Court Dismissed

When I was in my late teens and early 20s, I listened (surprise!) to a lot of country music. One of the songs which cropped up then (this was the late 90s, and early 2000s), was "Wave on Wave".

I've thought of that song the past couple of weeks, as I've been reading online. What I've read has shown me that the songwriter was correct: Americans really are all looking for redemption.

Driving this thirst for redemption is the desperate need that each of us has to know we are good, that we are moral people, living worthwhile lives. On the New Yorker, Joshua Rothman wonders why we spend so much time on Facebook, in light of how given over the website seems to be to perpetual outrage and anger. His answer? Whenever we judge the actions of others, or even when we expose ourselves to judgment, online, we have the chance to either confess our sins, or be cleared of them. This, Rothman writes, is what our the righteous anger of Facebook reveals: that we "yearn for absolution; we want to be declared innocent of the crimes we see around us."

Yet of course, posting on Facebook does not offer sufficient assurance that we are truly innocent people. Surrounded by the darkness of this world, we will never know ourselves, without a shadow of a doubt, to be moral, worthy people. Thus, we seek out ways to cleanse ourselves from sin, changing our eating habits and our reading and our exercise in order to make ourselves pure. Food journalist Mark Bittman writes that when people ask him about changing their diet, they "usually say one of two things: 'You've helped me chance my life,' or 'Please help me figure out how to change my life.'  Bianca Czaderna points out that the theology section of every bookstore is piled high with self-help books, dwarfing older classics like Augustine and all promising transformation, and personal breakthroughs. In other words, diet is a gesture to prove ourselves innocent; reading, a modern Virgil to direct us away from our personal hells towards a mini heaven-on-earth, a place in which we can hopefully find ourselves innocent. Heather Havrilesky writes in the New York Times that perhaps our awareness of the cultural sins drives us to seek innocence and moral rectitude, however difficult the path. Pointing out the link between materialism and our cushy work environments, she suggests that some Americans seek to free themselves from this materialism through punishing workout programs such as CrossFit. Indeed, these workout programs could amount, she suggests, to a kind of religion: "Like the idealists and extremists who founded this country, the modern zealots of exercise turn their backs on the indulgences of our culture, seeking solace in self-abnegation and suffering."

Importantly, this questing for moral purity, for purification, is not limited to unbelievers. I confess to wondering, explicitly, the question which these writers raise: Am I good? Am I succeeding at the standards which measure goodness? Specifically, do I spend enough time with friends, or do I spend too much time on my own? Do I use my time in a worthwhile manner, or do I fritter it away on the Web? Do I use my money responsibly, or do I purchase too much chocolate? By my answers to these questions, I judge myself. I am certain that you who are reading this blog ask yourself similar questions, and judge yourself by your answers. Even church talk urges us to measure ourselves against a standard, albeit a holier one, and when we fail to measure up, purify ourselves: So many sermons, or chapel messages, I have heard recently boil down to this: Be good. What good means is of course defined in more spiritual ways: using our time for God's glory, witnessing to people, being thankful for things. But when the message is stripped down to its skeleton, what remains is Be good, a Christianized call to live in a such a way that we can assure ourselves of our own purity.

I do not want to say (indeed, I cannot say) that following Christ involves no moral effort on our part. Throughout his ministry Christ calls His followers to a life of self-denial, to a rigorous pursuit of purity. But this is not the whole story. I am not even convinced that it is the largest part of the story. When we tell the story of who we are in Christ, what we do for Him should not figure most prominently; what should figure most prominently is what he does for us.

Here is what He does for us: He loves us, without condition. In Him we are pure and holy.

Over the past weeks, I have been reading the Gospel of John. John 3:16 is perhaps the best-known verse in the Bible; preachers occasionally refer to John 3:17 as well, using it in its soteriological sense, to assure us that our sins are wiped out in Christ and we no longer bear the penalty. But I think that, even after the moment of salvation, John 3:17 offers an enormous reassurance for believers: In Christ there is no condemnation. 

In the world, there is condemnation in abundance. If you don't eat local, or if you eat at McDonalds, you are condemned. If you cannot breakthrough to a "purpose-driven life" or your "best-life now," you have somehow failed. If you are not pushing yourself physically, if you are not fit and caring for your body, you are condemned. Even in the church there is condemnation: Progressive Christianity, I have read (I cannot remember where), condemns those who hold traditional beliefs as holding harmful beliefs, or simply unscientific ones. Conservative Christianity condemns those more interested in progressive beliefs as walking away from God, or abandoning a commitment to God's word. We condemn people for not praying enough, not thanking God enough, not reading their Bibles enough, not evangelizing enough. We condemn and condemn and condemn, and yet we do not feel more pure.

But in Christ, all of this condemnation is at an end. Jesus Christ loves us, without reserve, and in His life we find ourselves made pure. We condemn ourselves, but He does not condemn us. We perpetually hold court, declare ourselves innocent or guilty, and assign penance to purify ourselves of sin. Christ dismisses the court, and gathers us into His arms: There, resting in Him, we are forever holy and beloved.