Be a Christian

On the one hand: we should die to asceticism. Suffering needs no representation; it finds us. There is no need to craft it into an aesthetic, though some are drawn to monastic displays of sorrow as a catharsis. Yet suffering is not a performance. Our lives are shot-through with it—unbidden and inescapable. So if we must suffer, let it be a truth lived rather than staged with self-imposed monkery. There is, in my view, no clearer sign of a privileged and charmed life than having to design one’s own penitence.

On the other hand, we should love a poverty of spirit. The Franciscan theologian, Murray Bodo, in his “The Way of St. Francis” has the following to say which corrects my thoughts in the preceding paragraph: “In the midst of all the smoke and fire over the issue of poverty stands the simple Francis. For him poverty was never an end in itself. … In what is probably the earliest biography of St. Francis, a little allegorical work entitled Sacrum Commercium, the core of Francis’ relationship to poverty is sketched in a few deft lines. When he (Jesus) began to preach, he entrusted holy poverty as a light into the hands of those who enter the door of faith, and he set it as the cornerstone of his house. … How different is the thinking of Francis from those of us who fret about what is to be done to build up the Kingdom of God, as if we are the ones to bring about God’s Kingdom on earth. For Francis it is sufficient to be poor out of love for the Poor Christ. … It is not what we do that brings about the Kingdom, but what we embrace that God might dwell among us … the gospel paradox that to lose one’s life is to gain it. His poverty is a way of acting, of choosing, rather than a passive victimhood that lets things happen to him. It is love and not, as is sometimes thought, self-hatred or the desire to punish himself for his sins that impels him to embrace Lady Poverty. … Kissing the leper is the great moment of enlightenment for Francis, because it proves the truth of God’s words to him. The poverty and deprivation Francis chooses to suffer for the rest of his life is really a kissing of the leper’s hand, a further putting on of the mind of Christ that enables Francis to become poor, to see the world as God sees it.”

But seeking or loving poverty is no kind of principle. In fact, death to principles, too! The world loves principles because they offer efficiency, a semblance of control, a way to rationalize sweeping judgments. If the New Testament gives us greater understanding of what is truly human, then we should see clearly that there is nothing more opposite of that—nothing more inhuman—than efficiency at the expense of the individual person in his or her infinitely complex relations to the Creator and to creation which change at every moment. We get it wrong when we try to draw-out "biblical principles"; Christ’s Word gives us Christ. To religiously follow principles is to smother the conscience that must navigate a world infinitely more complex than any maxim can comprehend. Do principles inform the conscience? Sure—but they do so poorly, mechanizing moral life until we are no longer thinking, no longer feeling, only executing a script. Love is not a principle. Only persons love.

Democratic man votes on principles according to a framework. But time and again, when put into practice, we witness those principles carve through the lives of the suffering like a blade through a mass—and people are not a mass. The truth is that there are no collective groups, no monoliths to carve-up this way; there are only failures to see differentiation in God’s infinitely diverse and constantly changing handiwork. So it’s not just that the principles we invent are imperfect; they’re simply delusions. As for me, I no longer pretend to have any framework. I have studied them all, and I have none of them. The law is written on the heart, not in a handbook, not in an ethical system. It is personal. It is Christ working on my conscience every day in different ways.

Yet, if I must name something, as maybe a general rule of thumb I tell myself two things. First: When we’ve heard it all before, if we actually believe that to lose one’s life is to gain it, we’ll start living that way. That isn’t so much a principle to be followed at the expense of honesty; it’s rather a description of what will indeed happen in the Christian. Second: The more we know, the more we will hold it all lightly. Even these words will pass, as will my thoughts, my frustrations, my grasping at certainty. The kingdom is not built on my anxieties. What remains? The same answer as always: be a Christian. Even when the church falters, even when it is unfaithful, even when everything crumbles—be a Christian. Follow Christ.