The Call to Persevere: Life in the Wake of a Moral Defeat
Photo by Alexander Grey on Unsplash
God never promised you a rose garden—not in this life, at least. In fact, the New Testament teaches us to expect resistance when we live in obedience to Christ. Nevertheless obedience is our calling, whether in times of jubilation or discouragement. In joy or sorrow, victory or defeat, our call is to persevere in faithfulness to Christ.
Out of Sync
The human heart, said Calvin, is an idol-making factory. Along the same lines, Augustine taught that our problem as humans is that we love wrongly. We love the wrong things, and we love in the wrong way. When we talk about sin, we aren’t just talking about the things we do wrong, but our ongoing compulsion to rebel against God. Our desires, volitions, and priorities are disordered. We are like musical instruments out of tune.
Through Christ, we can cease the constant production of idols. We can love rightly. Christ will adjust our hearts and minds and bring them into harmony with his will. But then we face another, quite formidable problem, namely, that we are out of sync with the world around us. As we grow in the knowledge and love of God and love of neighbor, we feel more intensely the friction with the values, words, and actions of those who do not share our hope in Christ. We are people out of place. Hence the Christian insistence across the centuries that we are “in the world but not of it.” We’re strangers in a strange land, “aliens and exiles” (1 Pet 2:11). We feel it, and the people around us do, too. “For we are the aroma of Christ to God among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing; to the one a fragrance from death to death, to the other a fragrance from life to life” (2 Cor 2:15-16).
Waking up in Ohio the morning after the passage of the ballot measure in favor of Issue 1, I felt more intensely the disconnect with many of the people among whom I live. Ohioans have enshrined in their state constitution protection for abortions up to the point of viability (usually 22-24 weeks), with exceptions allowing later abortions. I have no doubts that unborn children in which disabilities are detected, and particularly those with Down syndrome, will be targeted under the exceptions. To suggest otherwise would be naïve. The measure could also prevent the requirement of parental consent in the case of minors, and it could lead to taxpayer-funded abortions. The linguistic vaguery of Issue 1 magnifies its potential effects. Its imprecision broadens its application.
There is a long Christian tradition of the elevation of human life. Chapter 2 of the Didache, one of the earliest non-canonical Christian documents, forbids both abortion and the killing of a child who has been born. While pagans would expose unwanted infants, the earliest Christians would rescue them. After all, humans are unique the bearers of the Imago Dei. Human beings, they insisted, are not simply useful, but sacred. The most vulnerable require the most care. For followers of Christ who continue in this tradition, the success of Issue 1 represents a moral defeat.
Love and Self-Destruction
Ohio is a long way from the East or West Coast, geographically and culturally. This is the Upper Midwest, the Rust Belt. We have long tended toward more traditional values, though times have changed. Expressive individualism has seeped ever more deeply into the empty spaces that were once filled by the morals of the church. The highest value is not, say, the common good, the protection of life, or the protection of the vulnerable. It is radical autonomy; I rule myself. Each person is his or her own master, and corporately we will oppose whatever impinges on our self-determination. We have traded “thy will be done” for “my will be done.”
It should be obvious that the commitment to radical autonomy will soon become untenable in any scenario in which at least two people must live together. To love, said Thomas Aquinas, is to will the good of the other, not just myself, nor even primarily myself. If I love you, I will your good, even if it costs me, and it very well may. In his divine wisdom, Jesus told us to love one another. As the one who created us, he knew very well what kinds of actions and attitudes would be for our good, and those that would lead to destruction.
Yet we are fallen, and the basic inclination of human beings is toward self-destruction. Like mosquitos to a bug zapper, we are drawn to pride, violence, greed, licentiousness, and gluttony, all of which are connected to some form of idolatry. The human heart is a factory for the making of idols. We love the wrong things.
The consequences of sin become apparent in time. This is what Paul meant when he said that the wages of sin is death (Rom 6:23). We will witness these consequences in the destruction of lives, the human carnage, the regret and lamentations that will reach the heavens. For those concerned with being on the “right side of history,” let us be clear that if there is a moral arc that corresponds to the passage of time, our descendants will not look kindly upon us.
Understanding the Times
So we lament. We cry out to God. We weep with those who weep—for a time. Lament is appropriate, but only for a season. One the most powerful passages I have read in recent years comes from Carl Trueman in his work The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self:
[I]n terms of positive action, lamentation offers little and delivers less. As for the notion of some lost golden age, it is truly very hard for any competent historian to be nostalgic. What past times were better than the present? An era before antibiotics when childbirth or even minor cuts might lead to septicemia and death? The great days of the nineteenth century when the church was culturally powerful and marriage was between one man and one woman for life but little children worked in factories and swept chimneys? Perhaps the Great Depression? The Second World War? The era of Vietnam? Every age has had its darkness and its dangers. The task for the Christian is not to whine about the moment in which he or she lives but to understand its problems and respond appropriately to them (30).
Now is not the time to throw our hands in the air or retreat into our bunkers. There are generations that depend on us. We may not see the kinds of spectacular breakthroughs for which we might hope, but that is irrelevant. We are called to be faithful, and so, as strangers in a strange land, we do what Christians have done across the centuries. We persevere. We run our race. We press on in the steady, sometimes plodding, work of everyday faithfulness. We worship the Lord our God, the Lord alone. We teach the faith. We teach people who and what they are, why their lives matter, and why the lives of others matter. We show love to those who do not love us. We pass on what has been handed on to us from the time of the apostles, and we stand on our convictions in the face of opposition.
This is not the first time the faithful church has felt the pain of dislocation from the world around it. In fact, friction with the ambient culture is the rule, not the exception, for Christian life. We are surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses who have taken up the cause of the poor, the needy, and the vulnerable. What a privilege to continue in their work. Now isn’t the time for retreat. It is the time for perseverance. There is too much at stake, too many who will live tomorrow and thus bear the consequences of what we do today.
David F. Watson serves as lead editor of Firebrand.