A Parable--February 17, 2023

A Parable--February 17, 2023

"I call heaven and earth to witness against you today that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Choose life so that you and your descendants may live..." [Deuteronomy 30:19]

This past Sunday, many of us heard these familiar words from the book of Deuteronomy.  And while it might seem pretty straightforward that the passage is calling us to choose good rather than evil, life rather than death, in our lives, it's also pretty easy for Christians to misuse a passage like this. And I'd rather we avoid that.

In particular, we have a way of taking a passage like this, which does indeed involve the language of "choosing," and turn it into a proof text for what I have to "do" or "choose" or "accomplish" on my celestial permanent record in order to "get" salvation.  And we end up turning our love for God [and God's love for us] into something we have "done" or at least that we have "chosen"--and therefore earned.  That leads us to have something to boast about... and that tells me that we are already off track.  

So in the interests of getting at what it does--and does not--mean to "choose" life, or God, or faith... and maybe also a more honest look at how we get to a place of faith, I offer a thought-experiment.  

So then, a parable, if you will...

You are at a party, having a pleasant enough time. People are mingling, standing around the table of hors d’oeuvres, when all of a sudden there is a commotion. One of the guests falls back suddenly, slumping toward the floor. A quick-witted, observant guest sees it happening, and in a split second, helps to break his fall, eases the guest—now unconscious—onto the floor in a natural position. She immediately checks for a pulse and for breath, shouts to the host to call for an ambulance, and determines that there is no heartbeat. She leans over the unconscious guest and puts her hands together over his sternum….

Now, let’s pause this moment in time to consider what is going on physiologically… and by analogy, theologically.

Technically speaking, no heartbeat and no breath is a recipe for death. Without some dramatic change very quickly, this person’s life is over. At most, you can say that he is teetering right on the edge between life and death, but even at that, a more cynical (or more honest?) observer would say it’s worse than that. Technically, he is dead, or is at least in that dark hazy space that becomes death in a matter of moments if nothing else is done.

Now, imagine a committee of observers watching this moment unfold, like a frame-by-frame viewing of a movie on DVD, and offering their advice and their prognosis of the situation.

One observer—let’s call him Al—says, “The problem is that he is not breathing and has no heartbeat. In order for him to live, he has to be breathing, and his heart has to be pumping. That is the definition of being alive. If your heart is not pumping and you are not breathing, you are dead, and your life is lost.”

Well, Al’s statement is absolutely true. But it is also painfully obvious. Everybody at the party knows and agrees already that the unconscious party guest (who probably need a name now that I’m introducing more than two characters, so let’s call the unconscious party guest Steve) needs to be breathing and his heart needs to be beating in order for him to live. This is without question. No one else can say, “My heart is beating—couldn’t I use some of my extra heartbeats to apply toward his account?” no matter how well-intentioned they are. It is Steve’s heart that has to beat, and his lungs that have to get air into them for him to live.

But the real question is, How will we get Steve’s heart and lungs working?

Another one of our committee of observers pipes up—Bill says, “Well, since it’s got to be Steve’s lungs and Steve’s heart that beat for him to live, he has to be the one to initiate this. He must will himself to breathe and for his heart to beat, because, as Al said, it has to be his heart and his lungs working in order for Steve to be alive. Therefore, it must be Steve’s choice to live. He’s not really alive unless his brain chooses to activate his lungs and heart.”

At this point, Linda chimes in. “That’s a logical fallacy. You’re right that it’s got to be Steve’s lungs and heart that are moving for him to be alive. But what nonsense to say that he must start his own heart and lungs working now that they have stopped! That’s precisely the problem—his heart and lungs have stopped! They can’t go on their own right now, and he can’t will himself to start them again. That’s like saying you have to pay a hefty fee in order to go bankrupt when you’re already completely broke—you can’t pay what you don’t have. Steve can’t make his heart beat at this point—that’s the very problem we’re here to solve.”

Linda, now finding her confidence has loosened her tongue, continues with what seems, to her, to be patently obvious. “Someone has to breathe for him first and make his heart beat for him in order for his heartbeat to come back on its own and his lungs to breathe on their own. Waiting around for him to bring himself back to consciousness is another way of saying we are letting him die.”

