Ken's sermon yesterday was based on James chapter 2, the
"Faith without works is dead" chapter. It helped me figure out how my faith had
gotten so wrapped around the axle for so many years.
The sermon was reassuring.
James has proven to be a tough book over the centuries. Martin Luther himself didn't believe it belonged
in the Bible -- "an epistle of straw" was his dismissive
epithet. The conundrum is essentially
this: after verse after verse of Paul
writing about salvation through faith alone, James comes along and suggests
maybe you should doubt your faith if it is unaccompanied by works (obedience to
God's law). Ken's analysis (hope I'm not
distorting it) is that we should view works as evidence of faith, not as its
prerequisite -- faith leads to works, not the other way around.
That said, it's easy to set up an impossible standard for
yourself, based a broader application of James' words than what he specifically
intended. In James' day, rich Christians
would show up at church bringing plenty to eat and drink for themselves, but
then refuse to share anything with the poor and hungry. James thought this practice was disgraceful,
and said so. But even faithful
Christians have sins they skirmish with on a daily basis -- the better the
Christian, so it seems, the more subtle and dangerous the sins that afflict him. Christ's perfection eludes us, and will keep
doing so until He cleans us up for eternity.
The Reformed Presbyterians I hang out with these days have a
term they apply to this cleaning-up process:
sanctification. It's a lifelong
process, and it's not always a linear one.
(Paul blames much of it, at least, on the war between the spirit and the
flesh -- in so many words, your flesh knows it is doomed to die and would like
nothing better than to take your spirit along with it.)
Now, a quick rewind back to my childhood. I became aware of and convicted of my sins
around the age of seven or so, give or take, and was baptized in our
independent Baptist church. I remember
the recipe for salvation was simple:
just ask the Lord to come into your heart and save you. All well and good.
However, I did not understand the concept of
sanctification. Nor do I recall, ever, a
single word preached on the subject. My
memory could be faulty on that score, or I may have been too young to grasp
it. But for whatever reason, that important
concept managed to slip through the cracks.
Instead, I believed that, as a Christian, I will no longer want to sin.
This led, quite naturally, to decades of self-doubt and
inner struggle. Even as a child, it
gnawed at me constantly. It started with
me committing some sin -- I lied, or swore, or stole from my dad's poker winnings. (Yes, I did that on more than one occasion;
Pop was a good poker player.) Then came
remorse for the sin. Then came the
question: why would you do this if
you're a Christian? Maybe you're not a
Christian after all...? I thought, wow,
I must have really messed up that prayer, and maybe I need to pray it again --
this time, with feeling. But then
another thought arrived quickly at its heels:
is my faith so poor that I have to pray for salvation twice? Won't the Lord be angry at me for doubting
Him?
I expected the sanctification process to be instantaneous,
and when it wasn't, The result? As the
younger folks would say, total buzzkill.
I went from doubting my salvation to disbelieving it almost
completely. I never doubted the Lord's,
but felt like the worst possible Christian, a complete phony. I still went to church, but it was torturous
and not very assuring. There's a
Gershwin song from one of his musicals ("Girl Crazy", I think) that
contains the perfect lyrical description of the way I felt about church: "They're singing songs of love, but not
for me." The scriptures offers us
many thing, including messages of hope and peace, but all I ever heard were the
condemnations.
I wonder how many others have abandoned the faith altogether
just because they couldn't resolve this dissonance? The only way I could function was to put it
out of my mind entirely, and be assured only that, some day, I was probably
going to Hell. I can't be the only
person who has ever gone through all that.
Gradually, over the decades since I came face to face with
that appalling dilemma, I was brought back.
Who or what brought me back? Well, the short answer is the Lord Himself
-- after all, that's an important part of Reformed theology ("irresistable
grace"). But in terms of
specifics? I was always intellectually
intrigued by Christianity. I devoured
anything written by C.S. Lewis, for example, and loved to read debates between
Christians and atheists (we Dises are a verbally contentious lot and love a
good argument). That was a start, at
least. Lewis is a good read for someone
who feels moved to embrace Christ but thinks doing would betray his
intellectual principles. However, I had
the opposite problem: I was fine with Christian belief intellectually, but had
trouble with believing it applied to me.
So something else was needed.
Then, I married a Christian woman. It really disappointed Debbie when I wanted
to skip church on Sunday, so I attended not because I wanted to, but because I
felt I should. This exposed me, of
course, to scripture, which is a means of grace. It will change you, but not if you don't hear
it. I found myself placed, out of my love for my woman, where I needed to be.
And then, we discovered our present church. Pastor Wally played a huge role. He'd look at me, smile, and say, "Cheer
up! You're worse than you
think!" Wally was an excellent
teacher, and we took a class he gave for prospective church officers, working
through the Westminster Confession -- I used to call it "Reformed
School." Our elders really do try
to teach us good theology. Our church
doesn't consist of perfect people proud of our perfection; we're just
struggling sinners who have faith in the Lord's promises, and try to help each
other with our struggles.
And there is certainly nothing special about me. That's a good thing. It means the scriptures aren't singling me
out as the only man since the dawn of Creation to whom the Lord's promises
don't apply. They most certainly do.
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