2023-08-27 A Meditation on Theology

“1 We give thanks to you, O God; we give thanks, for your name is near. We recount your wondrous deeds. 2 “At the set time that I appoint I will judge with equity. 3 When the earth totters, and all its inhabitants, it is I who keep steady its pillars. Selah 4 I say to the boastful, ‘Do not boast,’ and to the wicked, ‘Do not lift up your horn; 5 do not lift up your horn on high, or speak with haughty neck.’ ” 6 For not from the east or from the west and not from the wilderness comes lifting up, 7 but it is God who executes judgment, putting down one and lifting up another. 8 For in the hand of the Lord there is a cup with foaming wine, well mixed, and he pours out from it, and all the wicked of the earth shall drain it down to the dregs. 9 But I will declare it forever; I will sing praises to the God of Jacob. 10 All the horns of the wicked I will cut off, but the horns of the righteous shall be lifted up.” (Ps 75:1–10 ESV)

Theology has a few chestnuts for us, one, that no logic of actions and consequences applies to the new believer’s testimony: the judgment belongs entirely to God and not to Man. So the lifelong Christian is in that same boat: who’s to say that the valleys of godless despair and wistfulness, are not somehow things that have built character or better outfitted the new believer for Heaven? And who’s to judge the new believer’s genuine article: the genuine curiosity to know what they can learn from those having under their belt a long walk of faith?

Theologians mutter and implicate, blaming man’s perennial onslaught of reasoned deductions, for trying to tax each other for sins past, for prescriptions of good works that are needful for “shaping”, “discipling”, “tutoring” the slightly unwanted or seemingly unkempt new believer… or seasoned believer who simply has their own gig going. Therefore the theologian is unsurprised at the willingness to serve, the willingness to testify, the willingness to have a glad happy and honest inquiry into faith matters: this is no occasion for the frustrated long-time churchgoer to call ironical foul. There is no foul: this new convert has had an experience of Jesus; they sign on the dotted line and take up the full mantle of faith. They are soldiers and messengers, fighters and worshipers, who know Divine Oversight, unhindered by past sins or unresolved debts, joyous to know the One who Loved.

Yet each of us can cry out, “Unfair!”. It is an occasion—the theologians tell us—to work out our own salvation with fear and trembling (Phil 2:12). It is an occasion truly to dwell in that head trip of self examination: all our deeds, in and out of church, are oblique, tainted, lugubrious, until we credit the Lord for paving a way forward, for seeing us with unhindered eyes, for turning our flailings into Goodness. And thus a good theologian does not take up an accounting of good deeds, but rather blesses those others near each other in the faith journey, and learns from each such one to make proper confession in season and in Hope.

Hope, that is, for a final reckoning wherein all are begging, all are appealing to a God some know more of and some know less of, for sanctuary and for continuance of this walk called Life. We love ourselves on some level, even as we hate ourselves on another level; we long and believe in a way to live faithfully and a way all absolved. We see our inner man in frightening state at times, as though our religion only increased the temptations. As though it was never a wise move to follow Him; yet to follow is to put to rest all such doubts, taking a step that leads by one, that leads just enough, to say, if the trials are myriad, the resolutions are that much richer. Many trials, but a greater boon: the headaches and fantasies and strange pursuits are never healed by our own sanctity, but by a living Dynamo called Journey and called Faith and called Divine Blessedness. God blesses us, and that was only a devil who lived a step or two behind the main gig.

So the theologian is first of all obliged accurately to tell of what this world teaches: namely, that there is much goodness in the seasoned believer’s arsenal, much innate and habitual Christianity, that they have ways of having avoided certain ruts altogether, whereas the sinner has habits and pastimes that are not so easy just to wish away. The sinner know a few things, in a context wherein it is called Blessed by some theologians, to know less rather than more: innocence is held up, by Catholic and Protestant alike. And then the theologians parry with the fresh-faced faithful: take up this calling if you have courage, to be just as absolved as our friend long in the pews. Dare you, to walk in this new light? Can you accept a father’s or mother’s blanket forgiveness, or do you doubt and worry about falling back on old ways? See the dare, see the opportunity, see the genuine article. God is for us, God is minting fresh words from fresh persons. God is turning on its head all worldly accumulations of good works and of habitual “goodness”.

Character is a product of mercy received rather than litanies observed. Character is birthed in that impossible realization of sin knocking at the door, but Christ knocking all that much more determinedly. To be His people. To fight His fights. To mellow and vibe with the Call to rest and readiness, for tomorrow, for this journey, for this Calling unto which each new face and old warhorse is just as equipped to understand, to make sense of, to speak into, and to reflect upon with wisdom of godly regard. For if once called, then always called. If once brought to the altar, then all one’s life too brought to that place of sanctuary and forgiveness. Let us not tax and prescribe remedies, but listen and murmur words of thanksgiving, of joint worship, of appeals for those in our midst struggling and persecuted, and find this day, here and now, a theologically significant puzzle: is salvation by faith, or is it by good works? Are we ready to forgive again, and yet again, or do we expect an accounting: “I forgave you once, you now owe me some fruits…”

As if: such forgiveness is no forgiveness. Such mercy is a frustrated and unfulfilling way to be. Rather, let us like Christ find in ourselves—perhaps by our own repentance, or perhaps mystically and potently found just by inspiration—the power to forgive, and give chance upon chance, to love the unlovable and sin-wrecked, not to be jealous but rather to appreciate all that our Lord has sheltered our steps from discovering, from painful discovery. For all that hayride was somehow innocent of the deeper sins, sins against the altar, against the Name, against the limited capacities of the human heart to self-heal and cope. The one without a guidepost needs all the more to dwell near to perpetual mercy and new creation of that altar, of that Name, of that uncompromised relationship.

Some trials require that certain footing of a God-walk, not a hayride; such hayride at once turns evil, it has no ballast. And of these we speak in whispered composure, no longer frightened but grown up unto sympathy and reaction, always reacting by accepting newfound mercies… by faith, not by sight nor by works.