Confessions of a Christ Follower: Part 2 Legalism

I waved to David as he walked to his car, then slid my hands into my pockets as I watched him pull out and drive away. I stared out into the street, cars drifting by in the slow night. I wandered to my car and wrapped my scarf around my neck as I adjusted myself in the seat and drove home.


I miss community. I miss God being in my daily life. I think maybe that is what community is really for. We can read our Bibles, pray, go to church on Sunday, but I think Christianity is an interactive faith, it’s a faith of many parts and each of us is one of these small, yet integral pieces. Somehow, in the right stages, we just fit together, we feel each other's struggles and there are the right encouraging words, the right scriptures and the right late night conversations that let us see Christ between ourselves and the people in our faith oriented community. I think, though, it takes more than knowing the rules or just showing up on Sunday to be a part of that.

I don't believe the world can be strictly black and white, but I know a few believers who will tell you that it is. I don't mean to say there aren't 'rules' in our faith, guidelines for trying to live a Christ-like life, but a community isn't a court room. It’s not a place where the rules are posted on the wall like the Supreme Court. Fellowship is not hearing, “no” even before your butt hits the seat; it‘s listening, and comprehending where our friends are at in their lives and in their walk. I've been told I over-think things, that maybe God is easier than how I approach Him, but the only way I know how to come close to someone is to question. I over-think and I analyze because it’s how I can love. I've never fallen in love with a woman listening to her likes and dislikes, but I have after a disagreement, I have after a long, unnervingly vulnerable conversation about who we are, but not sitting at a fancy restaurant on a first date listening to all her accomplishments, intermingled with details of how great her cat is. A.W. Tozer said that we must know God by deep emotional intercourse. Rules and regulations are not emotional intercourse. At best I feel they are an outline of desire. They may tell us what is important, but I believe they can only outline the Heart which designed them. Yes, I think there are rules that we have to follow as believers, but the rules themselves are void of passion without understanding the Root which has created them.

“What would you do it you found a wallet on the street?” my professor asked, as I sat some years ago in my first religious studies course. She eyed us all, then pointed to a man in the back row. “You, what would you do if you found a wallet on the street with some money in it, maybe a few credit cards? A gold card, American express, the drivers license looks like to be a middle aged man.”

“Take it to the police, I guess,” he stammered out. She nodded, but still carried a feeling of apathy towards his answer. She pointed to the girl next to him.

“You. What would you do?”

“I guess the same, maybe take it to the address on the license, give it back.” She seemed more calm. The class looked about, realizing that she was running down the rows. We all began to think out our answers.

She did as we thought: one by one in a 100 person class, she asked us. Most said they would return it, a few brave ones said maybe they would keep the money; a few more said they weren’t sure. As she heard the last answer in the front right row, she paused for a moment, crossing her arms and panning her vision across the crowd of waiting students.

“You’re full of crap. Most of you anyway. You don’t know if you’d give it back, you just sputter that out because it‘s what you believe you should do; it‘s the ‘moral’ thing to do. At least the frat boy over there said he’d keep the money. The best we can say is, ‘I don’t know’,” she chastised us, and for some reason, I felt bad for saying what I thought was the right thing.

“You have no idea what situation you’d be in at that time; you don’t know what would be happening. Right action is in the moment; you’re stammering out your principals,” she said. A large man, probably in his 40’s, in the front row raised his hand. The professor looked over and nodded at him.

“It’s the right thing to do, and I know that it wouldn’t matter what the situation, I would return that wallet. I am a Christian and it’s what I’ve been taught to do,” he said confidently. She raised an eyebrow at him and walked over.

“Even if you were homeless and hungry you’d return it?” she asked him. He smirked a bit, then answered.

“I would; it’s what the church teaches us to do and so I would do it.” He leaned back in his chair; I could smell the arrogance from the other side of the room. I had just recently left the church, but I still felt a sting of embarrassment that this man used to represent my faith in that classroom. The professor stood looking at him, allowing the tension to build between them.

“Do you have a kid?” she asked him.

“Yeah, a five year old. Why?”

“So you’d be homeless with your kid. You would return that money, every dollar, when you have a child with you who needs to eat?” She didn’t smile, she didn’t taunt, she just wanted to dig into him, she wanted him to understand. He sat forward, eyeing her.

“I would. If you do the right thing, do what the Bible says to do, then God will provide! Taking that wallet would be stealing. If my son needed to eat, God would provide,” he blurted out, just under a shout. She wasn’t fazed.

“How do you know that wasn’t God giving you food? You think you’d be walking along and find a five star meal waiting on a candle lit table behind an ally waiting for you and your child? You think you know how God works? I don’t think you can fathom the plans of something so much greater than you,” she retorted. He sat there silently for a moment, looking at the ground.

“He would provide. You follow the Law and He blesses,” he said sternly, just above a whisper. “Do what the Bible says. That’s the way it works.”

Her face softened a bit, her brow furrowed and she sighed, shaking her head, as she walked back to the center of the class to begin the lecture.

I looked at him, his arms crossed, his demeanor spiked and defensive. Was it the greater sin to take the wallet, or let his son starve for the sake of pride in principal? Would God provide otherwise in that situation? Was that Him providing? I don’t know, I think it would be harder to know in the moment, but I think maybe she was right, maybe that is the right answer: I don’t know.

I didn’t recount this to say that we should take a wallet if we find it in the middle of the street, but rather to examine the Lawmaker through the Law. I think perhaps the laws and the rules are there for the sake of right action, and right thought, but I don’t know if any law could always be true; I don’t know if the same compassion Christ showed us is in that. It would seem ridiculous to pause at a stop sign in an empty intersection if there was a tsunami coming, and I don’t think I could let my child starve if there was a way to feed him (if I had a child). I often wonder if, perhaps, we don’t give God enough credit, enough room to be God. I wonder if we box Him in with what we know, not letting Him out to work through us because we’re afraid of the uncertainty of real relationship. It makes me think that we’re living as though Christ never came, never gave us freedom from the Law, didn’t give us the ability to pull a donkey out of a ditch on the Sabbath, or even another human being for that matter. What if God is bigger than we think He is? I don’t mean that it’s about not following the laws of faith, and I don’t mean to say that it’s not about not following the laws of our faith. It’s C.S. Lewis’ moral law, the inner pulling that begs us to do one thing when we feel another, it‘s being brave enough to pose a question and whole heartedly searching for an answer. It‘s being in ever-growing intimate relationship.

I once asked my friend, Jonathan Keck, if he thought that maybe God was in fact so great and so encapsulating that He may actually contradict Himself, as we only so insignificant and limited human beings could understand contradiction to be. That God is all Love, but just as much all Justice and somehow there is an incomprehensible balance there which we could never really understand. Jonathan said he thought this was probably true, but the real and hard part is finding a way to translate that reality into our daily lives, finding a way to truly live like Godly men and women in that uncertain area of grey. Maybe that is where, for some of us, relationship starts...