Categories
Cosmos Science and Religion Theology

God in the Dock: Part 1: The Courtroom Drama

(This is Part 1 of an essay I’m working on.)

The courtroom is a powerful symbol in our popular culture.  The phrase “the verdict is in…” appears in settings ranging from advertising comparisons of different kinds of shampoo to opinion polls on political issues to arguments for and against God.  As a practicing lawyer, law professor, and theology student, I find this use of courtroom metaphors fascinating and sometimes troubling.  In particular, I worry that the popularity of courtroom apologetics, particularly in the conversation over faith and science, belies some deep theological and philosophical misconceptions, and that these theological and philosophical misconceptions can hinder both our joy in seeking God’s truth and our faithfulness in witnessing to that truth in the world.

Let me begin with a story.

Some years ago I appeared in the U.S. Federal District Court for the District of New Jersey for a routine settlement conference in a contract dispute.  Both of the parties to the suit were small businesses.  My client had entered into a service contract with the plaintiff.  The plaintiff, according to my client, did not deliver all the services under the contract, and my client withheld payment.  The plaintiff alleged that it had, in fact, performed as required by the contract and that payment was due.  The amount at stake was about $250,000 – small potatoes for a Federal lawsuit, but significant to these small businesses.  State and Federal courts around the U.S. handle many thousands of similar cases every year.

In most Federal civil trial courts, settlement conferences are conducted by a Magistrate Judge.  Typically the Judge meets with counsel and the parties together in chambers to review the case.  Often the Judge will then meet with each party separately to conduct a kind of shuttle diplomacy.  Sometimes, while the Judge meets with one party in chambers, the other party waits in the empty courtroom, with subdued lighting, heavy drapery, and the great seal of the court positioned over the Judge’s bench.  There is an aspect of theatrical performance to this process.  The Judge tries to impress on the litigants the risks of litigation and the potential weaknesses in their respective cases in order to resolve the case and clear his or her docket.  Experienced counsel is wise to this game put tacitly participates in the ritual.  Trials are risky and clients sometimes harbor grossly unrealistic expectations about the results a trial might produce.

In the contract dispute I mentioned, the owner of the company I represented was shrewd businessman.  He and I both thought we had a good chance of winning at trial.  However, given the risks and costs, we were willing to offer about half of the claimed payment due in settlement.  We communicated this to the Judge during our private meeting, and the Judge agreed that this was a wise course of action.  The Judge had us leave chambers and called in the other party.  For an experienced litigator, this represents the moment when a case starts to move and settlement seems likely.

The owner of the plaintiff corporation, however, was not so objective.  For him, this litigation was about JUSTICE (he tended to speak about this in all caps).  He rejected our offer and insisted that he would take the case to trial and achieve justice, even if it took until his dying breath.

The Judge dismissed the plaintiff and called me and my client back into chambers.  He communicated to us the plaintiff’s position, and added the following astute judicial commentary:  “What a F—ing idiot!”   Some months later, after some costly and time-consuming discovery and motion practice, the case finally settled, at a value close to what we originally had offered.  Perhaps the plaintiff’s accountants realized the costs of justice.

I recount this story at the outset of this series because it illustrates the reality of the legal process.  In the popular imagination, the court room is the place in which lies are exposed and truth revealed.  Our iconic cultural moment for the judicial process is Tom Cruise cross-examining Jack Nicholson until Nicholson finally cracks and shouts “You want the truth?  You can’t handle the truth!” before admitting Cruise was right about everything all along.  The reality is that the judicial process is not set up to find the exhaustive and final truth of a matter.  It is set up to resolve disputes as pragmatically and efficiently as possible so that the business of society can keep moving on.

