I particularly like to have well defined requirements and expectations that can be clearly and unquestionably met and finished. This orientation is reinforced by my job. I am employed in engineering at a chemical plant where part of my charge involves the maintenance and testing of safety interlocks and other measurement instruments involved in a protective role. As you can imagine, the process for manufacturing chemicals has the potential for dangerous conditions with risks of toxicity, fire, or explosion if not managed properly. To safeguard against this we use a system which is agreed upon as best practice by the chemical industry. 
First, we perform a regularly scheduled analysis of all the potential hazards at each step of the process using an accepted methodology involving a multidisciplinary team and led by an engineer trained in this practice. In this analysis we consider every possible outcome. "What if" the pressure, temperature, or flow were to increase or decrease at each point and would that create a dangerous condition? The severity of the consequence and the likelihood of it occurring are ranked and the number of safeguards or "IPL's", Independent Layers of Protection, required are determined using this same practice. Once this PHA, Process Hazard Analysis, is complete, it is reviewed and signed off by those in authority.
Some of these protective layers are instrumented, using measurement and control instruments like pressure switches and automatic valves. This is my specialty, instrumentation.
To ensure these instrumented layers of protection function as intended when we need them, this discipline also sets testing, calibration and maintenance plans with intervals based on industry practice and the mean time between failure data for that type or model of instrument. Maintenance plans for IPL identified instruments are ranked with the highest priority in the work schedules. If we are unable to meet the set due date, there is a rigorous deferral process where knowledgeable people (of whom I am sometimes one) assess whether we need to shut down the process or if we feel justified extending the deadline to a determined date taking into account the maintenance history of the instrument or other temporary safeguards being put in place. This evaluation then has to be reviewed and signed off by those with the proper authority.
This whole system is audited, both internally and by third parties, to keep us accountable. So, at the end of the day, we can feel pretty good. No one can suggest that we needed to do more, or that we haven't met our obligations. All the requirements have been carefully considered following authoritative regulations, reviewed and approved by those in charge, implemented, documented, and audited.
I would like to feel a similar security in my personal life, to know that everything has been done that I'm obligated to do, that it's all been paid, all the conditions have been made and I don't owe anyone a thing. The most comfortable state is one with no anxiety about needing to do anything else, no slightly guilty feeling about whether I've done enough. I've figured out the rules and even gone beyond what is required so that I can feel justified and secure with no fear of anyone calling me out or thinking me a slacker. That's why I find this Jesus guy so upsetting.
There was a religious group in Jesus time that felt much the same way as this part of me does, the Pharisees. The Pharisees were the most prominent sect in Judaism at the time and pretty much set the tone on what it meant to be faithful to God. To them it meant being ever more specific and rigorous in how one met the letter of the requirements of the laws of Torah.
Judaism at that time was primarily modeled around the idea of a legal contract, the Covenant the Hebrew people held with God. God is basically beyond our compression as is the nature of our relationship with God, so we use concepts we are familiar with as analogies to try and get some sort of handle on the whole thing. The model the early Hebrew people used to explain their relationship with God was a covenant of the type that some neighboring nations had with their king, or which potentially hostile parties of the time created to keep the peace and form a basis for cooperation.
This covenant was portrayed in the Hebrew Scriptures as originating with Abraham:
I will set up my covenant with you and your descendants after you in every generation as an enduring covenant. I will be your God and your descendants’ God after you.8 I will give you and your descendants the land in which you are immigrants, the whole land of Canaan, as an enduring possession. And I will be their God.” (Genesis 7:7-8)
The Pentateuch, the first five books of the Bible, was written during the Babylonian Exile when the nation of Israel had been conquered by Babylon and much of the population had been taken there as captives. In an environment of slavery and oppression, they told a story of a compassionate, loving, and just God in the exploits of Moses and their people being rescued from another enslavement in Egypt. In this story, they used the Covenant motif to offer a way of life and treating each other that was in contrast to that of their oppressors. God was holy, loving, and fair. The Covenant required them to emulate this God and treat each other in the same way.
