I've been rolling a metaphor around in my head recently, and finding it useful in my attempts to articulate several different things. I think it began - at least in its current form - with another metaphor, in a discussion I had several months ago with my friend Nancy, about being and doing. We talked about stew: the steaming, savoury stuff of winter afternoons.
"What does stew do to make itself taste better?" asked Nancy. It cannot toss in a few more carrots or (in my kitchen) more garlic. It cannot reduce the amount of salt that's been added. It can't even change the temperature from a simmer to a boil. A stew is in fact rather limited in what it can do. The real power, the real artistry, is in the skill of the cook. He or she knows just what the stew needs - and when (because soggy vegetables are an abomination) - to make it delicious.
So what
can a stew do? Well, it can...
stew. It simply must
be, and trust that eventually it really will turn into a delicious stew, a worthy meal to nourish the hungry. And stew, to fully accomplish its purpose, must be served to others. There is always the element of doing. But half-stewed stew - lukewarm and crunchy, flavours as yet unmingled into perfect harmony - is a work in progress and not ready to be served.
This forced me to take a closer look at the ideas of being and doing. I had been talking to Nancy about how I "ought" to be reading my Bible more regularly. Her retort caught me off guard:
"Well, I guess that's just one more thing you're failing at." Her issue, of course, was not with the idea of reading the Bible more, but with that little word "ought."
I had taken the life-giving, soul-nourishing, spirit-refreshing act of Bible-reading and turned it into one more bothersome little "chore" that needed to be done. To be sure, there is a place for duty in the Christian life, but it is a starting place, a way for the beginner to set foot on the Way or for the doubter to walk forward into renewed or deepened faith. Duty, like the Law, is a form that tells us what we
must do. But what God most desires of us is that we do what we do because we
want to do it, because we can't help but do it, because our love of Him is so great.
"I desire to your will, O my God; your law is within my heart." My struggle is to keep moving from duty to desire, to let God's law work its way into my heart. Or maybe it's the other way around: my heart works its way into the law, transforming my motives and perspective. The question is,
how does one move from duty to desire, without making that goal into yet another duty?
Sacrifice and offering you did not desire,
but my ears you have pierced;
burnt offerings and sin offerings you did not require.
Then I said, "Here I am, I have come—
it is written about me in the scroll.
I desire to do your will, O my God;
your law is within my heart." --Psalm 40:6-8
For me it has meant trying to release myself from the guilt trips of what I "ought" to be doing. I am learning to say
No a little more often, at least until I can say
Yes with sincere desire. I am giving myself space and time to discover what it means to abide in Jesus. Eugene Peterson describes it as,
making "yourselves at home with [Jesus]" (John 15, the Message). Clement of Alexandria used the phrase
"keeping company with God." The point is to focus on my relationship with God (what it means to
be a child of God), not my "results" (the stuff I
do that authenticates that relationship). Relationship will ultimately point me to God, as the giver of His love and His blessings, which includes the gift of my status as His child. Results, in their best form, should naturally flow out of that relationship and draw us closer to God and point others toward Him. In their worst (and more common) form, results will begin and end with us - striving in our own strength to do what we feel we have to do to find favour with God.
It is this connection between relationship and results that got me looking for a metaphor. As soon as someone talks about being, another feels compelled to speak up for the necessity of acting out ("doing") our beliefs. Emphasize faith and another will defend works. Each perspective is valid, and the two truths are perfected when held in tension. But how can we hold that tension?
I have always been a doer, largely because I like lists, I like to check things off. I like the feeling of control that comes with doing. Also,
being freaks me out a little bit. It's so abstract, and I am a concrete kind of thinker.
What does it mean to be in Christ apart from what I do? What kind of intimate human relationship would be even remotely satisfying for either individual if
results were the main theme of its existence? How much more so with God?
