2023-07-13 A Meditation on Doctrine With Wings

“12 Blessed is the man who remains steadfast under trial, for when he has stood the test he will receive the crown of life, which God has promised to those who love him. 13 Let no one say when he is tempted, “I am being tempted by God,” for God cannot be tempted with evil, and he himself tempts no one. 14 But each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire. 15 Then desire when it has conceived gives birth to sin, and sin when it is fully grown brings forth death. 16 Do not be deceived, my beloved brothers. 17 Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change. 18 Of his own will he brought us forth by the word of truth, that we should be a kind of firstfruits of his creatures.” (Jas 1:12–18 ESV)

Ask the average bearer of a cross, the average one with a cruciform testimony, just how that theology carries a load, and they will tell of winsome Word that has gone the full gamut. It has flexed ideological muscle, holding up under intellectual scrutiny (“Is this a sensible creed?”) and painstaking application to what is practical (“Can it lighten my burden?”). The soldier is bearing on their back a light burden and a simple exchange of testimony for assurance from Above. And this creed is something strong but also delicate: we call it many things, good breeding, character, loving nature, camaraderie, affectionate desire. We mourn when others, pinched or panicking, seem to fail to “get” what seems common sense: no laborious demands of submission, but an airy demand that we salute this same practicality and call for agency. We are agents of the Lord, we are to salute, and to cease to compete as to which one is the secret “head”, for we are friends one with another, and love, and long to be in the machine of service unto a skeptical and lost world.

Some doctrine has wings. Some doctrine goes all the way through. We discover this often not with our innate sense of good taste or of fashion, but in this field, as it carries us through the day, as it preserves those ideals we hold to be holy. Keeping us holy, keeping us in dialog, keeping us in good labors.

That is, we live into and unto our creed. We embellish plain speech, theology, prayer time, some nod to what we hold to be holy, with deeds and exploration, no longer exasperated. Indeed, the plain complaint that crazy deeds are putting people at risk, spiritually, physically, is an exasperation that meets forgiveness. We need not occupy ourselves with thoughts too holy for us, as to whom God saves and how and in what manner. But we tinker with that sense of exasperation, because it is easy for people to flip-flop: I was strong, then my convictions met an interloper, an odd face, a new explanatory device; I lacked the backbone to distinguish betwixt the two.

That is, creed lived out is a creed proven in the trenches of life. In the fighting posture, in foxhole and bunker, it bears a load. It bears the weight of much pragmatic experimentation. It suffers wisely under our banter and jokes, it holds up under our meek sense of guilt at some things, it encourages us to be strong for a bigger war, a war that begins when for once we proclaim ourselves to be forgiven. It is a creed airy and hung on the laundry line bright and proper, to billow in the summer air. It is our inner delight, our ebullience at day’s end, our solemn discovery now joyous and personal to us.

This is the certainty that even to become exasperated is a bit of a sin; we learn instead to love through the pains of child-rearing, of those less experienced than us or—this we learn—simply with complementary life experience. That is a love bedrock, patient, and determined. It is submission not to our own sinful devices, but to a shared Creed and Cause. We are flag-bearers for the Lord and more: we are inducted and submitted to a Word and Creed, a lifestyle called Holy, an experiment underway called Society, called Soldiering, called Religion. And that is something mysterious, but this we know: that it goes all the way through the matter; it is strong for whatever comes our way; it bears a load.