In
a recent sermon I quoted the saying “When all is said and done, a
lot more is said than done.” I first saw this on a poster in the
1970s but I just read a blog post on the Psychology Today website
with that as a title. I have always thought of the quote in reference
to the numerous committees and meetings one attends as a part of an
organization or bureaucracy, where things are discussed exhaustively
but they rarely lead to any kind of action, except possibly the
issuing of a report. My idea of hell would be an endless series of
meetings in which trivial things are painstakingly dissected with
nothing concrete to show for it.
But
the subtitle to this piece by Dr. Gordon S. Livingston is “A
relationship is a collection of promises, explicit and implied.”
This is true of a marriage, a friendship, a common interest group (like a church) or
even a commercial relationship. Whether those promises exist in a
signed contract, in spoken vows or are simply assumed, relationships
depend on the acceptance of certain responsibilities. The promises boil down to this: I
will treat you well and not harm or betray you and I trust you to do
the same.
The
post was otherwise kind of all over the place but it did have another
good observation: “Any unkept promise ought to be interpreted as a
statement of priorities.” And that's true even if the promise goes
unfulfilled for what are universally recognized as good reasons. If
I didn't fulfill my promise to take you to dinner or to Disney World
because someone I love suddenly got ill, that simply means that the
life or health of the person in question is more important than the
activity postponed. If, however, I stay home to watch the game rather
than go to your mother's funeral, well, that means my pleasure is
more important to me than supporting you in your grief. Exceptions
reveal one's true priorities and principles.
In
the honor/shame culture in which the Bible was written, one's word was
supposed to be inviolate. We pay lip service to this idea but sadly,
we live in a culture where we routinely don't believe certain
people. It used to be quite bad for someone in public life to be
caught in a lie. They might be fired or forced to resigned or at
least censured in some way. Unfortunately, that no longer seems to be
the case. None of the tobacco industry CEOs who lied to Congress
about their knowledge that smoking causes cancer went to jail.
Candidates and government officials lie with impunity. Talk show
pundits and radio personalities say outrageously false things and
rarely pay in plummeting ratings. So we have whole websites that
fact-check things that are said by politicians, talking heads, and
the internet and rate them as true, mostly true, half-true, mostly
false, false and Pants on Fire! The last rating means a statement is
so extremely false that the person could not be merely mistaken but had to
know he was lying. I haven't noticed this putting the brakes on
persons who say things that, in this information age, are easily
tracked down and proven to be false. People who thrive on social
media don't even register embarrassment when they contradict what
they previously posted.
Even
in the Bible we see an acknowledgement that people can say one thing and
do another. In our passage from 1 John, it says, “How does God's
love abide in someone who has the world's goods and sees a brother or
sister in need and yet refuses to help? Little children, let us love,
not in word or speech, but in truth and action.” And while people
cynically accept that politicians lie, they get outraged when
Christians do so. Recently the #MeToo movement brought down David
Silverman, president of the organization American Atheists, founded
by Madalyn Murray O Hair. Silverman's board terminated him for sexual
misconduct and assault. And yet under the Facebook post was a comment
that had he been a Catholic priest, he simply would have been moved
to another parish. It didn't matter that movie moguls, famous actors,
comedians, governors, mayors, senators and representatives, and even
atheists have been ensnared in sex scandals. People are more incensed
when Christians get caught. They hold us to a higher standard.
And
they should. True, we are sinners like everyone else but we should be
getting help for that. We should be able to see a situation like this
developing in our church and especially in our own life. We should
catch it in the early stages and take action. If a prominent person
in rehab were routinely binge drinking or doing narcotics or
gambling, we would look askance at him. Sinning is a much broader range of behaviors but as it said in our passage from 1 John last week, “Whoever
remains in him doesn't continue to sin. Whoever keeps sinning has
neither seen him or knows him.” (1 John 3:6) I translated the verb
for “sin” as “continues to sin” and “keeps sinning”
because the Greek verb tense indicates an ongoing action or habit.
Again people in AA are not surprised if someone in the program falls
off the wagon. But if they aren't really trying to stay sober, the
group may exclude them until the person shows that they mean to get
into the spirit of the thing and starts working the 12 steps again.
