More on whether we need the law

It’s even intellectually harder sometimes to convince Christians of the value of doing good than non-Christians, ironically. Why do good deeds? And apparently it was a problem almost immediately for the church, historically, so much that it required addressing by the apostles. The early believers ingested the message of the ultimate importance and centricity of Christ to their salvation and personal approach to a Godly life, and then let it subsume and eradicate, rather than reinforce, the importance of everything else.

Salvation gives special understanding, and a particular motivation and power to godly living. But godly living, moral living, good living is the business of all men and women, saved or unsaved. It isn’t eradicated by the existence of salvation. And there’s a lot of stuff that needs to be done well, perhaps less than moral but vaguely related, regardless of salvation. Nutrition won’t save your soul, but you still need nutritionists. You might have extra motivation or understanding or power to follow good nutrition, having been saved, but the principles of nutrition are out there for all to discover and be helped or harmed by.

Being saved might help someone face having to go to the doctor, but the question of whether you need to go to the doctor as part of caring for yourself isn’t answered in itself by whether you are saved or not. Whether you are or not, you might need a doctor to help you take proper care of yourself. Being saved might help how you face the existential fact of it, if you’re caught in a natural disaster, but you’re still going to need the assistance of aid organizations, emergency services, etc.

FEMA can’t save your soul, but it still does some good. Compassion International won’t save the souls of every kid they help, but it’s still objectively good to help someone and do good to them even if they don’t get saved. Jesus did good to people because that’s what God would do. He would be kind, seek justice, seek to prevent evil, because that’s objectively a good thing to do. That’s what being godly is. Not just being saved, but acting as God would.

Salvation may be the greatest good, but it’s not the only good. It is a means to the other moral goods, not merely an escape or substitute. And the moral goods can be pursued and brought to light and enacted in our lives and those of others, and that’s a good thing, regardless of whether or not they result in an immediate conversion.

Solomon had to do a lot of law writing and wisdom teaching that didn’t directly relate to salvation, but had a lot to do with the little things of life that, while not of ultimate importance, can really get in the way if they’re not dealt with. It’s hard for some people to hear the gospel or be worried about their sin if they can’t even eat, or are worried they’re going to be killed. Jesus offered living water and living bread and heavenly sight, but he was also pretty generous about actual bread and water and wine. Coming to bring salvation didn’t invalidate the value or eradicate his efforts to do good in the world, it elevated them, it gave them purpose and extra meaning. Salvation isn’t something we can force on others either. It’s something God has to work out with that person. But showing kindness and generosity and fairness and justice to others, even defending it when need be, that’s incumbent on all of us at all times.
The burden of time and the nature of the fight that must be fought in every place in every time, over and over, to do good and help maintain that mission of kindness and justice, can be exhausting. Good teachers eventually get burned out and exhausted and depressed and can’t keep fighting and retire (Mr Hunter felt that way). Good Christians get tired and depressed and fall back on their ultimate hope because they can’t keep caring or fighting as much as they could when they were younger. And that perfectly understandable, and reasonable in many ways. And even right. There comes a time when you have to accept that it’s no longer your part to worry so much about the deeds and outcomes of the world and let your part in them diminish and eventually even cease. And there are many extremes to be avoided. Extremes of religious piety that seek salvation in works are clearly a problem. But so can a myopic focus on salvation. Roof-sitters, waiting for the end, or seeing no value in other questions or actions because the most important question has been settled. Properly understood, salvation is an engine for enabling the work before all men and women, that of living in a godly manner in the world we find ourselves in. Salvation may be the only engine that will reach the ultimate destination, but it’s our lot in life to drive the road, regardless, and to help others down that road, whether they get to the destination or not. We’re not ultimately in charge of whether they do. But we are called to help them as we can, as God would. Maybe that means helping them be fed, or find justice, or live in a healthier manner, or have safer vehicles (so their journey doesn’t end prematurely!), or assist them in whatever it is they need that would be a good to them along the way. Animals can’t be saved (and neither can all humans) but we can still seek to treat them with kindness and justice in respect for the dignity of what God has made them, regardless. And those standards exist for all humans, and are discoverable for all of them, and are felt by all of them, and the violation of them has consequences for them, no matter what they they believe. It’s a tricky balance to keep, and most people want to have one definitely win and eradicate the other, rather than keep them in tension. Care about eternity or care abiut the world. Only Christ can save you, so only Christ matters. Reduce things down. Make them simple. All questions become much easier when you only have to give on answer. But God made life big and complex and messy and diverse. Many people, many needs, many goods, many pleasures, many problems. All those things exist and must be engaged with, no matter who you are or what you believe or whether you’re saved or not. That’s just life. Salvation can transform your understanding of the journey, your approach to it, but you still have to take it, all that other stuff still exists. It’s not eradicated, or reduced, or subsumed, it’s transformed and recontextualized. Individuals aren’t eradicated by oneness in Christ, they are made more themselves by being made more like him. By solving the ultimate problem, he hasn’t made all others meaningless, he has given them new meaning. Answering the greatest question hasn’t ended all other inquiry, it frees it.

Christians should be happy that other people than themselves are concerned about doing good, it shows the universal power and accessibility of God’s laws and knowledge of his character. And they should never allow themsleves to be shown up in their concern for the small problems and questions and ways you can help and do good in life. Instead, they should be the example of concern and activity. Christ didn’t give salvation so we could forget the rest of life, but so we could be free to engage with it the way he always hoped. Christians are afraid, soemtimes, that if they acknowledge that there are other questions and problems, particularly moral ones, that non-Christians are aware of and trying to do something about, that it threatens their validity and the importance of the message they have to bring. The idea that the unsaved might see good and bad and try to do something about it is seen as a problem rather than an opportunity. We must convince them that it’s hopeless, that they can’t do any good, we must reduce them to despair so they’ll give up trying to do anything good and turn to Christ. We must make it clear that it’s all deceit and meaninglessness without Christ. And I’m just not just that isn’t a perversion of the message. There are elements of truth in there, but it sure doesn’t square with the approach of Jesus, or even of God and his people in the old testament. To me it seems like a myopic distortion, born from a desire to maintain exclusive rights to goodness and meaning. But that’s the problem, if the law is really objective. It’s not a private possession. It may not grant salvation, but you can do well or badly according to it, and seek to do better or worse. It may not be able to fix humanity as a whole, but it is there to help humanity as a whole, as an act of kindness of the part of God to all humanity, a God who brings rain to both the wicked and the righteous. But some Christians, through the primacy of Christ, seem to want to claw that gift back and say they only good thing, the only thing of any worth, is the thing they’ve got. And I think that’s a very subtle perversion of the truth. It’s not without basis, but that’s what makes it dangerous. It’s a subtle turn. We may count everything else as trash next to Christ, but Christ never treated everything else, even the small concerns of men and women, as trash. He showed them and us so much value that it transformed our understanding of God and men and the little details of our lives. Apparently God even cares about seemingly worthless and meaningless things like the lives of common birds. So much more should we care about the lives of people, because we care for their souls.