THE BETTER CHOICE

Some of my best friends are lawyers. That is no joke even though for every lawyer there is at least one lawyer joke that, while close to the truth, misses the mark. Next to clergy lawyers are the most ridiculed and maligned professionals. For every ten clergy depicted on television, nine are absolute idiots or complete fools. Lawyers, at least on television, get a better break. Lucky them.

All that notwithstanding, someone once observed – and not in any way slandering or maligning lawyers – that as Christians we are called to be witnesses, not lawyers. And that we are. The problem, of course, is that too many of us who profess to be Christians and far too many of us who are in positions of leadership, namely we clergy (and bishops, too), spend an inordinate amount of time and energy in being lawyers than in being a witness to our faith.

Playing lawyer (and, of course, judge and jury), is the easier way. One does not have to be a lawyer to stand in judgment of another, to call someone to task for not living out her faith as she is supposed to do, to proclaim certain actions to be sinful and those who commit them to be sinners. One does not have to stand in the pulpit to be a bully. All one has to do is open one’s mouth in critique and criticism.

That is not to say that we should be uncritical or, even worse, ignore wrongs when we see them being done, when we observe sin being committed. Silence in the face of wrong is just as sinful as the wrong being committed. It takes courage to call a spade a spade, to confront the guilty party.

Most of us fail mightily in this regard. We excuse ourselves by claiming another person’s sin or misdeed is none of our business. Jesus was never silent in the face of sin and wrongdoing. He got himself nailed because of his honesty and outspokenness, but he knew he had no other choice. He had to speak no matter how difficult that would be and no matter the consequences to his personal wellbeing. So do we.

However, the point at hand is that is all to easy to take another person or a group of people to task, to name them as sinners while taking the high ground and proclaiming oneself to be free of that particular sin. It is much more difficult to plug away at our faith, living it as best we can from day to day, failing often, asking for forgiveness even more often, and letting our loving actions speak to those who may be less so.

We are indeed called to be witnesses and are instructed to leave the judging to God. If we want to take anyone to task, if we want to put anyone on the witness stand and grill that person with a skillful lawyerly cross exanimation, the first person who should take the stand is ourself. If we held ourselves to the same standards as we hold others, both we and they might be better off and better people.

We are called to be witnesses to our faith in Jesus, first, last and always. If we have any time left over, we might use it to rest rather than pretend we are the prosecuting attorney.

FORGIVENESS: THE FINAL FORM OF LOVE

Reinhold Niebuhr, in his The Irony of American History, opined: “Nothing worth doing can be achieved in our lifetime; therefore we must be saved by hope. Nothing which is true or beautiful or good makes complete sense in any immediate context of history; therefore we must be saved by faith. Nothing we do, however virtuous, can be accomplished alone; therefore we are saved by love. No virtuous act is quite as virtuous from the standpoint of our friend or foe as it is from our standpoint. Therefore we must be saved by the final form of love: forgiveness.”

The cardinal virtues of prudence, justice, fortitude and temperance are extensions of the theological virtues of faith, hope and love. Practicing them enables us to be more faithful, more hopeful and more loving. Both sets of virtues take work, hard work and we never, ever, at least not in this lifetime, ever become proficient in practicing any one of them. We are always learning how to be more of whatever that virtue is at the moment on which we are focusing our attention.

Thus, as Niebuhr observed years ago, because we have learned that being virtuous is a reward in and of itself, that it benefits us; and because we have also learned that we will never be an expert in any one virtue, in any virtue, in our lifetime, we are saved from despair by hope. Hope reminds us that while we will never be perfect, we can always get better. That is all God asks of us and all that we can ask of ourselves. We must not ever give up on trying to be more virtuous.

Even more, even though the truly beautiful or the humblest of the holiest stand out as examples of what perfection may be like, there is too much imperfection around us, even cheek-by-jowl to the beautiful and living next door to the saint that we are left to wonder why we should try to so hard to be so good. The world today does not seem to be any better, any more beautiful, any more anything than it was in Jesus’ time or at any time. It may not be worse, but it is a test of our faith to hang in there to do whatever we can to make some semblance of a difference in our little corner of this world.

The task is so great that no one can do it alone, not even Jesus, which is why he gathered disciples around him and them left them the task to continue the completion of his work. But that work cannot be done alone. It must be done with and in and through community. Doing so demands that those who are part of that community, that church, that congregation, however large or small it is, must love one another and not be at enmity with others.

That work is still incomplete because they and we and everyone in between have failed at least in some way to do his or her or our part. We have not been as virtuous as we know we could have been or should have been and the road ahead, given our past unfaithfulness, does not look any better. What allows us to move on is the knowledge that we have been forgiven by God for our failures. The task that lies before each and every one of us to accept that forgiveness, to forgive one another and to live more faithfully, more hopefully and more lovingly every single day.