What does it mean to act Christianly and how do we know when we’re doing it?
Ruminations on that question sparked thoughts on James earlier this week. When I read that letter I get the overwhelming sense that it is telling us to do all the right things, but I still find myself discontent with the ways and reasons it tells us to do them. Maybe it’s the “how do you know this is the right thing” part that stays too much beneath the surface for my liking?
Isa 28:11-12 reads like this: “With stammering lips and a foreign tongue God will speak to this people, he who said to this people, “Here is rest, give rest to the weary,” And “Here is repose,” but they wouldn’t listen.
This dynamic expressed here is perfect: you know what you are supposed to do because you’ve heard the story of what God has done for you. Your job is to represent the reign of God to the earth–so go and extend the rest that God gave you.
Are you a forgiven people? Go extend forgiveness.
Are you a freed people? Go extend freedom.
Are you an accepted outcast? Go extend acceptance to the outcast.
I want to press more and more for exhortations that are tied to our story, faithful outworkings of the narrative (Richard Hays) or drama (Sam Wells) that not only tells how God has acted in Christ, but into which we are wrapped and given parts to play.
So when I read through my student essays that wrestle with the uses of household codes in the NT, I love to see them working out what it means to be faithful to the gospel, and how people have been faithless to our defining narrative, by the ways the church understands relationships of power, relationships of gender, relationships defined by race.
This could go on and on. The point, sparked by those two verses in Isaiah 28:11-12 is that we too often go too far afield in getting all creative about what makes us how we are. Our foundational story gives us the identity that is to propel us out into the world, and cement us as a building being built up in one another.
As… so…
As you have received from God, so be and give to one another and the world around you.
I haven’t yet articulated it in my head, but, in light of the season (and mostly in light of the study guide I just wrote for our church), what role might the resurrection play in James and ethical living? I know it is not explicit….Can we assume that it has a role? Or perhaps its lack of mention is worth noting. Anyway, I was just going over Romans 6 and thinking of your post. (Don’t be to haughty that your post was on my mind while I was doing other things….)
I really like your definition of Christian identity. It reminds of Nicholas Wolterstorff’s “action theory”:
in short, this theological philosopher claimed that humans know who and what they are by the actions that they do, with respect to how God Himself has acted or presented Himself in the biblical metanarrtive. This God-action is really summed up well in Isaiah 28:11-12. Wolterstorff’s claim, it seems, is a far cry from abstract definitions which render or reduce God to an idea/concept; nothing but head knowledge and endless rumination! This is a trap we in the West have a tendency to fall into, and so we should be sensitive and aware of this, I think (as I sometimes fall into it).
As for the indirect/uncomprehensive poetic articulation or reflction of Christ in James [*out of breath*], I think you and me can agree to disagree.
Good call.