Simple things you may already know

As stated earlier I will take this blog-post as an opportunity to express summarily the lessons we gave to the young people at camp Gemunden. So without further ado...

Let me begin with a little allegory you may find helpful. The phrase "You are your father's (mother's) son (daughter)" means very plainly that you act like your parents. But more importantly gives a sense of meaning to what we do. It means that I'm not just doing what I think is universally "right" or "good", but that I'm doing things that make me a part of something particular, in this case my family. For me, to act like my father or mother is to make myself a Pierce, and for you it is to make yourself a part of your family. Now let's broaden this perspective out a bit.

Often we try to justify the specifically "Christian" kinds of things by taking a universal perspective and attempting to display via our infinite philosophical wisdom that what we are doing is THE right thing to do. This is all well and good and I have no abstract disagreement with the idea, but I do often find it difficult to "prove" this other than on faith. What I can say, however, is that the things that we do, or that we are called to do, form is into a very particular kind of human being--a Christian. We certainly believe that what we do is what all people should do (in a perfect world), but this is not the kind of perspective that God seems to have, or that the Bible seems to convey.

Very early on, beginning with Abraham, God seems to be taking a different approach to things. Instead of commanding all people's on the earth to follow his will directly, he wants to call out a single person to form a community through his offspring to "be a blessing to all people." And this kind of thinking persists in the Bible under the general label of "God's people." Wouldn't it be great if all people would hold up the virtues of love, self-sacrifice, and humility as the highest (as we should be doing), but a simple observer of the world can notice very quickly this is not the case. So God has ordained a small portion of the world, first in the form of the Jews, now open to Gentiles but still only as "ingrafted branches" as Paul describes it. And God has ordained the "chosen" to demonstrate godliness in the world in the form of the imitation of Christ. He has set us apart to be beautiful in an ugly world and all of the commandments are ways of expressing the everlasting beauty of God with a very contrasting backdrop. Light out of darkness, resurrection out of death, order out of chaos--these are themes that are constant in the Bible and are realized deeply in our expression of Godliness, of beauty, of Christianity.

So to bring this back home a bit, the moral commands that we have been given in the Bible are not just rules to follow lest we burn in hell. They are guidelines to expressing the beauty of God in a world dominated by the ugliness of selfishness. The commandments set us apart and make us holy. In Romans 12 Paul conveys this very profoundly in the contrasting transformed spirit of Christ. His commands demonstrate a severe counter-worldly attitude that are meant to be refreshing to the world.

In this sense we may note Jesus' comment that his followers are the "salt of the earth" meant to flavor and to preserve the world. The call of Christianity is a unique call that allows our actions of humility, self-sacrifice, and love to demonstrate the possibility for something more than death and decay, something more than nihilism and self-interest, but rather a deep and abiding joy in the life of Christ shown through us.

So let us perhaps reconsider the ways in which we think about our moral life. To me it seems less about fulfilling a to-do list for entrance into heaven, and more about experiencing the fullness of human life, and in-turn expressing that fulness in love and self-sacrifice. And to express it in such a way that everyone looking on can only describe as beautiful.