Bill is about to protest, but Linda can see where he is headed. “It’s not a question of fairness. Nobody cares about what is fair or who does their fair share when it comes to saving a life. The question is, Will someone do what it necessary to save Steve’s life or not?”

Bill retorts, “I’m not saying it’s unfair to try to resuscitate Steve—just that he’s not out of the woods until he is breathing on his own and his own heart is beating on its own.”

Linda squints and replies, “Of course, Bill. I’m not suggesting that someone has to do CPR on him forever—the intention of CPR is that by breathing for him and doing chest compressions on him, he will be able to regain those abilities for himself. The goal, obviously, is to revive him. And of course it has to be his lungs that inhale and exhale—but in order to resuscitate him, someone else is going to have breathe their air into his lungs to make them move. It’s not a question of violating his free will at this point, because he has no ability to will anything one way or the other right now. Either she does this for him so he can live, or she lets him die in the name of respecting his "choice" and free will. And you are not just a fool—you are a damn fool—if you say you have to respect Steve’s free will and wait for his brain to consciously choose to breathe rather than perform CPR on him.”

Now, in our little committee of three, all agree with Al’s observation that Steve has to be breathing and his heart has to be pumping for him to live. Both Bill and Linda can agree to that. Bill, however, seems to be at risk of painting himself into a logical corner by saying, “He’s not really alive unless he is breathing on his own and his heart is pumping by his own volition.” Bill is in danger of missing the point that CPR is intended to bring Steve to a point where he can do those things on his own again, and he almost makes himself say that Steve’s not really alive unless he makes himself alive, which is impossible if you are dead.

It is important to note that Linda is not really disagreeing with Bill—it is indeed vitally important, after all, that Steve’s own lungs and heart be working. Linda can’t stand off at a distance and say, “Well, let my heartbeat count for him.” And Linda cannot say, “His parents raised him to be a living person, so doesn’t that count for anything?” Steve’s pulse must be his own to consider him really alive. Linda doesn’t dispute that.

But Linda’s point is that if you really want to identify the moment that Steve’s life is saved, it’s when CPR is done (or, if necessary, the old AED shock) to bring his heart and breathing back. And that action is something done entirely to Steve, while he is entirely passive. It’s not even a violation of Steve’s ability to "choose" or his “free will” or “natural autonomy” because at this point he’s dead and doesn’t have a free will to violate. Dead is dead, and when you’re dead, you can’t will yourself back to life. You can’t even want to be alive again. So it’s not even a question of Steve thinking to himself, “I want to live, and on the basis of my wanting to live, I deserve the CPR to bring back my faculties.” He can’t even want it on his own anymore. If he is to be saved, the guest standing over him at the party is going to have to choose life for him and do her work on him, in order that he can come to breathe again on his own. If this guest cares about rescuing Steve at all, she will unapologetically take the first step, because Steve simply cannot do it for himself.

Now, let’s take a time out from our time out to consider what each of our observers’ positions would mean theologically speaking. Broadly speaking, all Christians acknowledge something like Al’s statement—for us to be saved/rescued/brought back to life, our spiritual lungs and heart have to be moving. No one else can believe in God for you, and your faith needs to be your own. Parents cannot say, “I believe twice as many religious facts as are in the Creed—I would like to apply some of my belief to my child so he can ‘get in’ to heaven.” This is essentially all that Romans 10:9-10 is claiming (Romans 10:9-10—“…because if you confess with your lips that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For one believes with the heart and so is justified, and one confesses with the mouth and so is saved.”) It’s essentially Al’s diagnosis—that in order for Steve to live again, his heart needs to be beating and his lungs need to be breathing.

Bill, however, makes a logical miscalculation if he insists that this means that Steve must be the one to initiate that breath in order for it to “count.” It is nonsense to say that Steve is “cheating” if someone performs rescue breathing or chest compressions in order to resuscitate him. The language of “cheating” and “fair” and “deserving” simply do not make meaningful sense here. The question is whether Steve can live again by any means, not whether he has earned it. And quite simply, he is unable to make himself breathe on his own—that is his problem in the first place!

For a Lutheran like myself (and like Linda), this is the theological error of the Bills of the Christian family tree—their insistence that “It has to be Steve’s lungs and heart that are moving” requires Steve to make the first move to resuscitate himself. If asked the question, “What is it Steve that makes alive or not?” Bill and his crowd would answer, “It is whether Steve is breathing and his heart beating on their own.” But that forces him to do some mental and verbal gymnastics about whether he is alive or not while someone is doing CPR on him, making his heart pump and his lungs move, especially if it is these actions that bring back his heart’s ability to pump for itself.