But
notice that in our passage the big contradiction pointed out is when a Christian
fails to show compassion in a practical way. If you see someone in
need and you can help them out but don't, how can you say that you
have God's love in you? 1 John says, “We know love by this, that
[Jesus Christ] laid down his life for us—and we ought to lay down
our lives for each other.” And though in that time period, you
could literally die for being a Christian, he is talking about not
dying here but living your life sacrificially for others.
Again
the world knows this and every time a wealthy TV evangelist buys a
multimillion dollar airplane or gold-plated bathroom fixtures but his
church does not do much to help the poor, people get outraged. And
sadly, this has led some to think all churches are raking in the money and all
preachers are in it for the money. That's like thinking all radio DJs
make the kind of money Howard Stern does. Quite frankly, I was going
to enter seminary right after college. I became a nurse to pay my way
through seminary. And then I realized I was making more money as an
LPN—not even an RN but an LPN—than I would as clergy. Plus I was
married by then and having kids. So my plan to become ordained went on the
back burner for a couple of decades. Today, it turns out, the average pastor/priest actually makes about $5,200 a year more than
an LPN, probably because the medical establishment is trying to phase
out practical nurses. Still nowhere near a fortune. (Oddly enough the highest average pay for clergy is in
Nevada! Is that because of all the sinners repenting or do high
rollers tip the Lord well when they hit the jackpot?)
The
3 elements of any religion are belonging, believing and behavior. And
every religion has more luck with the first 2 than that last one.
Belonging is great. Having a group of like-minded people whom you
care about and who in turn care about you is good for you
psychologically and physically. In fact, most scientists attribute
the undeniable and verifiable health benefits of religion to the
social aspects of the phenomenon. Part of the reason they do is that you can quantify
attendance. Part of it is that they are loathe to attribute the
things they see among active members, like lower blood pressure,
better recovery from disease and longer life, to the action of God.
It
is harder to measure how much someone actually believes. Sociologists
and polling organizations like the Barna Group and the Pew Research
Center use studies based on self-reporting. Thus we can know what
people say they believe. Gallup found that only about a
quarter of Americans believe the Bible is the literal Word of God.
However, the majority of Christians (54%) will agree that the Bible
is the inspired Word of God. According to Barna, 56% of Americans
believe Jesus is God, though that drops with each younger generation.
And while 6 in 10 Americans say they have made a personal commitment
to Jesus, that percentage is higher among women (68%) than men (56%),
is higher among black Americans (80%) and non-white Americans (65%)
than whites (60%), and higher in those making less than $100,000
(63-65%) than those making more than 100K (53%).
Behavior
is, oddly enough, the hardest thing to quantify. While almost 3
quarters of Americans (73%) claim to be Christians, less than a
quarter of Americans (23%) go to church weekly, though just over half
(51%) say they go at least once a month. Just over half of Americans
have given to their church (54%) in the last year and 22% have given
to another non-profit. Overall, 96% of practicing Christians have
ever given money to a church or another non-profit whereas only 60% of
atheists and agnostics have. 75% of Americans say they have prayed to
God in the last week, only a third (34%) have read the Bible outside
of church, and about 1 in 6 has volunteered at a non-profit (19%) or
at a church (18%).
Now
one presumes that some of the money given to a church will go to help
the needy, yet it is hard to find any statistics on how many
religious programs there are to help the poor. All we can say is,
there are a lot. Large churches run soup kitchens, food banks and
homeless shelters. While the majority of churches in this country have less than 100 members, even small churches can contribute
to things like the local food pantry or to denominational efforts.
Every denomination has organizations that help the poor, immigrants,
people in developing nations and gives grants and funds to local
churches with specialized ministries to the homeless, the hungry, and
the disadvantaged. But there doesn't seem to be a clearinghouse for
all the data from all the denominations.
However,
I did find a disturbing poll taken by the Washington Post and the
Kaiser Family Foundation. In it 46% of all Christians said a person's
poverty is generally due to a lack of effort. Only 29% of all
non-Christians felt that way. Worse, 53% of white evangelical
Protestants blamed poverty on the person's lack of effort. Only 41%
attributed poverty to difficult circumstances. I find that incredible
considering that evangelicals pride themselves on taking the Bible
seriously and the Bible mentions the poor, the needy, the hungry, the
sick, the blind, the deaf, the lame, the fatherless, the widow, and
the resident alien more than 800 times. (Reality check: how many
times does the Bible refer to homosexual activity? 7 times. Which do
you hear evangelical preachers talking about more often?)