The rules of evidence and procedure that govern trials – in the very, very small percentage of cases that ever go to trial – reflect this pragmatic orientation.  Trials do not go on forever, the parties cannot call every conceivable witness or offer every possible scrap of evidence, and the standards of judgment are flexible.  In civil cases, the standard of proof typically is “a preponderance of evidence” – meaning that the scales must tip only ever so slightly to one side or the other.  Mistakes of law are often reviewable by appellate courts de novo – from the beginning, with fresh eyes – but alleged mistakes of fact are usually reviewable only for an abuse of discretion – a standard that is rarely met.  And very seldom does a witness utterly crumble under cross examination and admit the other side is completely right.  In fact, in most cases that don’t settle early on, the “right” outcome generally is ambiguous.  Both parties usually can make out a viable case under the existing law and available facts.

I think all of this makes the courtroom an inapt metaphor for Christian apologetics.  We imagine some sort of Tom Cruise meets Jack Nicholson moment in which the world crumbles on the stand and acknowledges that we Christians are right about everything after all.  Real court rooms don’t work that way, and neither does real, authentic witness to the Gospel.

It’s not just a matter of making the courtroom appear overly dramatic.  In litigation, the court is a neutral authority capable of making a binding decision about the merits of the dispute.  The settlement conference procedure I mentioned above tends to work in most cases because the parties come to realize that the process, at least as applied to their specific case, isn’t about “justice” in any absolute sense at all.  The process is about resolving disputes and moving on.  It’s entirely possible that the court might reach an unfavorable conclusion simply because of the inherent constraints intentionally built into the process.  In the broadest sense, the parties agree to a social contract in which the court, whether it turns out to be right or wrong, has authority to decide the case.  And the realization that the court could get it wrong, or simply that the process might drag on for long time and cost substantial legal fees, almost always eventually moves the parties to compromise.

We who are part of the Kingdom inaugurated by Jesus, however, could never enter into any such social contract concerning the truth of the Gospel.  As far as we’re concerned, there is no neutral third party, no judicial body, capable of adjudicating the claim that Jesus is Lord and that his peaceable Kingdom has come through his death and resurrection.  To submit the Lordship of Christ before any such judicial bar would constitute blasphemy.  We do not seek or even demand a verdict from anyone about this.  Rather, we proclaim that it is so, and announce that it judges all other presumptive authorities.

Yet, we do publicly proclaim that it is so.  A public proclamation is always a form of apologia.  It is a giving of reasons why we as the Church seek to live and worship in certain ways.  And it is an effort to describe as fully and richly as possible all the implications of what we proclaim.  Not the least of those implications is that the God who created the world created it good, that He imbued creation with His own beauty and reason, and that of all His creatures His love for humans is particularly shown in our share of that reason.  So our public proclamation, our apologia for this good news, includes our effort to express the coherence, explanatory power, aesthetics, and moral force – the fullness of reason – inherent in it.

Notice the priority in this order.  It is not that reason establishes the validity of the proclamation.  It is that the proclamation establishes the validity of reason.  The Gospel does not make sense in the light of reason.  Reason only finally makes sense in the light of the Gospel.

This sense of priority suggests an order of truth:  God, theology, proclamation, reason, and apologia.  From a Christian perspective, the first order of truth must always be God, and the second order must be theology.  Since God is in essence ineffable, our primary mode of speech about God’s truth must be theology.  Proclamation, reason, and apologia follow from theology.  Theology was once the “queen of the sciences.”  For Christians, theology must yet hold this title.  In my next post, I’ll begin to unpack this claim by exploring the relationship between faith and philosophy.

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Scripture Spirit

Paul's Remarkable Comments to the Galatians: on Reputation

In his long introduction to the letter to the Galatians, in chapters 1 and 2, the Apostle Paul recites his credentials as an Apostle and explains why he is writing the letter.  In short, there was a division in the Church between Jewish Christians and the growing group of Gentile Christians, over whether the Gentile Christians were required to adhere to all aspects of the Jewish Law, including the requirement of circumcision.  As Apostle to the Gentiles, Paul argued that the Gentile Christians should not be subject to the requirements of the Jewish Law (Torah).  In fact, throughout the Pauline corpus of the New Testament, Paul’s treatment of the Torah is far more subtle than a simple dichotomy of Torah against Grace — it is a narrative of completion and fulfillment and not one of opposition and supercession — but that is a bigger topic for another day.  In any event, Paul traveled to Jerusalem to have it out with the leaders there, including Peter, who were siding with the Jewish Christians.