Theologically, the Bills of the Christian community take this “believe with the heart and confess with the lips” business and take it to mean your heart saves you and your mouth redeems you. The Lindas of the church (the Lutherans and others of the cat-hold strands of Christian faith) would say, “Sure, it’s got to be Steve’s faith, but that faith came from somewhere as a gift, like the CPR compressions given to him by the other guest, without waiting for his permission, because he could not give his own permission first, which was his problem in the first place.”

Note that both Bill and Linda agree with Al’s general (and obvious) diagnosis—it’s just that they are extrapolating different conclusions as they work backward from that diagnosis.

This brings us to the real theological question: just what is our condition before God on our own? If you are willing to accept the parable I’ve present, which is where Lutherans tend to be, you’re starting from the point of saying, “Spiritually speaking, we sinful humans are dead before God and are in need of resurrection.” Others, like Bill in our little scene, don’t frame the question that way—they would have to say something like, “Spiritually speaking, we are sick and have to either ask the doctor for help first, or be willing to take the medicine the doctor is offering us.” If that is the more truthful analogy, then the Bills are right—we do need to take our own first step of choosing to accept what is being offered to us. But this is precisely the question: are we spiritually sick, just in need of some spiritual “medicine” that we can choose to take if only we will recognize that it will save us and trust our good doctor, Jesus? Or, are things more dire than that? Are we spiritually dead on our own and in need of resurrection? Because if that’s our problem, then we can’t initiate the cure—Lazarus can’t wish for Jesus to raise him, and he can’t even want the help, much less ask for it, because he is dead, not sick. Lutherans would point out that Lazarus’ story by itself should tell us something about the lengths Jesus is willing to go for us, and that Jesus does not insist on us asking for his help in order for him to revive us. Lazarus is not just a sick man in need of a doctor to offer him some medicine—Lazarus is entirely unable on his own to even ask for Jesus’ help. But because Jesus loves Lazarus, Jesus will not take Lazarus’ deathly silence as a reason to leave him dead, just because he hasn’t “asked” for his help.

To slightly shift metaphors, in an old cliché, salvation is often compared to tossing someone a life-preserver who has fallen overboard from the ship. The Bills among us will say, “You can throw all the life-preservers you want at someone, but if he doesn’t choose to grab it when you toss it, Steve is doomed to drown. He has to recognize that you are offering him a free rescue, but he has to take the first step to grab the big orange ring you are throwing him. Therefore, we poor spiritually-drowning souls have to consciously choose to accept the gift we are being offered by God, standing on the deck of the boat and saying to us, “I’ll rescue you for free if you’ll only do your own small, little part, and accept the life-preserver.”

The Lindas among us would say in reply, “All of that would be true, if the human problem was just that we are in the water. If we were awake and conscious and just in the process of drowning, we would be responsible to grab the life preserver and then from there let ourselves be pulled in. If that were the human predicament, then yes, we could say that to be saved you have to grab the orange ring and hold on tight. But what if we’re not just in the water splashing around? What if we’re unconscious in the water? What if our need is greater than Bill wants to admit? Because if that’s the issue, we need more than just an offer of a life-preserver we can grab onto—we need someone who is willing to jump into the water, grab us, and carry us to the ship again.”

Well, there’s the problem—Bill and Linda (or as I sometimes talk about with our confirmation class students, analogously, monkey-hold and cat-hold Christians, if you like) are starting with two different operating metaphors, two different diagnoses of the problem. One says we are just overboard and still splashing around for a lifeline; the other says, the problem is worse—we’ve gotten ourselves knocked out unconscious as well on our way into the icy water. One insists that “saved by grace through faith” means that you have to be willing to accept the life preserver in order to get pulled in. The other says, “We are unable to even say we need help on our own, and so we need not only a lifeline thrown to us, we need a God who is willing to get into the water for us and risk drowning himself to save us.” These Christians would produce as their Exhibit A the cross of Jesus as the sine qua non of just such a God—a God who does not just stand from the safety of the ship’s deck and offer us a line, but who has already jumped into the water for our sake before we knew we had a need.

