After having a conversation with a friend last week about the differences between Christianity vs. Morality (they’re not the same, by the way, despite what some people try to say), these lyrics from the beginning of Andrew Peterson’s Come, Lord Jesus caught my ear again yesterday:
Tonight in the line of the merchandise store
While they were packing up my bags
I saw the pictures of the prophets of the picket signs
Screaming, “God hates fags”And it feels like the church isn’t anything more
Then the second coming of the Pharisees
Scrubbing each other ’til their tombs are white
They chisel epitaphs of piety
You are right, of course. Over time, I’ve decided that one of the main reasons that people focus on rules and morality, rather than true purity of heart, is because quite frankly, it’s a whole lot easier.
That seems counterintuitive at first, with all the strict “Do”s and “Don’t”s of legalism, and all the difficult restrictions that they place on our activities. But really, it’s simple to live that way, because we simply erect imaginary lines, and say “As long as you don’t cross these lines, and as long as you stay within the permitted area, you are doing good. You are impressing God and man.”
It requires no heart change, no self-examination or conviction, no growth. That’s why Jesus was saying things that seemed utterly foreign to the Pharisees. They were highly trained professionals whose entire life work was making the following of the rules increasingly strict and complicated, and boasting proudly at how righteous they were by staying completely within the seemingly impossible guidelines they had created.
We like tangible things. We want to be able to wrap our hands and our minds around something, thus a system of rules is much easier. How can a man evaluate his own walk, the growth of his faith, without tangibles? Much less compare our own faith with another, as we are wont to do.
“Well, I didn’t kill anyone today; but I didn’t do that last week, either.”
That is something solid to measure.
“Well, I didn’t wish anyone hurt today, like I did a few weeks ago.”
Still, this is a solid measure, though of something less obvious to the eyes. To say, by looking at my heart, that this is a natural action (flowing from the Spirit within) and not a contrived or forced action is sometimes hard for us as humans. And so we do have moralists who take the name “Christian” but never take more than a skin, a costume, a badge of description.
It’s true, of course, Christianity and morality aren’t the same thing. Yet I think it bears pointing out that most Christians don’t follow thier own code of ethics nor do they lead lives that could be considered any more moral than the next person’s. Our morality ought to be testament to our faith, but not our faith in its entirety.
Cach, I would agree that our morality should be a testament to our faith but not the definition of it. Although it could be argued from philosophy that many of our “moral laws” can be traced back to Christianity, morality is not exclusively Christian.
I am currently most concerned with how this viewpoint that christianity and moralism are synonyms affects the art that Christians produce and partake in. Go read Ezekiel 23 and then try to tell me that Christians can only create and view art that is “safe for the whole family” and pretends evil doesn’t exist.
Well said. And I’m in complete agreement. My comment was only a reflection of how amusing I find it that so many Christians equate their faith with morality when they do such a bad job at the morality thing. Morality is not “family friendly.” You get that.
Exactly. If I get around to it, I’ve been meaning to write a series of posts called “Shifting the Blame”. Christians today see how many marriages break up, and decide the way to best change it is by voting against gay marriage. That way, there is not any actual effort required on their part or any changes in their actions.
[...] One of the many books I’m currently working my way through is Walter Brueggemann’s Hopeful Imagination: Prophetic Voices in Exile. After blogging recently about Christianity vs. Morality, Brueggemann’s caution against reducing God’s Holiness to mere moral categories caught my attention. The Holiness of God [...]