Our Whole Selves--January 31, 2022

Our Whole Selves--January 31, 2022

"For whoever keeps the whole law but fails in one point has become accountable for all of it. For the one who said, 'You shall not commit adultery,' also said, 'You shall not murder.' Now if you do not commit adultery but if you murder, you have become a transgressor of the law. So speak and so act as those who are to be judged by the law of liberty." [James 2:10-12]

Okay, let's be honest.  The whole concept of "The Law" (you can hear the capital letters when you say it with gravitas) sounds pretty ominous.  But it's not meant to. Maybe we need to examine why talk about "The Law" or "God's Commandments" can make us tremble with fear rather than smile with grateful appreciation the way you would watch a sunset or view a painting in a museum.  Because ultimately, I think the issue is with us, not with the Law.

I think a lot of us grew up thinking that the Commandments from the Bible were something like a final exam in school: as a set of basically unrelated questions on which you would be graded over all as either acceptable or as a failure.  Examinations, of course, are meant to evaluate us--to see whether we have learned enough, memorized the facts sufficiently, understood the content adequately, and whether we can recite it all back on demand.  And in a sense, a thorough test is intended to find everyone's weak places, to see what lessons you grasped, and which ones you have yet to master.  The point of an exam is to judge your worthiness.

The upside of an exam like that is that your grade is based on how well you do overall.  If you really blow it when it comes to listing state capitals, you might still be able to make up for a low score in that section if you do fantastically on the true-or-false section, or if your answer to the essay question is stellar.  You just have to hope your average is good enough to pass.  But still, the point of the whole exercise is to determine worthiness based on getting a good enough average score.

So, think about how that affects our understand of God if that's the way we understand "The Law" and "The Commandments."  We're going to end up thinking that God is only here to evaluate us--that God is basically a scowling teacher looking for ways to get us to fail, or at least to make us reveal our own inadequacies, so that they can be identified and circled with red pen.  We'll also end up thinking that what really matters is just whether we do well enough to pass--that the test is only a way of getting us a good enough grade to move on to the next level.

The biblical writers don't think about "The Law" that way--in fact, maybe it's better not to even translate the notion of "Torah" as "Law," but as "instruction" or "direction."  The Torah was intended a complete way of life, and everything fit together in a cohesive whole.  God's individual commands--things like "Do not murder," or "Do not steal," or "Love your neighbor as yourself"--were not isolatable from one another, but part of a whole web that made up a way of acting, thinking, choosing, and living together. Unlike a final exam in school, where you could conceivably do poorly in one section but well enough on others that you could still get a passing grade, the biblical writers see God's Torah (Instruction) as a whole seamless entity.  You don't get to say, "I did fine at not cheating on my spouse, but I've been a real jerk to my coworkers--don't I still get a passing grade?"  You don't get an overall grade that allows you to make up for envy and greed in one area of your life with extra prayers or rituals on another part of the exam.  It's not like that.

That's because God's Instruction isn't meant to judge us, but to shape us into something--something made in the likeness of God's own justice and mercy.  The commandments aren't a test to see if we are worthy of a passing grade.  They are the strands out of which a whole way of life are woven.  Think of it less like a test in the classroom and more like a clay pot.  If the pottery has a crack in it, even if 99% of it isn't cracked, the pot will still leak, and the whole thing is no longer useful for holding water.  99% is a fantastic test grade, but a boat that is only 99% leak-proof is still going to sink from that one-percent that's letting the water in.

James wants us to see the individual commandments as part of a whole that, taken all together, is intended to form us into a certain way of life.  We don't get to pick and choose which commandments to be graded on, and we don't get a pass on breaking some in the hopes of doing better on others.  In other words, James wants us to be people of integrity--who are shaped by love and justice in every area of our lives, rather than just some, while we hope that our strengths outweigh our weaknesses when it's grading time.

We live in a time when it is very easy to try and compartmentalize ourselves and our character.  We say things like, "Yeah, that public figure is a terrible liar and mean-spirited person, but I like how he projects 'strength,' so on the whole, I support him." Or, "No, I don't like how that person treats women, but he seems good with money, so I still look up to him."  We allow ourselves to divide our own character up into pieces, as if you can do poorly in one area of our lives but do well enough in others to still get a passing grade.  But that's all still final-exam thinking, when James doesn't see any of this as a test in a classroom.  James sees our lives as an organic whole, where every area is connected to every other area.  The way I treat my neighbors is connected to whether I speak truthfully or keep promises faithfully, and both of those are connected to how I love God.  These are all interconnected, because they are all part of our whole selves.

Today, then, let's allow James to shift our thinking about commandments, laws, and instructions.  Let's move away from fearfully thinking of "The Law" as God's way of evaluating who is "good enough," to instead seeing God's Instruction as part of how God makes us into people of integrity, who act with love and justice, with truth and humility, in every area of our lives.  It's not about getting a passing grade on a test--let's not worry about tests or grades or passing.  It's about letting God make us whole--patching the cracks in our pottery, and filling the leaks in the boat.

That way, even "The Law" turns out to be a gift of grace... which is exactly how the biblical writers think of it.

Lord God, make us whole, and shape us in your likeness to be wholly holy.