There are so many remarkable comments and asides in Paul’s introduction that it’s hard to single one out.  Today, this one struck me:  “But from those who were of high reputation (what they were makes no difference to me; God shows no partiality) — well, those who were of reputation contributed nothing to me.”  (Gal. 2:6 (NASB)).  Paul is speaking here of the leaders in Jerusalem.

I am easily impressed by pedigree and reputation.  If Professor So-and-So or Reverend Whoseiwhats agrees with me, I feel more confident; if Professor Such-and-Such or Reverend Whichisthat disagrees with me, I worry.

There is a degree to which this is appropriate.  If I really know and respect someone’s work, it is wise for me to take his or her opinion seriously.  Even more so, if I am under someone’s authority in a work or ecclesial setting, I may be required to take another person’s opinion seriously.

But Paul is not speaking here about well-earned or institutionally necessary deference.  He is speaking about reputation-as-reputation:  mere status, not substance.  Here, Paul is unsparing:  it makes no difference to him at all.  Paul is confident to brush aside mere reputation because he knows that finally all people stand equally before God on substance.  We each are naked before the creator and judge of the universe.  Now that is both a humbling and a liberating thought.

 

Categories
Scripture Spirit

Who Am I, that I Should Go to Pharaoh?

I haven’t blogged in quite some time.  Partly that has been because I’ve been spending most of my theological energies on my dissertation, partly it’s been for other reasons.  One of those other reasons resonates with the title of this post, which is a quote from Exodus 3:11.

Exodus 3 is the famous story of Moses and the burning bush.  Moses had fled from Egypt because he was wanted for murder (Exodus 2:11-15).  He had married the daughter of “the priest of Midian,” Jethro, and was working Jethro’s flocks when “[t]he angel of the LORD appeared to [Moses] in a blazing fire from the midst of a bush; and he looked, and behold, the bush was burning with fire, yet the bush was not consumed.”  (Exodus 3:1-2 (NASB)).  God spoke to Moses “from the midst of the bush” and commissioned Moses to “bring My people, the sons of Israel, out of Egypt.”  (Exodus 3:4-10).

I’d like to think that if I experience a theophany like this I would respond with humble faith.  In fact, Moses’ response could be read that way:  “Who am I,” Moses said to God, “that I should go to Pharaoh, and that I should bring the sons of Israel out of Egypt?”  (Exodus 3:11).

“Who am I that I should blog?”  “Who am I that I should teach law, or write about theology and culture, or try to raise children, or say anything to anyone?”

But Moses’ humility in Exodus 3, I think, was false.  Moses, born a condemned Israelite slave baby, was rescued from death by Pharaoh’s daughter and was raised as a prince of Egypt.  (Gen. 2:1-10).  Among the shepherds of Midian, he would have been the most educated and cultured of men — qualities the Priest of Midian surely recognized when Moses lived in his tents.  There is a hint of this excitement about Moses when Jethro’s daughters report to him “‘An Egyptian delivered us from the hand of the shepherds, and what is more, he even drew the water for us and watered the flock.”  (Gen. 2:19).  How else to fill in the interstices of the terse narrative in Exodus 2:16-21?  I wish we had reports of some of Moses’ conversations with Jethro deep into the night.  No one outside Egypt was better qualified by birth or training to rescue Israel from Egypt than Moses, the Jewish-born Egyptian prince.

Well, I am no Moses.  In any social network with which I am connected, there are people with better qualifications than mine, and with life narratives more dramatic and obvious than mine.  Yet I suspect that these narratives about Moses can speak to someone like me as well.  For each one of us stands before the burning bush every day.  If we wake with breath in our lungs we find ourselves in the presence of the God who created us and whose glory continually fills His creation.  We each, from the most accomplished and able to the most humble and “dis”abled, are given gifts, struggles, and circumstances that as things given can be invested and multiplied.  Let the recognition of these things as “given” turn our thoughts away from ourselves — “who am I” — and towards the giver, who also told Moses:  “Certainly I will be with you.”  (Exodus 3:12).

