“And Jesus said unto him, ‘Why callest thou me good? there is none good but one, that is, God.’” – Mark 10:18
“For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: Not of works, lest any man should boast.” - Ephesians 2:8-9
“And straightway the father of the child cried out, and said with tears, Lord, I believe; help thou mine unbelief.” - Mark 9:24
A bit of housekeeping, as the saying goes. I’m planning this as a sort of series of amateur sermons. I’m not a pastor. I’m not a religious scholar. I’m just kind of an egghead and a follower of Jesus Christ. But I wasn’t always. I grew up an atheist, a nihilist really, and then was a Zen Buddhist for many years. A lot of readers (relatively speaking) have asked me to write out that story and maybe I will. I’m afraid memoir is the least appealing genre to me, and I think in this essay you’ll see why.
Anyhow, when you see an issue titled “Ecclesia” you’ll know that we’re going to get explicitly Christian about things. I think there is room for an allegorical interpretation on some issues if you’re not a believer. That’s okay with me. I’d love for you to get something out of these, but I’m not going to softball anything or attempt to be ecumenical or inclusive. However, take what I say with a heaping helping of salt and always check anything that sounds right from me against scripture and the Spirit.
Roughly speaking, I see my work going forward divided into these categories:
1. General uncategorized essays, largely on Philosophy and the Arts
2. “Words, Words, Words” – My series on etymology
3. “Ecclesia” – Sermons, more or less
4. Short Stories
5. An as yet untitled and unwritten series on the nature of Identity, which I see as a (if not the) core issue in human life
This is all to say that if you enjoy my writing, but don’t think you’re a Christian, no hard feelings about avoiding this series. But I feel compelled to write it and have for a long time. I want to offer my thoughts on the Christian walk and hope to be of service to you in this way. It’s also a way to work life out on the page.
“Ecclesia” is the Greek word in the New Testament that we commonly translate to “church”. It really means something like “the called out people” and has connotations of a beachhead or military outpost. Strictly speaking, in NT terms, the “church” is simply a collection of people called out from “the world” who seek to follow and trust Jesus of Nazareth, at all costs. That sometimes involves a formal structure and a building, sometimes it doesn’t. So, this is like my online church and I welcome you and hope you’ll get something here if you’ve never been comfortable in a “church”, as it were. Jesus said: "For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them.” I see no reason why this gathering is limited by space and time. So please join me, if you would.
I am not a good person. Neither are you. Sorry. I mean it as no insult. But there’s always a trap laid out for us to think that we are. Or, that if we just do the right mixture of practices, or had the right thoughts, or knew some hidden knowledge, we could become good.
Why this quest? I believe unless someone is really deranged and committed to evil, people want deeply to be good. The problem is that people are poised to do evil. Even if we are not habitually committed to a wicked path, the world’s ethics and actions serve to teach us that ends justify means. We have only to look very recently in history to see the horror born of ostensibly seeking “the greater good”. I’m speaking of the sincerely motivated people. Obviously there were and are many people intentionally acting for wrong.
I’m going to get very personal in this essay, if not particular. I think it’s rather inappropriate to display your specific dirty laundry publicly, and I think it’s most often done for the purpose of increasing social capital. The currency of the realm is victimhood and narcissism, unfortunately. And while I can appreciate a dash of sympathy as much as the next honest person, I don’t want to be pitied by anyone but the Lord, and I certainly don’t want to make a supposed sermon about myself. I’ll talk about me only as far as it points to Jesus, to the best of my imperfect ability.
Let me tell you why I’m writing this at all. I got very angry this morning and was almost cruel to the people I care for most. Before you go ringing up the authorities, this is no occurrence that would even remotely be classified as abusive, and “objectively” might be shrugged off by most as no big deal. Just some hurtful comments and a bad temper. But see, this is just the issue. We play this “not-as-bad-as-hypothetical-awful-behavior” game and think that absolves of us of our sin. Hell, we tend to think it even negates the existence of said sinfulness.
