extracted from: Baa-ing Nature“If I don’t have the hope of one day being good,” a friend once confided in me, “if there is no escape from the evil I keep doing, nothing could reconcile me to life.” I share his sentiment.
God does too: He would have us
rid of all discontent, all fear, all grudging, all bitterness in word or thought, all gauging and measuring of ourselves with a different rod from that we would apply to another. He would have no curling of the lip; no indifference in us to the man whose service in any form we use; no desire to excel another, no contentment at gaining by his loss. He would not have us receive the smallest service without gratitude; would not hear from us a tone to jar the heart of another, a word to make it ache, be the ache ever so transient. ~George MacDonald
It is God’s will that we should be holy (1 Thessalonians 4:3), by which Paul assures us that God’s ultimate intent is to make us good. Every day He is leading us along the path toward righteousness.
We’re inclined to think of God’s will solely in terms of where we will go and what we will do when we get there, and certainly God does have a plan for each moment of our lives. But God’s direction primarily has to do with holiness and His determination to change us beyond recognition—to make us as good as He is.
The goodness that comes from God
Some people try too hard; they’re upright, but uptight. Goodness, for them, is stern, demanding business. They’re chaste, honest, sober, respectable, Bible-toting, church-going, psalm-singing people, but everything seems out of phase. As William James said, “Their faith exists as a ‘dull habit.’ ” They have an appearance of righteousness with their self-imposed worship, obvious humility, and harsh treatment of the body, but they lack the cordial love that springs from contact with God.
Edicts, dictums, creeds, rites, rituals can never modify us; nor do admonishments to read the Bible more, pray more, and go to church more often. There is a life beyond earnestness. “From such silly devotions deliver us, good Lord,” prayed St. Francis of Avila.
The problem with rules and regulations is that they have no mechanism for overriding our natural tendencies to go wrong. All they can do is reveal those tendencies and say to us, “You should!” “You shouldn’t!” “You haven’t!” “You can’t!” The rest is up to us.
It takes too much energy to keep the rules. We must never lose control. We must maintain a safe distance from people and resist intimacy. But though the spirit may be willing the flesh is weak. Inevitably we get weary and sick of trying. Then, no matter how hard we try to suppress our instincts, we become unable to sustain the effort. Some unsightly, emotional display, some inappropriate reaction to a relational failure, some other humiliating behavior blows our cover. Our facade cracks and others see behind it. We have that horrible experience of being found out. Others come to know what we have known all along—that much of us is ugly and unacceptable.
No, self-effort doesn’t work. It only makes things worse. We must take sin seriously and want with all of our hearts to put it away, but we must not be self-conscious, compulsive, and preoccupied about it. As a plaque on a friend’s wall reads, “Today I will not should on myself.”
Suffer us not to mock ourselves with falsehood
Teach us to care and not to care
Teach us to sit still
Even among these rocks
Our peace in His will . . .
And let my cry come unto Thee.
~T. S. Eliot
A job for God . . .
Goodness is a job for God. We must stop horning in on His business and instead ask Him to bring about our change: To those “who are far from righteousness,” He says, “I am bringing my righteousness near” (Isaiah 46:12–13).
Being godly does require discipline, but that discipline should never be construed as a rigorous technique. Following Christ requires effort, but it is the effort to stay close to Him and listen to His voice. Serious effort is needed if we are to focus on Him and become sensitive to His desires.
As we draw close to Him—walking with Him, talking to Him, listening to His words, relying on Him, asking for His help—His character begins to rub off on us. Quietly and unobtrusively His influence softens our wills, making us thirsty for righteousness, inclining us to do His pleasure, restraining our passions, keeping us from evil, making us ashamed of evil, giving us the courage to choose what is good. In His quiet love He takes all that’s unworthy in us and gradually turns it into something worthwhile for Him.
Change is not passive; we must hate evil and love righteousness. To love righteousness is to will it to grow. It’s a matter of inclination and desire. It’s not what we are, but what we want to be that matters. Do we want righteousness? Do we want to do better? “When the fight begins within himself, a man’s worth something,” Robert Browning said.
Paul puts it this way: “The one who sows to please his sinful nature, from that nature will reap destruction; the one who sows to please the Spirit, from the Spirit will reap eternal life. Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up” (Galatians 6:8–9). It’s the law: Every time we sow to the flesh—harbor a grudge, nurse a grievance, wallow in self-interest and self-pity—we are sowing seeds of self-destruction. On the other hand, every time we till the soil of the Spirit—long to please God’s Spirit and ask for His help—we sow seeds that will endure to eternal life. Every time we make a right choice, God begins to turn us into someone a little different from the person we were before.
We cannot rid ourselves of our sins, “but we can set about sending them away. We can quarrel with them and proceed to turn them out. The Lord is on his way to do his part in their final banishment” (George MacDonald). God is the only source of authentic and lasting change. Whatever conformity to goodness we achieve is the fruit of His doing.
Fruit is exactly the right word, suggesting as it does some hidden element, quietly at work to produce results. Jesus said: “I am the vine; you are the branches. If a man remains in me and I in him, he will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing” ( John 15:5). The relationship of a branch to its vine is the relationship we must sustain to our Lord: We must remain, or abide, to use the older term. We must set aside everything we normally rely on and cling to Him—closely joined to Him, sustained by His life, waiting for His impulses that will in time produce the fruit of righteousness for which we yearn.
“There is no true virtue without a miracle,” Augustine said. God must work His magic on us. Any progress we make toward righteousness is the product of our association with Him. We must come again and again to Him with our desires and lofty ideals and lay them at His feet. We must bring our weakness, our shame, our compulsions, our doubts and fears, our misjudgments, our weariness, and our staleness and ask Him to complete us. He is the only one who can take the vision of all that we have never been and bring it into being.