Categories
Cosmos

Common Prayer

Lord God, help us to live out your gospel in the world. We pray for those who do not know your love, that they would be wooed by your goodness and seduced by your beauty. Form us into a family that runs deeper than biology or nationality or ethnicity, a family that is born again in you. May we be creators of holy mischief and agitators of comfort . . . -people who do not accept the world as it is but insist on its becoming what you want it to be. Let us groan as in the pains of childbirth for your kingdom to come on earth as it is in heaven. Help us to be midwives of that kingdom. Amen.

From Common Prayer:  A Liturgy for Ordinary Radicals

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Uncategorized

Making Peace With the Land?

When I was at the Duke Divinity Center for Reconciliation conference, I picked up a copy of their newest publication, Fred Bahnson and Norman Wirzba’s Making Peace With the Land: God’s Call to Reconcile With Creation. I enjoyed this book and I agree with its basic premise that God’s work of reconciliation, in which we are invited to participate, involves all of creation. It is part of our calling, therefore, to care for creation, which includes practices such as wise, sustainable agriculture.

At a number of points, however, I wonder if the authors protest too much. Let me offer a few thoughts as perhaps a friendly critique.

A big emphasis for sustainable agriculture of the sort Bahnson and Wirzba promote is the notion of “working with the land.” If a particular region is mostly savannah, say, or rain forest, then agricultural methods and crops appropriate to those regions should be used. Fair enough, as a matter of baseline practical wisdom. But there is also a theological and philosophical claim being made: God made this land savannah or rain forest, and therefore an effort to transform the landscape into a different kind of biome is an affront to the integrity of creation.

Here we run into a significant problem: what is savannah today might have been a swamp, or a sea, or a desert, or a forest, or an ice sheet during other periods of geological time. Part of God’s design for creation is that it constantly changes and that biomes continually flux and adapt. That is the genius of evolution. The notion that reconciling with creation requires preservation of a particular biome as it appears at some moment in geological time therefore seems to me highly problematic.

I should be clear that I am not here agreeing with Christian global warming skeptics who think polluting the atmosphere with globs of carbon is nothing to be alarmed about because creation will adapt. That’s nonsense. We humans are capable of transforming the land in terribly harmful ways, even catastrophic ways. But transformation-qua-transformation isn’t unnatural – it’s how the world is made.

A related theological-scientific problem is a notion that runs throughout the book concerning technology, particularly genetic modification. The authors clearly are against genetically modified (“GM”) crops and animals. But, once again, genetic modification is part of the genius of evolution. God is the great architect of GM crops and animals, from the root of the evolutionary tree of life to today, and beyond. When humans engage in GM technology, they are using God-given knowledge about the created fabric of biological life. Life was created modular and flexible, and there seems to me no principled reason why human understanding of these capacities is inherently violent rather than an aspect of the cultural mandate. Indeed, there is no kind of agriculture, however organic and sustainable, that doesn’t make use of old-fashioned GM: selective breeding.

This isn’t to say that modern industrial practices of GM are all good and healthy. From my perspective, one of the main culprits here is the patent law system, which too easily allows large multinational corporations to monopolize seed supplies. But again, the problem isn’t GM-qua-GM. The problem is the social-cultural-legal frameworks for what kinds of GM are done, and how the results are made accessible.

And this finally highlights what for me is another ambiguity in this book. Many of the practices mentioned could be a form of small-scale witness, such as a church growing a sustainable garden to help supply a local food pantry. Amen! But how do such acts of witness translate to broader cultural action, policy-making, and the living out of life in the every day world for those of us (most of us) unable to relocate to home farmsteads? There is a big tension here, only passingly acknowledged, between the already and not yet of eschatological time. The prophetic imagination still must connect with the present reality. I’d like to hear more about this from the authors and from my agrarianist friends.

Categories
Law and Policy

They Preached Liberty?