As part of the renewal of the Covenant with Moses, the Law was portrayed as a concession because the people were unwilling to bear the direct presence of God in order to follow his ways in spirit. In the renewed Covenant, the Law was seen as the terms and conditions of what was pictured as a contractual relationship with God.
In the time of Jesus, Israel had again been conquered, this time by Rome. Israel was occupied by Roman forces and was ruled by a client king. The Jewish people interpreted these events in terms of Covenant. God wasn't following through on God's side of the agreement. This must mean that they had not fulfilled their side. They must not be doing it right, or meeting the requirements to the extent and precision necessary.
Following this view, the Pharisees were particularly zealous in following Torah to the letter. They created numerous regulations and requirements on how to put Torah into practice. Much of this legalism was based on the Mishnah, a redaction of the oral traditions of the Pharisees from the Second Temple period (536 BCE – 70 CE). The Mishnah is comprised of examples of Rabbinical judgments that were used to determine the correct way to carry out laws recorded in the Torah. Each Rabbi would teach both the collected regulations, the "yoke", of his teacher and the line of teachers before him, as well as his own, leading to an ever increasing body of rules to clarify and break down in ever increasing levels of minutiae the proper observance of Torah.
This way of thinking carried over to their expectations of Messiah. The Messiah would be a figure anointed by God to show the people the proper way to observe the Law and bring them back into the right in their Covenant with God. He would bring a punishment on the people that would settle the debt for their past transgressions and would judge and purge the land of offenders. Once the people's side of the Covenant had been satisfied, he would, as God's Chosen, drive out the invaders and establish Israel as a powerful sovereign nation.
The drawback of this legalistic deficit mindset is that it doesn't leave much room for giving anything beyond the minimum of what is seen as required. If you believe that you are in debt and have fallen short of the basic requirements, it is difficult to consider going beyond the letter. How can you consider the spirit of compassion, community, and generosity that are the principles of the Law when you feel that your survival depends on just getting what's obligated by the letter and you are already coming up short? But, this is exactly what Jesus demands.
Jesus contends that our relationship with God extends beyond any legal contract. There is no point at which the demands of God's spirit; love, compassion, and fairness, are satisfied, where we can opt out when the spirit calls. The demand of the spirit can never be fully met or paid, so that anyone can claim to be fully righteous, paid in full, and beyond any further obligation.
For I tell you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven. Matthew 5:20For Jesus, it is more than the minutiae of what's technically correct, it is the principles and spirit behind the Law that is most important.
“Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You give a tenth of your spices—mint, dill and cumin. But you have neglected the more important matters of the law—justice, mercy and faithfulness. You should have practiced the latter, without neglecting the former. Matthew 23:23To make things even more challenging, Jesus also calls us to be totally unbiased, indiscriminate, and non-preferential in our practice of this boundless spirit of love, generosity, and compassion. There is no hierarchy of priority, or anyone we should not include. We are to love those outside our family, our religion, and our national and cultural groups the same, even those who hate us and mean us harm.
If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that? Matthew 5:46
“But to you who are listening I say: Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you. Luke 6:27-28
“If anyone comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters—yes, even their own life—such a person cannot be my disciple. Luke 14:26
Jesus was asked in the Gospels what the most important Commandment was.
When he answered that it was to love God and to love our neighbour as our self, he was asked who this neighbour we were required to love included. In response, he told a parable about a foreigner of a despised religion, a Samaritan. In the story, the Samaritan stops to help a Jew who had been left for dead by roadside bandits. Even though pretending to be injured was a common trick by bandits and he could be walking into a trap, and even though knew that Jews hated and reviled Samaritans like himself and we're forbidden from even associating with them, the man tended to his injuries and even put him up in an Inn and gave him money. He did this even though he was unlikely to ever see him again or get anything back. This is the un-preferential and boundless love that Jesus tells us God expects.
This teaching is quite in contrast to the limitations that some Christians justify. I recently saw a post that reported on a Religious Right activist who stated that Christians are not obligated, “to be giving money to feed those Muslims.” He claimed the Bible tells him only, "how Christian brothers are supposed to relate to Christian brothers, not how Christian brothers are supposed to relate to the lost world.”
