"Finally, beloved, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things. Keep on doing the things that you have learned and heard and received and seen in me, and the God of peace will be with you." [Philippians 4:8-9]
It is easy--let's just admit it--it is easy to be in favor of "truth" in the abstract. It is easy to say you are in favor of "justice" as long as it is kept as a vague generic concept that doesn't pinch your wallet or poke your own conscience. It is easy to say you are in favor of "goodness" and "love" and "compassion," so long as those are just words we throw around, and not actually made real where it will change our actual actions, words, beliefs, or attitudes.
But once we actually have a human face giving us a model of what it looks like to practice generosity... or compassion... or justice... things get hard. And we start to back away to the safety of empty talk. Once there is skin on these virtues and we realize that they may well upend our self-centered comfortable little worlds, we retreat to the haze of generalities. All of the farm animals are firmly "pro-bread" in the abstract, but when the Little Red Hen calls them to the hard work of actually making bread with her, all of a sudden, the barnyard is full of "Not I" answers.
That's why I love--or maybe, I should say, I squirm-but-know-I-need-it--that the apostle Paul doesn't leave things in the generic when he lays out his laundry list of virtues. Yes, he directs our attention to "whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure," and so on, but Paul is wise enough--and honest enough--to know that we are a bunch of stinkers who have a way of dressing up whatever-we-already-are-doing in those terms of virtue. And so Paul says, before we can pull a fast one on ourselves, "Keep on doing what you have seen in me." In other words, we don't really know what it looks like to practice truth... or justice... or purity... or excellence... or the rest, until we see it with skin on, in the lived life of actual people trying to embody it in real situations.
This isn't really about Paul's ego. It's not that Paul was sure he always got it right--he is honest enough in plenty of places to say that he keeps struggling and often messed up, wanting earnestly to do right, but struggling inside and missing the mark. Paul didn't think he had it all figured out. But he did at least know that big, broad concepts like "truth," and "justice" and "excellent" are like empty vessels waiting to be filled with whatever meaning we want to give them unless they are fleshed out in actual lives of real people.
Paul knew, after all, that we human beings tend to have a rather high opinion of ourselves--we each like to think we are right, and thus that whatever I already want to do is "just," and that whatever I already believe is already "true." We have a way--let's be honest here--of taking what we want to be true, and then inventing reasons to prop that up, rather than daring to look a little closer to the truths that run counter to what is convenient. We have a way of assuming that whatever benefits me is "justice," and of assuming that everybody else is wrong or out to get me. We have a way, in other words, of baptizing what I already wish, or what is comfortable to me, and calling it "truth" and "justice" and "love" and "godliness."
But when I have real human lives to look at, I am forced to come face to face with something solid and real and lived-out. When Paul says, "keep on doing what you have heard and seen in me," it keeps us from letting ourselves off the hook when things get difficult, because Paul forces us to see his own practice of justice and truth and kindness and love and courage in real life.
We would tend to say things like, "Well, of course we all want to be loving, but surely that doesn't mean even being kind to people who have been cruel to you." But then there's Paul, who spared the life of the Philippian jailer who had tortured him, and then baptized him and allowed the torturer to wash his wounds.... and all of a sudden, the practice of "love" becomes painfully (but also beautifully) real.
We would tend to say things like, "Well, of course, we all want justice, but that's mostly about punishing bad guys, right?" But then there's Paul, who says that God's kind of "justice" is what forgives us of our sins, loved us when we were enemies, and shares abundance with those who have nothing... and all of a sudden, we see that "doing justice" will call us to share our resources, forgive those who have wronged us, and love our enemies. That is more than we have likely bargained for.
We would say things like, "All I want is the truth." But Paul shows us in his own life that facing the truth also means sometimes realizing we had it completely wrong, just as Paul had to do when he was so damned sure (and, I mean that--that is not gratuitous profanity) he was right and had all the answers, when he got knocked off his high horse and had to learn how much he didn't know yet. Think about just that bit by itself--Paul had been certain he knew the right answers, and was so confident of his "rightness" that he was willing to arrest, jail, torture, or kill people who disagreed with him... and then the One whom he was persecuting showed up on the road to Damascus and said, "You've got it all wrong... but I still claim you in love." Nobody wants to have their old picture of reality shaken or broken open. Nobody wants to have to admit they were... or are... wrong. And yet Paul himself says, "If you are going to say you care about the truth, you are going to have to be willing to let go of your damned certainty and allow the possibility that love is bigger than you imagined."
So whatever it means to think about "whatever is true, whatever is just..." and all the rest, it will mean holding it up to the real lived experience of people trying to practice these big words with skin on.
The only place that happens is in a community of real, actual people. And that is why Christians believe we have not just been handed a pamphlet, or given a brochure, or bequeathed a set of stone tablets with abstract principles or even been entrusted with a constitution written on parchment. We have a way of taking written words and stretching them to mean whatever we wish them to mean. But when those words and concepts are given shape in actual people--in the beloved community--all of a sudden we have nowhere to run and no way of twisting concepts to mean what we wish them to mean. All or a sudden, we are brought face to face with love... and truth... and justice... incarnate--with skin on.
Christians believe that Jesus didn't just leave a pamphlet full of generic words behind. Christians believe that all the talk of "whatever is true" and "whatever is just" is made real in the actual, lived, flawed (yes), real lives of a community of actual, living, flawed (yes), real people daring to live them out in light of what we have seen and come to know in Jesus.
Today, let us not settle for vague empty talk. Please, please, please--don't ever just settle for big talk and empty, flowery prose or attention-grabbing headlines. Let us settle for nothing less than real, lived-out, in-the-flesh "truth" and "justice" and "love" in the actions, and words, and thoughts of real people, daring to practice them.
Jesus, don't let us settle for empty talk today. Pull us into the real, lived practice of people seeking to live justice and truth and mercy in little and big actions. And let us learn from the people who have put such things into practice in their own lives, even if imperfectly.
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