Surely He must occasionally wish we would ditch the deeds long enough to hang out with Him and get to know Him better, to find out what's on His heart, and let Him show us what's in ours. Faith and works must indeed go together but not in such a conscientious way as I'd always thought. I shouldn't be
making works happen, they should just be happening on their own without so much forced effort on my part.
Here's where my new metaphor comes in. Picture two lovers, a husband and wife bound together by love and commitment. Because they are in love, their time together is characterized by joy and contentment and comfort. Because of the time they spend together and their promise to each other, their relationship is secure against all threats. There is no place they would rather be than in each other's presence. Eventually, during their most intimate expression of love for each other, a child is conceived. Over the course of nine months, their love will blossom and deepen in recognition that this child is the wonderful - and inevitable - "result" of their love for each other. Further, if we were to ask the couple about what they did to "make" the baby, they would probably not start speaking about zygotes or the dividing of cells. They would speak of the act of love that is at the centre of their relationship. Ultimately, this child "happened" because they love each other, not because they consciously thought about matching up sperm and egg.
I think this is similar to how we are meant to be in relationship with God. As our love for God grows and matures, our deeds will be the inevitable result of that love.
If we obsess about "making" deeds happen, we have missed the point entirely. If we instead will pour our energies into loving God and growing in our relationship with Him, those deeds will begin to happen without so much thought or effort on our part. Our deeds will be the fruits of desire instead of duty.
In his essay entitled
Lilies That Fester (from
The World's Last Night and Other Essays), C.S. Lewis talks about words such as
refinement and
religion, and how people who speak in such terms are in fact the ones least likely to be defined by them. That is, the one who speaks most about piety is the least likely to be truly pious, the one who speaks most passionately about culture is the least likely to in fact be cultured. He writes,
"The talk is inimical to the thing talked of, likely to spoil it where it exists and to prevent its birth where it is unborn." (33)
And so it is with deeds. The more time you spend talking about doing them - what you should be doing, what you don't need to do, what you don't want to do, what others are doing or not doing - the less time you're spending in your relationship with God, which is the only source of truly good deeds. I have found this to be true in many areas of the Christian life, just one example being the obsession of some believers about submission (a flawed result of imposed duty rather than a generous outpouring of love). Darrell Johnson's book
Fifty-Seven Words brought up another one. In the fifth petition of the Lord's Prayer, believers are told to pray and ask God to forgive their debts,
"as we also have forgiven our debtors." Many have struggled with the apparent suggestion that we might not be forgiven by God if we haven't first forgiven others who have sinned against us. Consequently, we can get lost down the familiar rabbit trail of insecurity or indignance about faith versus works.
As Darrell points out, the issue is not about a formula we must complete in order to earn favour and forgiveness with God, rather it is about whether or not we truly understand forgiveness. He quotes John Stott (who so often makes profound statements with few words):
"God forgives only the penitent, and one of the chief evidences of true penitence is a forgiving spirit." Like the unmerciful servant of Matthew 18, if we dare to ask God to forgive our mountain and yet refuse to forgive another's molehill (so to speak), we have missed the point entirely.
If we don't understand forgiveness enough to give it, how can we pray to receive it? The two are in fact one and the same.
I think that's almost the end of my ramblings, for today anyway. I guess my point is that
our human tendency is so often to try and reduce the complexities of relationship with a simple formula for results. Rules are so much easier and more efficient than the demands of relationships. They may limit the chance of messing up (with regard to the letter of the Law, anyway), but they also limit the potential for true Love to do its - His - own work in us. Why play with a ragdoll of our own making when we're able to give birth to real babies with God? Or, to borrow from Jesus' analogy, why fiddle about with plastic fruit when He can produce
real fruit in us - as we learn what it means to abide in Him.
"Live in me. Make your home in me just as I do in you. In the same way that a branch can't bear grapes by itself but only by being joined to the vine, you can't bear fruit unless you are joined with me. I am the Vine, you are the branches. When you're joined with me and I with you, the relation intimate and organic, the harvest is sure to be abundant."
- John 15:4-5, The Message
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