Here’s a letter to the Editor of mine published in today’s Wall Street Journal in response to the editorial “They Preached Liberty.”

Categories
Law and Policy

Christians and the Supreme Court's Health Care Decision

I have a post up on Jesus Creed.  Here’s the text:

Thursday last week the U.S. Supreme Court issued its decision in National Federation of Independent Business v. Sebelius – the health care law case.  Not surprisingly, the talk shows, the newspapers, the blogosphere, Twitter, Facebook, and every other imaginable outlet are lit up with comments and arguments.  What should Christians think about this case?

I will offer some thoughts about how I think Christians should think about it. But first, and perhaps most importantly, I’d like to suggest that there is no single position that can be called the Christian view on this particular case.  It’s a complex issue in terms of economics, social policy, history, and the law.  Let’s try to give each other the freedom to express nuanced opinions on these difficult questions.

There are at least two common themes running through much of the Christian commentary on the decision.  On the right, the view is that the Court’s decision, as well as the law itself, represents a threat to freedom.  For example, here is something posted on the Trinity Forum’s Facebook page, from TTF Trustee Edwin Meese:

The Court was correct to find that Congress does not have the authority to compel purchases under the Commerce Clause.  But it erred in contorting the statute to declare the penalty a tax.  And the fact that the Court decided to allow this abuse under the government’s taxing authority, not the Commerce Clause, doesn’t change the fact that individual freedom has been dealt a serious blow.

On the left, the decision, and the law itself, are viewed as an important victory for justice.  Here is Jim Wallis of Sojourners:   “This is an important victory for millions of uninsured people in our country and ultimately a triumph of the common good.”  Nevertheless, Wallis qualifies his praise:

While I believe the decision is reason to celebrate, it doesn’t mean that this legislation is somehow the flawless will of God; it is an important step in expanding health care coverage and reducing long term costs, but it still is not perfect and more work is yet to be done.

The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops opposed aspects of the law but did not ever argue for its repeal.  Their concerns about the law were not based on the notion of universal health care itself, which is something Catholic Social Teaching supports (or at least can be read to support).  Rather, the Bishops are concerned that the law that seems to support abortion, compromises rights of conscientious objectors, and does not provide adequately for immigrants.  In their statement on the Court’s decision, the Bishops conclude:

Following enactment of ACA, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) has not joined in efforts to repeal the law in its entirety, and we do not do so today.  The decision of the Supreme Court neither diminishes the moral imperative to ensure decent health care for all, nor eliminates the need to correct the fundamental flaws described above.  We therefore continue to urge Congress to pass, and the Administration to sign, legislation to fix those flaws.

Before I offer my thoughts on these varying representative perspectives, let me step back and note once again that each of them represents good faith efforts to think Christianly about the Court’s decision.  The fact that they finally offer different visions of the end result should give us pause before we argue that there is only one faithful way to think about it.

That said, from my own perspective, the Trinity Forum / Edwin Meese comment is the most theologically problematic of the three I’ve referenced.  Even more problematic, I think, are the more extreme libertarian critiques of the law heard in many outlets.  Meese’s comment is at least measured in tone, which is not the case with much of the libertarian rhetoric that feeds into what many Christians have said and are saying about “Obamacare.”  How quickly does the dreaded “s” word – “socialism” – arise in many of these comments?

I wonder when “individual freedom” became the sine qua non for Christian social ethics about health care? It seems to me that Christians of all people should be willing to sacrifice some of their “individual freedom” in order to ensure that everyone, particularly “the least of these,” has access to health care.  In scriptural and Christian theological terms, true “freedom” is not libertarian license, but rather is the full participation of a person in God’s self-giving love.  And true “freedom” is never about isolated individuals – as God is a Triune community, so we as human beings can only be truly “free” in community.