Sadly, when it comes to helping the poor, many Christians point to 2 Thessalonians 3:10 which says in part,
“Anyone unwilling to work should not eat.” But Paul was
addressing people in one church who thought Jesus' return was so
imminent that they had quit work and were just waiting for the second
coming and mooching off others. In no way did Paul, who exhorted
Christians to help the poor (Romans 15:26; Galatians 2:10), mean for
skepticism to be our default attitude towards the needy. Nor did
Jesus. (Matthew 5:42; Luke 14:12-14)
We
are saved by God's grace not by works. But works should be the
natural outcome of the action of God's grace on our lives. In fact
the most famous passage about this reads, in its entirety: “For by
grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves;
it is the gift of God, not of works, that no one would boast. For we
are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which
God prepared before that we should walk in them.” (Ephesians
2:8-10) We are not saved by works but we were created to do good
works. God intends us to help others. They are a sign that we are in
good spiritual health. When you are in bad health you refrain from
doing things because they are difficult or impossible. When you are
in good health you engage in healthy activities. You should be able
to go on a long walk without getting winded. You are able to go out
with friends, do things around the house, help out an aged or infirm
relative or neighbor without any thought for whether you can. If you
can't, there is some health issue you need to correct.
God
is love. If we are in good spiritual health, we should be making that
love concrete in all we do. And just as you have to be healthy to do
exercise, doing exercise in turn keeps you healthy. If you ask me, a
lot of the spiritual ill health we see in the church has do with our
not doing our spiritual exercise, that is, not doing loving things for
others. Somehow we have come to think that spirituality is strictly
internal. It is something that takes place in the mind and heart.
True, but if it doesn't manifest itself in how you live then it is
merely notional. Jesus went off by himself to pray but then he got to
his feet and went out and healed the sick and forgave the
guilt-ridden and fed the hungry and guided the lost to the truth. He
was the most spiritual person ever and yet he didn't shut himself up
in a cave or on a mountain top and meditate his life away. He plunged
into his mission of bringing good news to others, both with his words
and with his works.
Somewhere
along the line we have gotten the idea that what I do, standing up
and preaching, is the main thing the church should do. And the world has
heard our fine words and said, “Put your money where your mouth is.
Act like you are following Jesus.” And the world is right. It is
simply seconding what James wrote 2000 years ago: “Show me your
faith apart from your works and I will show you my faith by my
works.” (James 2:18) Show; don't tell. When all is said and done,
there's a lot more said than done.
At
the jail last week an inmate pointed to the verse where Paul says “If
you declare with your mouth, 'Jesus is Lord,' and believe in your
heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.”
(Romans 10:9) Which makes it sound as if there is nothing more to
being a Christian than believing something and saying so. I pointed
out that in those days just saying that could get you killed. Saying
you were a Christian in public was a brave and death-defying act. In
the year 112 AD, Pliny, governor of a province in what is now Turkey,
wrote to the emperor Trajan about what to do with Christians. He said
he would give them 3 chances to deny they were Christians, invoke the
Roman gods, offer prayer, incense and wine to an image of the
emperor, and curse Christ. Those who refused and persisted in their
loyalty to Christ, even under torture, he executed, as he did with
two slaves who were deaconesses. Trajan wrote back that Pliny had
done well.
Yet
they were not able to stamp out Christianity. In fact, the bravery
with which Christians faced death made more converts. Pagans were
especially impressed with the way Christians stayed in cities when
plague struck and took care of the dying at the risk of their own
lives. They feared neither despots nor disease nor death. They made
their lives and their deaths count. What they found worth dying for
made life worth living.
If
it were illegal to be a Christian here, as it is in certain parts of
the world, would there be enough evidence to convict you? Has your
life changed sufficiently that the only explanation is that the God
who is love, and who was incarnate in Jesus Christ, lives in you? Are
you willing to lay down your life and take up your cross for others
as Jesus has done for you? Show the world.
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