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| "On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets" (Matthew 22:40) |
http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/daubenmire-christians-are-not-obligated-help-muslims#sthash.1R4MZVKC.dpuf
When I was in High School, the staff advisor for our Interschool Christian Fellowship group taught us the hierarchy of Christian duty he had learned at his Church. Our first duty and allegiance is to God, then one's spouse and family, then one's job, employer, and nation. This would make the difficult choices between competing concerns much easier, but it is not the teaching of Jesus.
Often our most difficult moral choices involve two legitimate demands from different people or groups that are mutually exclusive. To show your love and give your assistance to one means withholding them to the other. Whichever side you pick, someone is going to get hurt or neglected. A system like the one above allows you to make some of these choices in a way that absolves you from responsibility and guilt for your harm or neglect of the side not chosen and see yourself as "in the right". One can appeal to the authority of, "family comes first", to justify a decision and still appear righteous. Again, this does not follow Jesus' teaching.
As a young man, I was concerned that these teachings of Jesus were extreme, unbalanced and seemingly fanatical. They scared me. I looked at the life of Jesus in the Gospels and asked myself what it might mean to really follow this man and take up his call to emulate him and live like he did. I saw a man who lived in poverty, had no job, no home, and little possessions beyond the clothes on his back, and living off the charity of others. He was never married or had children. He was constantly giving his self to others to the point of ultimately giving up his own life and travelling a path that led to his execution.
When younger, I also heard a story about a Holy Hermit that I found disturbing. Holy Hermits were persons in the Middle Ages who, "turned their back to the world", in their desire to follow Jesus. They would travel the country, homeless, jobless, and with little in the way of possessions, giving sermons on street corners and depending on the charity of others for food and shelter. The story went that one particular Holy Hermit, who had no possessions other than the clothes on his back and a tin cup for drinking, one day spied a man drinking water using cupped hands. Once he saw this, he threw his cup away.
So, what does it mean to follow the way of Jesus. Is it a path of total martyrdom where you constantly give of yourself without reserve or boundary until there is nothing left, up to and including death? Does it mean limitless and unbiased giving where no preference can be allowed for those who might support you in return? Is it a totally self destructive road of self sacrifice?
I do not think this is the point of Jesus' teaching. I think what Jesus is calling us to is an acceptance that we will always be, "in the wrong", at some point and that debt and obligation is not something that can ever be paid in full by us. We can't earn or perform our way into a position where our part of an agreement with God is complete and we have some kind of right or power to demand things of God. We can never consider ourselves as set apart and special as compared to others. But, these things are not what the, "life more abundant" that he offers are about.
What Jesus is telling us is that being, "in the right", is not the priority or goal that we should be setting. People who set their priority on petty legalism and always being, "technically correct", usually have little grace and forgiveness for those who don't make the grade. And grace, mercy, forgiveness and inclusion are the major tenants of Jesus' teaching. The vision he shared of God that he calls us to imitate includes not only limitless love, compassion, and generosity, but also limitless grace, mercy, and forgiveness. God not only has boundless grace for us, God also calls us to have infinite grace for ourselves. We are included through grace no matter what, and we are called to practice that same inclusion to all around us with the same lack of stipulation.
I have been writing a blog series called, "A Literary Look at the Gospels". In this blog, I am working my way through the Gospels passage by passage in an effort to better understand what these teachings and stories meant to the authors and their faith communities. In the course of this study I have been quite excited by the themes of acceptance and inclusion I have been discovering in the second chapter of Mark.
The second chapter of Mark gives three stories in a row centered on Jesus' inclusion of those considered outsiders in the society of his time. In all three, inclusion is independent of performance and is a statement on the unrestricted compassion of God. A cripple, blocked from Temple sacrifice due to his deformity and therefore ostracized by the community, is pronounced forgiven by Jesus and brought back into the community. Similarly, a leper, also expelled, is made clean and returned the community. The third story involves a tax collector, a collaborator with the enemy, making profit through oppression and in competition with the collection of the Temple taxes and the tithes seen as necessary to regain God's favour. Jesus not only elevates him to the same social level as himself and other Teachers of the Law, by eating with him in his home, he honours him by calling him to be one of his disciples.