Of course, even if we agree that Christians should be willing to give up some “individual freedom” to facilitate health care for others – or, perhaps better, that Christian freedom means moving beyond selfishness —  the question remains whether such care should be provided through government, through private associations, through Churches, through families, and so on.  There is a long and tangled tradition of Christian political theology on all of these questions – and, at least in my opinion, there is no simple right answer.  It isn’t enough here merely to refer to “sphere sovereignty” or “subsidiarity,” just as it isn’t enough merely to refer to the immanent “peaceable Kingdom.”  I do think some ways of working through this are much better than others, but these are the subjects of long and carefully worked out philosophies that can’t be reduced to sound bites.  (For a flavor of what I think is a wonderful example of contemporary Christian political theology regarding public goods and markets in areas such as health care, see Pope Benedict’s Encyclical Caritas in Veritate).

From my perspective there is less to criticize in Wallis’ comment on the decision.  Nevertheless, I would much more significantly qualify my enthusiasm for the result because of Justice Roberts’ reasoning on the taxing power.  In fact, ultimately I think it’s a poorly reasoned judicial opinion that opens a can of worms concerning what the government can call a “tax.” It seems to me troublesome development that the Constitution’s taxing power can extend to a choice not to buy a product – a choice not to act.  I don’t want to pay taxes, for example, for choosing not to buy a car or a bicycle or broccoli.  This really does seem to expand the government’s economic power in ways I find troubling.

While “individual freedom,” in libertarian terms, is not the central concern (as I see it) of Christian social ethics, nevertheless the integrity of the person very much is a central concern.  And this does mean that persons, not States, finally are the basic subject of politics, and that freedoms of the person and of private associations of persons are of basic importance.  An essential function of any just political structure therefore must be to hold the State’s power in check through the rule of law.  Whether the majority or the liberal-wing dissenters in the Sebelius case were right about the commerce clause issue – itself a legally and historically complex question — I believe the commerce clause should have been the basis for the decision rather than the taxing power. In my view, the payments required for uninsured persons under the individual mandate clearly are a “penalty,” not a “tax,” and therefore they should stand or fall as an exercise of federal governmental power under the commerce clause.

Given my reference to Pope Benedict’s Caritas in Veritate, it’s perhaps not surprising that I personally find the USCCB statement about the Court’s ruling the most appropriate of the three I’ve referenced.  In my view, Christians should desire that all persons have access to decent health care, and markets alone cannot meet this goal either from a moral or a pragmatic perspective.  A Christian social ethic therefore should recognize that it is a necessary and appropriate function of government to facilitate universal access to healthcare. However, where “healthcare” includes things like elective abortions, which raise serious moral concerns for many persons and religious associations, appropriate exemptions should be included.  And I fully agree with the U.S. Bishops that, particularly from a Christian perspective of welcome, immigration reform is essential, not least as in relation to education and healthcare.

So, I don’t have a final answer concerning how Christians should thing about the Sebelius case and the health care law.  I hope, however, that we can try to think about it in more careful and theologically nuanced terms than usually surface in popular debates.

Categories
Poetry Spirit

Poem: Theologian's Lament

Since we are always bumping up against
the limits of what we can and cannot see,
we must admit this discipline is sore,
a horse hair shirt drawn tight against the skin,
a flagellation of the lonely mind.

Perhaps if we could glimpse the lovely face,
a beatific vision of the God
whose thoughts we strain to comprehend, just for
a blink of time, we might surpass the soul’s
captivity and apprehend the Truth.

But none can see the face of God and live,
so our sacred scriptures say.  Perhaps the
scribe who first put this to parchment knew too
well the contemplative frame.  Perhaps he
wished to warn us off, to make us close the book.

Yet here we are before the mysteries,
straining to reconcile opposing thoughts,
making careful distinctions with our words,
as though our language were the substance — the
ousia, to be smart — of our subject.

No, our subject hides like a mythic beast,
a Behemoth rumored to inhabit
these seas, who swallows the universe whole.
We are in his belly without knowing
we have been consumed, stewed, and digested.

Still, a hint of beauty draws us out, past
our subjectivity, something glimmering
in the peripheral field of vision,
where sight is most sensitive in darkness
to movement and the light from distant stars.

