When Christian philosopher Dallas Willard died last week, I enjoyed reading remembrances from individuals whose lives had been touched by his ministry. One of them recalled how Willard believed that there were four great questions that human beings must answer: 1) what is reality? 2) What is the good life? 3) Who is a good person? 4) How do you become a good person?
People will give radically different answers beginning with question 1, depending on whether the God of the Bible exists. Tim Keller writes in his book, Every Good Endeavor: "If the God of the Bible exists, and there is a True Reality beneath and behind this one, and this life is not the only life, then every good endeavor, even the simplest ones, pursued in response to God's calling, can matter forever." (Keller, 29)
If this is true, then what has God told us of the good life? The good life is to obey God and to keep covenant with him. Exodus 20:1-17 shows what God commands of his covenant partner, Israel: having no other Gods but He alone, not making a physical image of God for the purposes of worship, not making wrongful use of the Lord's name, remembering the sabbath day, honoring mother and father, no murder, no adultery, no stealing, no bearing false witness, and no coveting anything belonging to your neighbor. This was summarized later by Jesus as "love God...love your neighbor." This is the good life.
Who is the good person? Clearly the one who does the whole law. But what does that look like? Author A.J. Jacobs tried this and wrote a book about it - The Year of Living Biblically. Somehow this experiment seems more like running an especially good marathon or staying faithful to your diet. Is there more to it than personal performance? Some say that good intention is all God is really looking for. He'll grade on a curve if he sees we're really trying and not messing around too much. But this doesn't take God's holiness very seriously. As the Apostle Peter writes in his letter, "As he who calls you is holy, be holy yourselves in all your conduct." We should take it seriously. But how seriously can we take it without becoming legalistic?
I think the quote Jenn included in the bulletin from former MPC pastor, Jack Watson, is very helpful in pointing us through this gridlock. "There are many in our society today who hardly are in danger of seeking to live too rigorous a life, who certainly are not addicted to rules and regulations in abundance. There is much all around us that is not too tight, but too loose. But it is nevertheless a fact that I am sure we have all encountered that many need to be freed from the tyranny of a rigid religion...we are freed from all false ties, including ourselves, so that we may be firmly bound to Christ."
Indeed, there is much around us that is too loose. And there is no refuge in what is too tight. Being bound to Jesus Christ is our only refuge. Neither holding tightly to rules nor insisting that they don't apply is the mark of a good person. With Martin Luther, we say, "Of myself, I have no righteousness. But I have another." We can't be good people. Created very good in Genesis 2 - we were very bad by Genesis 3. Jesus? He is very good. Proclaiming, healing, raising from the dead, storytelling, debating. As the people of the Decapolis put it, "he does all things well." He even dies well. One of the first Christians is the Roman centurion who, upon seeing Christ crucified, calls out "Surely this man was the Son of God."
Keller's point still stands from the beginning. If the God of the Bible is real, the good life and the good person are both shown to us in the law-fulfilling, God-glorifying life of Jesus - a life that was bulls-eye precise with regard to holiness and grace alike, and with regard to the latter, generous, spacious, and abundant. He is both the good life and the good person.
What about the fourth question? If he is both, how do we become like Jesus? Much of human wisdom insists that we can become good and wise people and not think much about God. We all have wandering eyes and wandering minds that will find goodness all over the place and not connect it with God. But for each of us, for all that we have, the time will come, maybe today and maybe next week, maybe decades from now, the question will come - "do you love this more than me?" And whether it is our spouse, our son, our daughter, or our own concept of goodness, of wisdom, of what God owes us or of what we owe God, we will have to answer, even if we choose not to give any answer at all, that will be our answer. The opportunity, from my experience, seems to be this: if we merely choose to allow him, Jesus will make us like himself. It will take a long time. It won't be easy. It will often feel like we are really walking to the cross with him. Jesus has done the rest of it once and for all, if we will only take stock of our heart and allow the master to work.
1) I took awhile to write this, but I invite you to take just a few minutes: how would you answer Willard's four great questions?
No comments:
Post a Comment