So the real underlying issue is this: how would we know which analogy is accurate? Which story is the truthful one? Are we overboard and awake, or are we unconscious and unable to even ask for help on our own? Is our initial story—about an unconscious partygoer needing CPR to revive him—a truthful picture of our spiritual condition, or are things not quite so dire? And the real question underneath that is—how would we know the state of our spiritual condition? Classically, of course, Christians go to the Scriptures. And while everyone has their favorite “proof-texts” and stories they like to bring out to “prove” their point, even that requires us to make some decisions about which stories we choose to read in light of other stories.

Lutherans like Linda will say that the New Testament is clear, both in outright doctrinal teaching and in the “flow” of its stories, that we are not just sick in our souls and in need of a doctor (whose advice or medicine we would then have to choose to take or not), but that we are dead in our spirits and in need of nothing less than resurrection. Lutherans point to places like Ephesians 2:1ff, which come right out and say, “You were dead through the trespasses and sins in which you walked…but God made us alive together with Christ.” Or they point to John 15:16 as a touchstone, “You did not choose me, but I chose you…” Or they notice that in the metaphor of being born again (John 3), one can only be passive in being born, because it is really up to the mother to do the work. And then beyond these passages, the Lindas of church history will point out that there is a certain “way” to the stories of the Bible, a certain pattern, that always starts with God and then continues with our response to God, whether it is Jesus inviting himself over to Zacchaeus’ house, God calling to Abraham out of nowhere, Christ appearing to his bitter enemy Saul on the Damascus Road, or Jesus calling to a bunch of fishermen who were not looking for a new job, not to mention Jesus raising a dead Lazarus back to life.  In other words, whatever "choosing" we do of God comes only after--and as a direct consequence--of God's having chosen us in love first.  We may well dance, but only after God has taken us by the hand and led us out onto the dance floor.

If these Scriptures are to be taken at face value and other passages read in light of this recurring theme of God’s initiative to save and rescue, then our “How do you know…?” question is answered. These passages and stories show us in the water, not only overboard but unconscious, and in need of someone to initiate a rescue we cannot choose for ourselves. These passages would say that the way God works with us is to start CPR so that we can breathe for ourselves, rather than saying, “I will do CPR on you as soon as you can breathe on your own and tell me you want me to do it.”

Once you accept the parable I have laid out at the beginning here, you can see where things are headed. It is nonsense to say that CPR can only be begun when the person has told you they want you to do it, or when they accept your offer to do CPR. That’s the problem in the first place. So the question is really, “Is my CPR parable an accurate description of our state before God, and an accurate description of what God is willing to do for us in order for us to be brought to life again?” And for that answer, you can only go to the Scriptures and see whether the Father of Jesus Christ seems more like the sailor who jumps into the ocean to rescue a drowning man or the sailor who stands back on the deck offering only to toss life-preservers. You have to read the Bible and determine whether the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob is the kind of God who waits for us to ask for CPR or just starts doing it, because that is the way you get a heart to beat again.

I am unapologetically a Lutheran standing with Linda, because the more I read the Scriptures, the more I discover a God who jumped into the water in Jesus to save me when I wasn’t even aware of my need or able to call out for help, much less grab a life-preserver. The more I come to know this Jesus, the more I see him breathing his breath into my lungs so that I can trust him on my own. But that means admitting that it’s he who brought me to life again, and that he began it before I could will my heart to beat for him.

What difference does any of this make on a Friday morning in February?  Well, for whatever else it means, it tells me that my ability to love God--or God's love for me--are not things I get to boast about.  Love doesn't make room for bragging, because love does not operate on a logic of accomplishment or an economy of earning.  It is vital indeed that I can say, "I am seeking to love God more fully with all of my heart, strength, and mind, and my neighbor as myself," but it's not my willpower to do any of those things that gets me saved.  Sure, I can say I am "choosing" life and goodness and God, but those are really only possible because God has first called, chosen, loved, and claimed me--all of it as a gift.  No room for me to brag, because all I bring is my empty-handed deadness.  

And maybe, with that impulse to prove what I contributed to the deal removed, I can find myself simply free to love--God and everybody else--without worrying about what I "did" to make it happen.  It's all been grace... which frees me to love.

Lord God, thank you for bringing me to life in you.  Let me leave behind today my own need to think I've earned what you've given freely.