In these stories, Jesus deliberately picks three people who were excluded and reviled by the community that considered themselves as God's special chosen people, three people rejected because they were unable or unwilling to meet the requirements of the Law. He makes a point of including them, no strings attached. He requires no prerequisites, he does not condemn them or demand any change. In fact the only people he ever condemns or demands change from in the Gospels are the Pharisees and Teachers of the Law who consider themselves as righteous and having earned special favour with God, those who exclude and persecute others who they don't feel have matched their purity. He makes the point that all are welcome in the fellowship and community of God, God's kingdom, no payment necessary.
The Apostle Paul, in his Epistles, continues the metaphor of Covenant in order to explain Jesus' teaching in a way that it can be seen as a continuation and culmination of the Hebrew tradition. He portrays Jesus death in terms of a sacrificial payment that has met all the demands and requirements of the Law for us. For him, Jesus represents a New Covenant, with the Old Covenant fulfilled and completed and therefore no longer binding. The Law now no longer applies. He criticized those in the Christian movement who, by continuing to call for strict adherence to the purity laws, were rejecting the freedom of Christ to remain "slaves to the law" (Galatians 5:1).
Like the original Covenant metaphor, some people literalize this New Covenant or stretch it too far until it is not only no longer useful, but in fact harmful. A legal contract is not a love relationship. It is a power relationship where one party tries to control the actions of the other based on the terms set out. Legalism is an attempt to control God. Legalism is not love, and God is love. A legalistic mindset requires there to be terms on our side so that in meeting them we can force God to fulfill His/Her side. There needs to be a level of performance to meet so that we can consider ourselves as having merited special favour and set apart from others who fail to make the grade.
But, the beauty of this New Covenant in Paul's theology, is that it not only completely negates the requirements of the Old Covenant, but has no requirements of it's own. It is totally unmerited and totally without stipulation or condition. Yet this is beyond the grasp of many Christians who need a performance hurdle to feel like they have some control or claim over God and can perceive themselves as better and entitled beyond others.
Some Christian theology claims that the law was never fulfilled and negated, but is still in play. They believe that each transgression requires a separate act of forgiveness to be granted by God after it has occurred. This forgiveness is only granted if after each transgression we ask it of God in Jesus name, accepting Jesus sacrifice as payment for the punishment they believe we deserve. It also requires that we accept that the laws arbitrarily identified as being still in play (unlike others like eating shellfish or wearing clothing woven from two different types of material) are valid and deserving of punishment and death by a "just" God. And it requires an attitude of repentance, a decision and conviction not to engage in the unlawful behavior or lifestyle in the future. It is a well thought out, systemized and popularized theology cobbled together with a string of proof verses removed from context and a twisting and convoluted logic. But, it is not reflective of the spirit of the stories and teachings of the Gospels, or the writings of Paul and other writers of the Epistles.
So, given all this, how does Jesus call us to live? How do we know how to act or make value decisions if there is no ultimate set of binding rules or human authority to dictate how to implement them to allow us to be in the right in each circumstance? First, I think we need to give up the illusion that it is possible to be right and "justified" in every situation life brings us. We need to humbly accept that living means that we sometimes do the wrong, we harm or neglect the needs of others. We eat while others go hungry, we clothe and shelter ourselves and our loved ones while others go naked and homeless. We should no longer try to justify and enoble these choices, but humbly recognize our debt to those we share the world with. At the same time, we need to offer ourselves the same grace that God does and in accepting that grace extend it to those around us.
We can't walk through the field of life without bruising the grass, but we can be mindful, humble, and grateful. I think we need to adopt the mindset I have been told that some indigenous American people take towards hunting. They do not consider the animals they hunt and kill their possessions, or the animal's life their due. They do not see an animal's purpose as only to serve their needs, but as a creature that has the same right to life as themselves. When they kill an animal, it is never for sport, but to meet their own needs for survival. After taking an animal's life, they address the animals's spirit. They express gratitude to the animal for their sacrifice and tell them how their body will feed their family and tribe, and how all their body will be put to use with respect with nothing wasted. The point is that they do not deny they have taken what they have no inherent right to and treat the taking with humility and gratitude.
