“11 Do not speak evil against one another, brothers. The one who speaks against a brother or judges his brother, speaks evil against the law and judges the law. But if you judge the law, you are not a doer of the law but a judge. 12 There is only one lawgiver and judge, he who is able to save and to destroy. But who are you to judge your neighbor?” (James 4:11-12 ESV)
Radically Christian, the zealous one performs strange non-compete deeds, strange self-humbling deeds, strange ways they invite all manner of scorn and contempt: why don’t you lead us? Why not a little admixture of “how the world, basically, works” within the spell or formula of your faith-based outlook? Why so quick to give it all away?
Meantime the pundit of One Doctrine ceases to apologize for the worldly-wearying aspect of their gamesmanship. Like a good game of pool or billiards: we stay sharp and eyes on the cue ball. We contest the competition using every manner and dignity of exchange with the alternate, with the foe. We contest as though fighting a worldly battle, because our Theology is plainly competed out of the frame, denied out of the relevance, hated for its apparent weaknesses or overt humilities.
Therefore to curb the desire to write the nasty email, is a curbing around Reflection: that there are mysteries beyond our ken, mysteries that spell out strange Qualities of family life or life in community. Strange ways some creed or habitual doctrinaire “good works”, “humility”, “dispassionate reflection”, “love for the brethren, for the sistren”, do lift a higher purpose.
Because Man drives Man mad with his or her utterly flawed but at time inspired deeds. The demand, perhaps, for immediate answers or resolution to Battle: it is a football game in each of our respective lives, and Christ has given us one we can win, because to boast in Him is finally no proud or ambitious Calling, but a surrender to some modicum of stern reaction, some modicum of tasteful refusal, some modicum of patient blessing.
All these things we do, because Christ has carved the way for us. So to the frontline! We shall be hated by son and daughter for our Creed, for our Good Works, because they came across as surrender, as too weak. But in this criticism, do we see them also as deeds too Otherworldly? Deeds that engender good works in others? Deeds yes vulnerable to the atheist in our midst, but damn the torpedoes, no willingness to cease with the self-humbling, weaker outlay. For the Believers in our midst.
Apparently weaker, the soldier rightly reflects on the heights reached by a peer, their respective Calling and Career, with solemn—not covetous desire—desire to Learn from them and to Glean from them. For this we curb the personal characteristics and personality traits, and become tabula rasa, a blank slate.
The One Doctrine, this is the hurried escape from all worldly condemnation, to the Cross. It is more than the teaching that “you must give all your goods away to the poor”, more than that “you must be meek”, more than “turn the other cheek”. Christ’s strange One Doctrine, so Pauline, is hushed and whispered-over precisely because it doesn’t flatter us or meet our approval due to it centering on Good Works.
God’s One Doctrine centers on the radical claim of the Cross, minus good works to point to, hated or maligned for the ill-repute of a death on the Cross, and strangely warming our hearts to a celibate or dessicated, dried out, Tomorrow, one spelt large with good works, precisely because we left them airy and non-doctrinaire.
So to this Doctrine, we cease to ape each other with good works, but start to fight the good fight, pragmatically knowing that trials will come, that a stern countenance is called for in anyone who is potentially in a leadership position, that the “logic” of “I want a resolution today” meets with the reality of yardage in a football match: we have a duty to be stern and patient, leadership material, even though it gets boring or is unrewarded. But all this only for those who have once tasted the Creed and seen that it is Good.