Like the rest of you, I have relationships in many different networks. Church is just one of them. My observation is that people are getting angry at levels I have not seen before–the economics crisis, the bailouts of banks, the bailout of industries with employees who make $70 per hour, the subsidization of housing for those who signed ARM notes, the lack of regulation of financial industries, and on and on it goes.
I wonder if the church is prepared for this time. No, actually I don’t wonder. I believe it is not. For a long time the church has gotten by with its emphasis on forgiveness. So far so good. If all is justice, then we are all doomed. Mercy must have the final word. But along the way the church has neglected another truth – virtue leads to true happiness. It is the good man, the good woman who can be truly happy. I think the church is distrustful of that message. The Protestant emphasis on justification through faith alone apart from works remains true. It is the jewel in the crown of the Reformation. But the church has an incipient distrust of virtue, lest it be seen somehow compromising the imputed righteousness of Christ through which we alone stand before God as accepted.
We need a fuller dose of Thomas Aquinas in addition to Augustine. We need to return to the Sermon on the Mount as a guide to a life well lived. The bottom line is this: those who live lives that center on self and willing to compromise God’s commands should sacrifice happiness. And the church’s role is not to diminish that principle. A hard day’s work, paying one’s debts, refusing to buy what one cannot pay for, not stealing but giving, not taking but giving, keeping one’s word and fulfilling one’s obligations lead to true happiness. Any other kind of life, forgivenes or no forgivenss, will make bad men of us all and keep us from the life of blessedness.
Am I commending a works salvation? Absolutely not. I am simply stating what the Bible says in so many passages. A life with God without a commitment to holiness cannot be a well-lived life. I believe the church should return to the teaching of the blessedness of virtue. I mean to post more on this. For now, let it be said that our government has decided to bless behaviors that fall beneath the good, the true and the beautiful. We will pay for this in spades. Pretty soon the church had better start producing people who pay more debts, live more frugally, envy less, love more, etc., or we are useless to our neighbor and to God.
Forgiveness is the watch spring of the Christian life, but it is a gift to an end, a life lived to God and a life lived to bless my neighbor.