Without absolute law and authority to make our decisions for us, how do we decide when to put the interest and needs of ourselves over others and to what extent? The Gospels tells us that Jesus has sent us his spirit to guide us. This is the spirit behind the principles of the Law, "justice, mercy and faithfulness" (Matt. 23:23). It is also the spirit of love, compassion, and inclusion demonstrated in the Gospel stories of Jesus and his parables. We are called to make the best and most balanced decisions we can by the prompting of this spirit with grace both for others and ourselves. It is messy and filled with uncertainty and lacks the assurance, self justification and lack of moral responsibility one can find in Law and authoritative directives. However, it is a path of maturity, of accountability, of truth and integrity, the path of the Way of Jesus.
When I was in High School, the staff advisor for our Interschool Christian Fellowship group taught us the hierarchy of Christian duty he had learned at his Church. Our first duty and allegiance is to God, then one's spouse and family, then one's job, employer, and nation. This would make the difficult choices between competing concerns much easier, but it is not the teaching of Jesus.
Often our most difficult moral choices involve two legitimate demands from different people or groups that are mutually exclusive. To show your love and give your assistance to one means withholding them to the other. Whichever side you pick, someone is going to get hurt or neglected. A system like the one above allows you to make some of these choices in a way that absolves you from responsibility and guilt for your harm or neglect of the side not chosen and see yourself as "in the right". One can appeal to the authority of, "family comes first", to justify a decision and still appear righteous. Again, this does not follow Jesus' teaching.
As a young man, I was concerned that these teachings of Jesus were extreme, unbalanced and seemingly fanatical. They scared me. I looked at the life of Jesus in the Gospels and asked myself what it might mean to really follow this man and take up his call to emulate him and live like he did. I saw a man who lived in poverty, had no job, no home, and little possessions beyond the clothes on his back, and living off the charity of others. He was never married or had children. He was constantly giving his self to others to the point of ultimately giving up his own life and travelling a path that led to his execution.
When younger, I also heard a story about a Holy Hermit that I found disturbing. Holy Hermits were persons in the Middle Ages who, "turned their back to the world", in their desire to follow Jesus. They would travel the country, homeless, jobless, and with little in the way of possessions, giving sermons on street corners and depending on the charity of others for food and shelter. The story went that one particular Holy Hermit, who had no possessions other than the clothes on his back and a tin cup for drinking, one day spied a man drinking water using cupped hands. Once he saw this, he threw his cup away.So, what does it mean to follow the way of Jesus. Is it a path of total martyrdom where you constantly give of yourself without reserve or boundary until there is nothing left, up to and including death? Does it mean limitless and unbiased giving where no preference can be allowed for those who might support you in return? Is it a totally self destructive road of self sacrifice?
“Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will find it."
(Matthew 16:24-25)
I do not think this is the point of Jesus' teaching. I think what Jesus is calling us to is an acceptance that we will always be, "in the wrong", at some point and that debt and obligation is not something that can ever be paid in full by us. We can't earn or perform our way into a position where our part of an agreement with God is complete and we have some kind of right or power to demand things of God. We can never consider ourselves as set apart and special as compared to others. But, these things are not what the, "life more abundant" that he offers are about.
What Jesus is telling us is that being, "in the right", is not the priority or goal that we should be setting. People who set their priority on petty legalism and always being, "technically correct", usually have little grace and forgiveness for those who don't make the grade. And grace, mercy, forgiveness and inclusion are the major tenants of Jesus' teaching. The vision he shared of God that he calls us to imitate includes not only limitless love, compassion, and generosity, but also limitless grace, mercy, and forgiveness. God not only has boundless grace for us, God also calls us to have infinite grace for ourselves. We are included through grace no matter what, and we are called to practice that same inclusion to all around us with the same lack of stipulation.
