A Call to Divorce, Part 2 (concl.): Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness

Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.  Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account.  Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you.

Here we come back to the reward of the kingdom of heaven.  We started with it and we end with it.  It belongs to the poor in spirit and to those persecuted for the sake of righteousness.  By beginning and ending with it, Jesus seems to say that his followers will strive for all of these things and they will face persecution.  But fear not, he says, your reward will be great.  And he enjoins us to meet persecution not with groaning or complaining, but rejoicing and gladness.

In America we have Blessed are those whose rights are upheld, for theirs is American freedom.  Blessed are you when others respect you and honor you and praise you for your talents and personal achievements.  Rejoice and be glad, for you will be remembered, for so they praised the great Americans who were before you.

The American church, to an overwhelming extent, seems to have bought into this mentality.  When we see the nation moving away from practices that coincided more closely with our own (such as prayer in schools) we moan about a loss of freedom of religion and demand that things go back to what they were.  When legislation causes us to fear for our personal freedom, we insist that the legislation be changed to guarantee our own rights.  We petition and protest in support of ourselves and are unwilling to accept what persecution might come.  And so people utter all kinds of evil against us rightly, and for this we have no reward.

These days, when Christians in America suffer actual persecution, it is generally the lesser persecution of shame.  Scoffers laugh at us because we believe in Jesus and to the world that is foolishness.  Our rights are not in danger, and we are in very little actual danger of being prevented from practicing our religion.  This country does still uphold the right to hold any religious opinion we desire, and it doesn’t seem likely to change that any time soon.

So why do people seem to be turning against Christians these days?  I suggest that it’s because we’re whining more.  We aren’t getting everything our way and some minority groups are being raised a little bit and given more dignity.  This endangers our position of political and economic security and often superiority.  We aren’t being threatened, but our worldly supremacy is.  Perhaps rather than seeing this as the world overcoming the Church and leading into a great persecution, instead we can consider it a time when God might be humbling us because we haven’t humbled ourselves.

Now, if we are being shamed because we are whining, then we are being shamed for doing a shameful thing.  We are not being persecuted for righteousness or for the name of Jesus.  We are being persecuted for things that we ought not do and for our own fear and pride.

So what happens if we stop whining and start to more fully live out the gospel?  What happens if we strive to make peace and to meekly love our neighbors and to throw off our ambition for the sake of poverty of spirit?  Will our country see the good we are doing and praise us for it?  Will the persecution, even the persecution of scoffing, end?

If we start to live out the gospel, the persecution might finally begin.  The world meets the righteous with persecution almost every time.  It is rare that prophets died quietly in their beds.  Even during the reign of Christendom, the saints often met persecution from other Christians who were envious or proudly blind.  Actual righteousness is not a popular thing.  If nothing else, it often makes people feel guilty because you aren’t doing what they are.

Earthly security and honor are not only not promised by Jesus, they are not offered.  What he offered is earthly trouble, telling us that if they hated the master, they will hate the students.  This didn’t change with Constantine and it isn’t new to the post-Christendom world.  The world has always and will always hate Christianity because following Christ is, at its very heart, a call to leave the world and follow Jesus.  The world will despise people who abandon worldly values in favor of Christian values.  This is a guarantee.

Jesus said that the world will know that we are his disciples because we love one another.  It seems evident to me that this is different from upholding a Judeo-Christian moral code in secular legislation, or adamantly insisting that I am a Christian along with a demand that my rights are upheld.  When the world sees this, they know that we are “Christians.”  They know that we are affiliated with an organization of people that carries certain conservative moral values and certain religious opinions.  They do not know that we are disciples of Jesus, because Jesus didn’t do these things.

How, then, do we show the world that we are disciples of Jesus?  In pre-Constantinian Rome, the Christians were evident and were seen as a threat to the empire because they were meeting the physical needs of their community.  People didn’t need the government because they had the Church.  And these were not simply impersonal charities.  They were brothers helping brothers.  And when the brothers were helped and there was more to give, they spilled out into their communities and helped everyone within their reach.