 

Categories
Poetry Spirit

Poem: The Psalmist's Profession of Uprightness

“No one who has a haughty look and an arrogant heart will I endure.”  – Ps. 101:5

The King enthroned: a glorious sight!
He sparkles in his ermine robes, his garnet rings, his crown.
His holds his staff erect, above the gathered crowd, a flash of gold,
the sign life or death.

His Court arrays in splendid form at his right hand.
Their glistening silks flow toward the throne
and back again. Electric arcs of power trace their mouths, a low expectant hum.
They smell of ozone and of smoke.

The Guards, their bronze-tipped spears like stars,
form ranks behind the Court. Their breastplates sculpt the shape
of muscled beasts. Their faces, cut from stone, unflinching, stare toward the King,
desiring his command.

The Priests and Monks hold silence at the King’s left hand,
in ruby cloaks or cassocks black as tar. They lightly sway and chant a hymn,
their song and incense sweetening the air. A sacrificial dove is held above the bowl,
its blood a recompense for sin.

The Subjects wait before the throne. They kneel, abased, and kiss the cool grey floor,
their calloused palms turned up in prayer. They wear their finest farmer’s wool,
rough garments for this place, and offer bowls of figs and grapes, and bread,
and honeycombs.

The King, his arms held wide, arises from his throne,
the purple lining of his robes like wings unfolding in the Sun. His eye
surveys the multitudes who gather at his word. The Earth falls still. Now he will speak,
and all will hear the voice of God.

Categories
Church Spirit

Change and Grace

I heard a story recently about a woman who had grown up Catholic in another country.  As the story is told, it was one of those Catholic upbringings — lots of guilt and obligation and rigid authority.  She came to America as a child, and throughout her life here she searched for God, until, finally, she was “saved” in an independent evangelical church, at which she tearfully told her story.  In this experience and in this community, she found the Grace that had eluded her all her life.

I heard another story about a man who was raised in an independent evangelical church.  It was one of those independent evangelical upbringings — lots of noise and action floating lightly above an undercurrent of reactionary anger and denial.  He became a famous writer, he wrote Important Books that would reform his church.  He realized that all along he had been searching for God, and in the middle of his life, he converted to Catholicism.  In the quiet presence of the Eucharist, in the long, slow history of the Tradition, in the nuance of the great Catholic minds, he found the Grace that had eluded him all his life.

I’ve heard this story many times:  Charismatics becoming Episcopalians; Episcopalians becoming Eastern Orthodox; Eastern Orthodox becoming Pentecostals; Pentecostals becoming Quakers; Arminians becoming Calvinists; Calvinists becoming Arminians; Catholics becoming Evangelicals; Fundamentalists becoming Liberals; Liberals becoming Fundamentalists; Evangelicals becoming Anglicans becoming Catholics becoming Eastern Orthodox becoming Evangelicals again; all of them searching for God, finding, perhaps, some measure of Grace along the way.

Maybe Grace only appears when change becomes necessary.  Or, maybe Grace is always there, and we don’t see it until the weight of our inherited and accumulated self-righteousness provokes a crisis of change.  Maybe the final surrender to the inevitability of change releases our souls to receive Grace.  Maybe it’s more about the change than the substance.

Yet the Word is full of grace and truth (John 1:14).  So, maybe the change moves us towards the Substance.  Maybe change itself is Grace.  Maybe God draws each person to Himself on pathways known only to Himself for reasons known only to Himself.  The Orthodox and the Catholics and the Anglicans may be right about the Apostolic Succession.  The Orthodox may be right about the Great Schism of 1054, or the Catholics may be right.  The Baptists instead may be right about local independence, or the Presbyterians may be right about oversight (and Calvin) or the Methodists may be right about it all (including Calvin) or the Anabaptists and Quakers and New Monastics might live more faithfully, or the leftist Episcopalians or the rightist evangelical Anglicans or the obtuse Anglo-Catholics. We each have to trust, I suppose, that God is giving us the Truth we’re prepared to handle, and that Grace is pulling us along.