I have been writing a blog series called, "A Literary Look at the Gospels". In this blog, I am working my way through the Gospels passage by passage in an effort to better understand what these teachings and stories meant to the authors and their faith communities. In the course of this study I have been quite excited by the themes of acceptance and inclusion I have been discovering in the second chapter of Mark.
The second chapter of Mark gives three stories in a row centered on Jesus' inclusion of those considered outsiders in the society of his time. In all three, inclusion is independent of performance and is a statement on the unrestricted compassion of God. A cripple, blocked from Temple sacrifice due to his deformity and therefore ostracized by the community, is pronounced forgiven by Jesus and brought back into the community. Similarly, a leper, also expelled, is made clean and returned the community. The third story involves a tax collector, a collaborator with the enemy, making profit through oppression and in competition with the collection of the Temple taxes and the tithes seen as necessary to regain God's favour. Jesus not only elevates him to the same social level as himself and other Teachers of the Law, by eating with him in his home, he honours him by calling him to be one of his disciples.
In these stories, Jesus deliberately picks three people who were excluded and reviled by the community that considered themselves as God's special chosen people, three people rejected because they were unable or unwilling to meet the requirements of the Law. He makes a point of including them, no strings attached. He requires no prerequisites, he does not condemn them or demand any change. In fact the only people he ever condemns or demands change from in the Gospels are the Pharisees and Teachers of the Law who consider themselves as righteous and having earned special favour with God, those who exclude and persecute others who they don't feel have matched their purity. He makes the point that all are welcome in the fellowship and community of God, God's kingdom, no payment necessary.
I do not set aside the grace of God, for if righteousness could be gained through the law, Christ died for nothing! (Galatians 2:19)
The Apostle Paul, in his Epistles, continues the metaphor of Covenant in order to explain Jesus' teaching in a way that it can be seen as a continuation and culmination of the Hebrew tradition. He portrays Jesus death in terms of a sacrificial payment that has met all the demands and requirements of the Law for us. For him, Jesus represents a New Covenant, with the Old Covenant fulfilled and completed and therefore no longer binding. The Law now no longer applies. He criticized those in the Christian movement who, by continuing to call for strict adherence to the purity laws, were rejecting the freedom of Christ to remain "slaves to the law" (Galatians 5:1).
For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to every one that believeth. (Romans 10:4 KJV)
All things are lawful for me, but all things are not expedient: all things are lawful for me, but all things edify not. (1 Corinth. 10:23 KJV)
For freedom Christ has set us free. Stand firm, therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery. (Galatians 5:1)
Like the original Covenant metaphor, some people literalize this New Covenant or stretch it too far until it is not only no longer useful, but in fact harmful. A legal contract is not a love relationship. It is a power relationship where one party tries to control the actions of the other based on the terms set out. Legalism is an attempt to control God. Legalism is not love, and God is love. A legalistic mindset requires there to be terms on our side so that in meeting them we can force God to fulfill His/Her side. There needs to be a level of performance to meet so that we can consider ourselves as having merited special favour and set apart from others who fail to make the grade.
Legalism is an attempt to control God.
Legalism is not love, and God is love.
But, the beauty of this New Covenant in Paul's theology, is that it not only completely negates the requirements of the Old Covenant, but has no requirements of it's own. It is totally unmerited and totally without stipulation or condition. Yet this is beyond the grasp of many Christians who need a performance hurdle to feel like they have some control or claim over God and can perceive themselves as better and entitled beyond others.
Without absolute law and authority to make our decisions for us, how do we decide when to put the interest and needs of ourselves over others and to what extent? The Gospels tells us that Jesus has sent us his spirit to guide us. This is the spirit behind the principles of the Law, "justice, mercy and faithfulness" (Matt. 23:23). It is also the spirit of love, compassion, and inclusion demonstrated in the Gospel stories of Jesus and his parables. We are called to make the best and most balanced decisions we can by the prompting of this spirit with grace both for others and ourselves. It is messy and filled with uncertainty and lacks the assurance, self justification and lack of moral responsibility one can find in Law and authoritative directives. However, it is a path of maturity, of accountability, of truth and integrity, the path of the Way of Jesus.
