Shame and God's Project with Me
Ethics without theology are rules without a foundation.
I really believe that. Theology can't stop itself from telling us how to live, and we can't know how to live without listening to it.
But I also believe, and this is a big deal coming from me, that ethics are not the point of religion. Morality is not the point of faith.
Sometimes religion functions as a system of dos and don'ts. When that happens, our faith becomes a way to know we're ok. For those of us with weak stomachs, with overactive consciences, our faith hedges us in as protection from the storm of anxiety.
We just want to know we're ok.
There are probably people out there who can live their whole lives without the sinking feeling of guilt. There might be people who don't lay awake at night afraid they might be making mistakes, living in sin, saying the wrong words, singing the wrong songs, praising the wrong god. I am not those people.
I am an ethicist, but it's deeper than that. I need to know I'm ok. I need to know God is pleased with me, that my parents are pleased with me, that my priest is pleased with me. I need to know I'm doing it right.
It's the same old fear of shame that happened to the first humans. I am afraid things are terribly wrong, that I am terribly wrong, that it's all my fault.
And in that place, I look to religion to comfort me.
The problem is that God doesn't speak out loud very much, the Bible is not a rulebook, and the church can sometimes get it wrong. Religion as a system of dos and don'ts will fail me, because it is shifting sand. Because it is an illusion of certainty. Because God is a lot bigger and more complex and more personal and less rigid than all of those boxes and lists and rules. They fail me. I can never be sure.
Don't get me wrong. Jesus revealed the character of God, and I know Jesus, I know him for sure. But all those things we tell ourselves will make us good, or bad, or ok, or not? They betray us.
The Pharisees, out of everyone, should've gotten it right. They knew the rules. They were ethicists.
Then, Jesus.
Jesus bent down to the dirt one day between a woman and those about to stone her. John 8 says he wrote something on the ground with his finger. "When [the Pharisees] heard it, they went away one by one...and Jesus was left alone with the woman standing before him."
"Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?"
They had dropped their stones to the ground and gone. "Neither do I condemn you. Go your way and sin no more."
Guilt entered the world a long time ago in the garden. God was with us before that. So faith is not about easing our guilt; faith sets us truly free. Those who are looking for moral certainty are looking for bandaids to cover the gaping wound of shame that is the human condition; I don't want it. Moral certainty is the illusion of religion; I want Jesus.
He turned our rules upside down and he didn't promise we would always be right and he didn't say we could stay guiltless in this life. Bonhoeffer said the search for moral certainty leads us astray, that instead we should venture free action on behalf of the world, like Jesus did. We can never really be sure. We can never wash our hands of sin or free our consciences of the messiness of this earth. We move forward anyway. Bonhoeffer chose between letting millions of Jews perish at the hands of Hitler and plotting to kill Hitler; there was no clean conscience there for him.
But Jesus says, "Neither do I condemn you."
Go and sin no more. For sure! But my response of sinlessness will be a result of an encounter with the Holy, not the rules that I pull up around me like warm covers at night to protect myself.
I asked Jesus to speak to me yesterday and for the first time in a long time, he did. He said his project with me is to walk me out of shame, for us to leave it behind together. And we will get to the new garden one day, where everything is made well, and my story will tell of a God who brought me there not because I followed the rules but because maybe I didn't, but it never really mattered at all.
I really believe that. Theology can't stop itself from telling us how to live, and we can't know how to live without listening to it.
But I also believe, and this is a big deal coming from me, that ethics are not the point of religion. Morality is not the point of faith.
Sometimes religion functions as a system of dos and don'ts. When that happens, our faith becomes a way to know we're ok. For those of us with weak stomachs, with overactive consciences, our faith hedges us in as protection from the storm of anxiety.
We just want to know we're ok.
There are probably people out there who can live their whole lives without the sinking feeling of guilt. There might be people who don't lay awake at night afraid they might be making mistakes, living in sin, saying the wrong words, singing the wrong songs, praising the wrong god. I am not those people.
I am an ethicist, but it's deeper than that. I need to know I'm ok. I need to know God is pleased with me, that my parents are pleased with me, that my priest is pleased with me. I need to know I'm doing it right.
It's the same old fear of shame that happened to the first humans. I am afraid things are terribly wrong, that I am terribly wrong, that it's all my fault.
And in that place, I look to religion to comfort me.
The problem is that God doesn't speak out loud very much, the Bible is not a rulebook, and the church can sometimes get it wrong. Religion as a system of dos and don'ts will fail me, because it is shifting sand. Because it is an illusion of certainty. Because God is a lot bigger and more complex and more personal and less rigid than all of those boxes and lists and rules. They fail me. I can never be sure.
Don't get me wrong. Jesus revealed the character of God, and I know Jesus, I know him for sure. But all those things we tell ourselves will make us good, or bad, or ok, or not? They betray us.
The Pharisees, out of everyone, should've gotten it right. They knew the rules. They were ethicists.
Then, Jesus.
Jesus bent down to the dirt one day between a woman and those about to stone her. John 8 says he wrote something on the ground with his finger. "When [the Pharisees] heard it, they went away one by one...and Jesus was left alone with the woman standing before him."
"Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?"
They had dropped their stones to the ground and gone. "Neither do I condemn you. Go your way and sin no more."
Guilt entered the world a long time ago in the garden. God was with us before that. So faith is not about easing our guilt; faith sets us truly free. Those who are looking for moral certainty are looking for bandaids to cover the gaping wound of shame that is the human condition; I don't want it. Moral certainty is the illusion of religion; I want Jesus.
He turned our rules upside down and he didn't promise we would always be right and he didn't say we could stay guiltless in this life. Bonhoeffer said the search for moral certainty leads us astray, that instead we should venture free action on behalf of the world, like Jesus did. We can never really be sure. We can never wash our hands of sin or free our consciences of the messiness of this earth. We move forward anyway. Bonhoeffer chose between letting millions of Jews perish at the hands of Hitler and plotting to kill Hitler; there was no clean conscience there for him.
But Jesus says, "Neither do I condemn you."
Go and sin no more. For sure! But my response of sinlessness will be a result of an encounter with the Holy, not the rules that I pull up around me like warm covers at night to protect myself.
I asked Jesus to speak to me yesterday and for the first time in a long time, he did. He said his project with me is to walk me out of shame, for us to leave it behind together. And we will get to the new garden one day, where everything is made well, and my story will tell of a God who brought me there not because I followed the rules but because maybe I didn't, but it never really mattered at all.
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