Of the ol’ Seven Deadlies, my biggest struggle is Wrath. Anger is a fine synonym for modern discourse. I even use the phrase “I have a temper”, as if that somehow makes it okay or that it is an immutable part of my being. It’s a sin and I need to do better at calling it what it is. Admitting you have a problem is step one, etc.
Here’s a rub for you though. I am a better person now than I once was, dramatically so in comparison to before Jesus got a hold of me. And people generally think I’m a good person. I’m sort of stereotyped as a “nice Christian fella”. People seem to trust me implicitly, and a fair amount of people like me. They tend to think I’m smart and kind and easy to get along with. And again, to a degree they are right. I take people’s trust seriously and do my best to honor it. I’m objectively intelligent and I don’t bear much ill will toward anyone and I think I’m sociable enough to get on with most normal people.
None of this is the righteousness to make me worthy of the love and provision of a Holy God.
Bear with me a while longer while I really twist the knife. As always with our God, the final word is Hope. But we have to see for ourselves the situation we’re really in before Reality can make any sense. This is nothing the great preachers of history haven’t covered exhaustively and well, but maybe the modern voice of some former nihilist turned Buddhist that God plucked from the fire has something useful to add. In any case, I feel called.
So in contrast to the perfectly fine bloke I described above, let me tell you what else I am. I am quick to anger, slow to listen, greedy, stubborn, gluttonous, distractible, petty, lustful. A former addict, a former cheater (in multiple meanings), a former lover of literally satanic music, a former womanizer and probably former misogynist. Praise be to God the Father of our Lord that I can append “former” to the descriptions of the last sentence.
I do want to offer a word of caution here though. I have a tendency to think that those terrible, sinful qualities in the preceding cursed litany are the “REAL” me. I’m not really a Calvinist and I don’t believe in so-called “total depravity”. Without getting into the theological weeds here, I think “sufficient depravity” is a fine descriptor of our condition. Without God, I will inevitably revert back to being the person described in the last paragraph and I can’t do anything to save myself. As to the “real” me, I am at present a mixture of the Good and the Wicked. That is reality. And that is the reality of most people. Both good and bad.
I’m pretty well into thinking that freedom from sin means we are free from being bound to commit it. We can obviously still choose to sin, but in the unregenerate state we didn’t have a choice. We simply do what is wrong, being darkened in our understanding of what is Right. Once we have claimed Christ as Savior, we see with the eyes of the Spirit and we can make better choices. I see this in myself. I used to always get angry when what I “wanted” was frustrated. 100% of the time. With the Law written now in my heart, if I call on Jesus’s help, I find myself supernaturally behaving in a way that I could never accomplish back in my Buddhist days when I simply tried really hard to be compassionate and loving.
But more often than I’d like I reject His help, and try to live in my own Kingdom, and invariably become a tyrant. This is the process of but an instant. And what I’m left with in the aftermath of my scorched-earth war on Right is a deep regret and a heart-wrenching cry for forgiveness to Him who is Perfect Goodness. This what happened this morning. And I’m basically in a state of grief over it.
Hence this essay. All of our problems come from thinking wrongly about God. I feel somewhat uneasy making such an absolute statement, but I do think that is the core issue in human life. And I behaved the way I did, and I feel the way I do, because I am thinking about Him wrongly. I’m trying to set myself straight here in this essay, and maybe it will help you do the same.
See, the way I feel right now, I think, “how could God possibly love me or take care of me when there’s this much wrong with me?” But that’s a thought about me, not God. It’s a commentary on my character and my myopia and my obsession with myself. It’s thinking that my value as a person comes from what I do in my own power. It comes from thinking that if I just try harder and make myself righteous, then! - O, sweet “then”, God will accept me and I will deserve His love.
