9 - 1 - 2017 A Church of Accountants (4 minutes)

“Therefore stay awake, for you do not know the hour or the day.”

I think this is intended less to have us fretting about the apocalypse every morning than to remind us that our faith is always urgent, as Lewis says it must not be of moderate importance.

It’s very tempting to let ourselves go in our spiritual life, just as one might cheat on a diet. We say, “I’ve been so good lately” or “surely just a little can’t hurt” and then spend hopefully days, but sometimes weeks, sometimes months being dishonest in our faith, paying lip service to God without really offering the effort that would be necessary to sustain the oath.

There’s a certain type of fundamentalist that will criticize the more conservative branches of Christianity, especially Catholicism, for attempting to be their own saviors, earn their way to Heaven. I see where they’re coming from. From the outside a Church that has allowed indulgences, that offers specific penances for specific sins, that has it members every service pray the act of contrition, seems to be one interested in a certain bookkeeping of righteousness.

They see this as a counting of sins, weighing it against our good works, as though we are trying to come out of life debt-free and being worthy of Heaven. I think the reason we do these things is two-fold, well most likely more but I can think of two good reasons.

When people are accountable, even if only to themselves, they behave better, work harder. If we aren’t constantly evaluating how closely we are emulating Christ in our life how should we know when we went astray? And what better way to evaluate than to look at what we’ve actually done?

I’ve written before and still currently feel that much of the importance of good works is the change it creates within us but that’s not something we can see! On the contrary good works are both the instigator and symptom of a righteous and harmonious inner life. We don’t keep track of our sins and good works because we think that they are what matters. We keep track of these things because it’s the closest approximation and indication as to what our inner state is like at the moment, something we could never directly observe.

For anyone who has pursued science at anything above an elementary level this concept of indirect observation is quite familiar. There are some things we have trouble observing but we know have strong correlations to things we can very easily observe. Therefore, rather than going through the often formidable, often impossible, challenge of attempting to directly measure these things we take what we can get, and apply our models from past observations to approximate the true state of the object of interest.

The second is a more emotional and less practical reason. If I say I love someone, say I dedicate my life to their service, say that I will forever be grateful for all they have done for me, but do not act upon their wish, wouldn’t it be better had I never lied to them?

Jesus says this to Peter in his commissioning of the Church, “Do you love me?”. Yes Lord. Then feed my sheep, tend my flock, teach my people. Christianity was not founded as a religion of feeling, but as a religion of doing. As much as Jesus taught people to forget their troubles in the world and look ahead to Heaven, he also spent time solving their current problems. Banishing demons, curing sickness, raising the dead, he was no mere philosopher and we are not to be simply his admirers and students.

If we claim Jesus as our savior but don’t do our best to work for His Kingdom we’ve written a bad check, we’ve been lying to the only one we could never get away with lying to!

So when we try to take account, try to measure ourselves by some real and tangible yardstick we are not asking God if we are worthy of Him, we’ve known forever we are not, we are simply trying to live up to the promise we have made. Not that we could fulfill it, but so that we can at least be true to our word.

This religion of action as opposed to feeling concept also featured prominently in an article I read recently from Brett and Kate McKay on the feminization of Christianity. I don’t really feel like summarizing the article but I found it informative, fair, and very interesting. He’s a better writer than I would’ve thought, but usually when I’m reading his stuff it’s advice on making tents and managing time so maybe an article like this would give that talent more exposure than other topics.

Writing about differences between Christians reminds me of Lewis’s Mere Christianity. I think if everyone who claims Jesus read that we wouldn’t converge into one or even a couple dozen denominations, but at least we wouldn’t be so indecent to each other once we contemplated our common ground.