which Jared Wilson pointed us a while back, which has some great material. I particularly like this one—I’d missed it, but my wonderful wife drew it to my attention—from Dan Allender, picked up from Gospel Transformation:

The cost for the recipient of God’s grace is nothing—and no price could be higher for arrogant people to pay.

That about sums it up, I think.