Thoughts

“Your righteousness is an everlasting righteousness,
and your law is truth.” – Psalm 119:142

“Your law is truth.” We aren’t used to thinking like this. We think of laws as rules, so how can rules be truth? We read our own assumptions about what laws are back into the text and thus can’t really hear the text. We need a deeper vision of God’s law to understand what the psalmist is getting at here.

God’s commands are truth because they reveal reality, and they guide us in the path of true human flourishing. God’s law is truth because it co-inheres with what really brings life. God’s law is truth because it warns us away from paths that would lead us astray into death and destruction, for ourselves and others (even while promising life). God’s law is truth because it tells us the truth about life, and the path to true flourishing.

As Dallas Willard said, “The law is never the source of righteousness, but it is forever the course of righteousness.” That is, God’s law is the path we walk as justified people who have been co-crucified with Christ. God’s commands are the path of our participation in Christ and the mode of our transformation into Christlikeness.

It’s a bit like a dare: Try living your life this way and see what happens! That’s trusting Jesus: putting his teaching into practice. We participate in his life not by merely thinking about his teaching or articulating an understanding of how formation works, but by actually walking the path of God’s commands. By actually putting Jesus’ teaching into practice in concrete, practical ways.

God’s law is truth (especially and specifically as interpreted and proclaimed by Jesus)! It reveals to us the true nature of reality, and illuminates the path of true human flourishing. So we walk it out, not because we’re afraid of punishment if we don’t “follow the rules,” but because we trust the One who is guiding us, that he knows what’s best for us, wants what’s best for us, and is able to accomplish what’s best for us.

Here’s St. Augustine on the perennial question of prayer: If God knows what we need before we ask him, what’s the point of prayer?

Why we should pray, when he knows what we need before we ask him, may perplex us if we do not realize that our Lord and God does not want to know what we want (for he cannot fail to know it), but rather wants us to exercise our desires through our prayers, so that we may be able to receive what he is preparing to give us.

His gifts are very great indeed, but our capacity is too small and limited to receive it… The deeper our faith, the stronger our hope, the greater our desire, the larger will be our capacity to receive that gift, which is very great indeed.

St. Augustine, quoted in Wright, J. Robert, Readings For the Daily Office From the Early Church, p. 377.

I’m reminded of C.S. Lewis’ words, too:

If we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that Our Lord finds our desires, not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.”

It seems that in prayer we exercise our desires, as St. Augustine said, and we also exorcise our desires. In prayer, if we will be honest about our desires, God will help us discern where our desires have been misdirected, where we have settled for making mud pies in the slum instead of packing for our holiday at the sea.

We pray because there is no other way to sift and sort through our lives profitably. We must lay the reality of our lives before the Lord honestly and trust him to lead us into life as he expands our capacity to receive the good gifts he longs to pour out upon us.

There is simply no other way to do this than learning to pray. In prayer our desires can be discerned and our capacity for participating in God’s life can be expanded.

These are some beautiful thoughts about the parable of the prodigal son from Peter Chrysologos, Bishop of Ravenna [450 AD]. Notice how there is no hint of shame in the way the father embraces his wayward son.

“I will break away and return to my father.” What is the basis for such hope, such assurance, and such confidence on his part? The very fact that it is his father to whom he will return. “I have forfeited my sonship, ” he tells himself, “but he has not forfeited his fatherhood.” There is no need for a stranger to intercede with a father: it is the father’s own affection which intervenes and supplicates in the depths of his heart.

And the father, on sighting his son, immediately covers over his sin. He prefers his role and father to his role as judge. At once he transforms the sentence into pardon, for he desires his son’s return, not his ruin. He “threw his arms around him and kissed him.” This is how the father judges and corrects: he gives a kiss in place of a beating.

The power of love takes no account of sin; that is why the father pardons his child’s guilt with a kiss, and covers it over with an embrace. The father does not reveal his child’s sin, neither does he stigmatize his son; he nurses his wounds in such a way that they leave no scar or dishonor whatsoever.

Peter Chysologos, Sermons 2-3: PL 52, 188-189, 192, quoted in Wright, J. Robert, Readings For the Daily Office From the Early Church, p. 375-376.

Recently I read through the Old Testament books of Ezra and Nehemiah. I was especially struck by Ezra’s repentance in chapter 9.

He finds out that other Israelites have sinned. He hasn’t committed this particular sin. Others have. And yet, when he hears about it, he spends a full day in mourning, and then prays in full identification with his fellow Israelites who have sinned.

My God, I’m too ashamed to lift up my face to you. Our iniquities have risen higher than our heads, and our guilt has grown to the heavens.

Ezra 9:6, emphasis mine

I often have the opposite impulse. When I hear about the latest ways Christians have failed to care for the orphan and widow, when I hear of their complicity in acts of violence and oppression, I don’t immediate identify with them and ask God to forgive our sins.

Instead, my temptation is mostly to distance myself from such Christians.

But there appears to be some power in this kind of repenting on behalf of others. Ezra’s repentance in chapter 9 paves the way for the rest of the people to repent in chapter 10. They mourn their sins and renew the covenant and return to the Lord.

In years past, when I went on vacation, I wanted to receive some big revelation from God about my calling. I noticed others would go away on retreats and come back with the next 10 years all mapped out because God spoke to them.

That sounds pretty good to me, but it’s literally never happened. I used to worry that this meant I had taken a wrong turn somewhere in the past and had been slowly drifting away from God for years and could never find my way back.

But I don’t worry too much about that anymore, because (in general) I think the way God guides us is much different.

Now I think about more like a general orientation that guides my life, and a trust that God will be present and at work in the midst of whatever circumstances come up in the midst of that journey.

For example, I know I have a priestly call to minister God’s word and sacraments to God’s people, to help them pay attention to how God is at work in their lives. But as far as the specific steps to take along the way, well, I don’t even know what the options will be until we walk it out.

In the midst of the general orientation and call to ministry, I simply pay attention to what God seems to be doing in the midst of it, and respond with a YES. The specific twists and turns along the way can’t be known ahead of time, so it’s fruitless to try and predict the future or “get a word from God” that will guarantee a positive outcome.

Instead, you simply orient yourself in the direction of your call, and keep your eyes open for God’s activity, trying to stay within the wake of God’s grace as he goes ahead of you.

So it’s less like having a map, where you know the exact location of your destination, and the terrain you’ll be encountering along the way, and more like having a general orientation and being ready for whatever along the way.

It’s like checking your compass to make sure you’re oriented to true north, and then trusting that God will be present and at work in whatever challenges the terrain presents along the way.

That isn’t to say that God doesn’t give us specific words sometimes, but that’s not the only (or even normal) way he guides us.