But I don’t deserve his love and nothing I can ever do will make me worthy of it. I don’t mean to say being Good doesn’t matter. It is of the utmost importance to God that we become Good people. It is a crucial part of his redemptive purpose. But we tend to get the order of things mixed up terribly. God does not love me because I am good. I become Good because God loves me.
Hard as we might try, we cannot earn grace. I am flattered when people say I’ve changed for the better since following Jesus, but I didn’t really do it. Well, I did in a way. As Dallas Willard used to say, “Grace is opposed to earning, not effort.” I do work to follow Christ’s commandments. But let’s not let Pelagius in through the back door here, I’m no heretic. My success in doing this fruitfully is based entirely on my acceptance of my total dependence on Him. Without Grace, I wouldn’t even have the thought to do something different than my inclination to sin. And He gives me the strength to follow through on the Right course.
I point all this out mostly to tell you (and myself) that this is all irrelevant in terms of God’s love. God doesn’t need anything. But let me tell you a mystery: He wants you. And me. To be completely honest with you, I don’t know why. While theologically accurate to say it is because love is God’s nature, that explanation doesn’t quite touch the heart for me. What does is Galatians 2:20: “the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me.” [italics mine]
Look to the Cross. That’s what God thinks of you. Something to the effect of: “I would rather be brutally tortured to death than be without you.” This is what I need to remember when I’m caught up in my petty legalisms about how I’ve lost my place in the Kingdom for getting mad and saying some rude stuff. It’s navel gazing in the end, when set against the magnificent and overwhelming love poured out in the blood of Jesus. And I ask you, and myself, a question that makes us all a little uncomfortable I think, if we are honest: Is there a sin which the Blood does not cover? Only one, and while it’s a subject for another piece, it’s not the one we would exclude in our human understanding of justice.
Let me try to leave you with something you and I can take away from this in a memorable way. See, the title I gave this piece was a bit of a misdirect. On my own, I am not good. But I have good in me that the Son has shined there and will continue to brighten unto eternity. This is the Christian Hope. Jesus the Hope of Glory. All of God’s awesome Goodness transforming who we are down to the very core. “We know that, when he shall appear, we shall be like him.” So day by day, if I will invite the Lordship and Kingdom of Jesus into the fine texture of daily life, I will be more and more truly good.
God sees what we will be, and is working that out in us if we consent to it. So I, and you if this is your issue, need to set aside these ideas that we can become good on our own and the guilt that comes with inevitable failure.
As to the (I hope) memorable bit:
Stop trying to make yourself Good.
Believe that God loves and accepts you as you are and you will be inevitably drawn to His Goodness. Your heart will cry out for Holiness and He will help you to become it.
Another bit of radical honesty for you: I don’t always believe the last two sentences. I know that they are true, though. And in some sense of the word, I do believe it always, and more strongly at some times. Let’s pray for any lingering unbelief to be taken from us.
Father, I believe that you love and accept in me in Jesus. Help thou my unbelief! Help me see, by the eyes of your Spirit, the truth of your transforming love and give me your strength and power to walk the righteous path by your side. Help me to find my value in what you have done for me, and not whatever small thing I can offer you. Help me to understand that my work will be multiplied like the good seed, many fold, if I will only trust you and not my own designs. Strengthen in my heart the overwhelming desire for your Kingdom and your friendship. And forgive me where I fail to follow. In the mighty name of the Lord Jesus. Amen.
At first I was slightly offended by your observation that you grew up atheist/nihilist, but then upon rereading, I realized you said grew up, not you were raised. So I take that to mean you accepted responsibility for that action. Our home was always God-centered though not yet, until recently, pulled into the flock of Jesus.
This is a concise description of the condition in which all of humankind finds itself. Yes, the struggle to be good or to be perceived as good most often stands in the way of what God has carved out for us. It is almost as if some super evil power devised this non-winnable game to keep us distracted from winning the ultimate prize. Ha ha. Thanks for putting your thoughts out there.