I wonder, sometimes, whether St. John would reprimand us for our method of giving today.  He reprimands the church for claiming to love God but not loving their brothers, asking how they can claim to love God who they have not seen when they do not love their brothers that they have seen.  I wonder if he would look at the difference between how we give to impoverished nations and how we give to the poor within our own congregations and ask us how we can claim to love our brothers that we have not seen when we do not love our brothers who are among us.  I think he would echo the Lord’s sentiment in instructing us: “You ought to have done the one without neglecting the other.”

We are instructed to do these things, called to follow Jesus wholeheartedly, leaving the demands and values of the world behind.  We are not called to take the values of Christ and fit them into our culture as best as we are able.  We are called to sacrifice worldly gain, knowing that like the disciples who had left everything for the sake of following Jesus, we will receive a hundredfold in return; and with it persecutions.

So have we counted the cost?  Are we willing to take up our cross and follow Jesus?  If persecution begins and the righteous of this nation are fined, jailed, or killed, will we remain faithful to Christ?  Will we be faithful to Christ even if it starts a violent persecution against us?  For mercy’s sake, I hope so.

A Call to Divorce, Part 2 (cont'd): Blessed are the pure in heart/Peacemakers

Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.

This is another value in which America isn’t entirely off the mark.  However, “pure in heart” demands a certain standard of purity that is not individually definable, which is where we drift off center.  In America, the value tends to be Blessed are the sincere and consistent, for they shall see God.

Americans in general tend to be rather religious, although the religions might not be the same.  This is more true historically than it seems to be becoming, but it is still generally true.  Whether the religion is some form of Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, or some new or newly revived religion, the majority of Americans hold to some belief system about a spiritual world or a life beyond this earthly incarnation.  In our culture, everyone is entitled to their opinion about religion.  And increasingly it is being understood that as long as you really believe in the religion and are consistent in following it, you will receive the reward promised by that religion.  It is the “true for you” mentality.

Sometimes this seeps into the Church, but most of the time when it does the Church relatively quickly stops being Christian.  This mentality denies the exclusivity of Christ and undermines the very meaning of the word truth, so it is natural that it doesn’t fit in with orthodoxy.  Where it doesn’t miss the mark entirely is that it does demand some sort of purity, as sincerity and consistency do not allow for double-mindedness or hypocrisy.  (That being said, most Americans don’t actually demand consistency or sincerity these days; they are happy to allow nominal belief in whatever you choose.)

A somewhat syncretized form of this does exist in the form of nominal Christianity.  Some believe that anyone who has, for instance, prayed a prayer accepting Jesus as Savior or been baptized into the Church will be saved.  This has a certain appeal to those looking for personal security, but it does not seem to reflect Jesus’ teaching.  He says here that it is not those who have performed the rite of your choice, but those who are pure in heart who will see God.

So what does it mean to be pure in heart?  This is where I would point anyone to the rest of the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-7.  The Beatitudes are the opening statements to the Sermon on the Mount.  Whether you are or aren’t familiar with it, if you haven’t read it today, go read it.  Read it when you’re done with this if you have time.  If you don’t have time for both, stop wasting your time reading this and read that instead.)  The Sermon on the Mount is full of teachings that say it is not only your actions that matter (they do matter, by the way) but even your thoughts. 

Elsewhere Jesus says “Out of the overflow of the heart, the mouth speaks.”  That is, the things you do reflect your heart.  So if you have a sinful heart, you will perform sinful deeds.  But even if you manage to so discipline your deeds that you keep every point of the Law in action, if you commit sin internally you are still sinning.  So even if you never commit adultery, you are guilty of adultery for lust.

“Pure in heart” is a resetting of the bar.  When Jesus teaches here on the Law, he teaches that simply following the Law is not enough.  What God desires is that your very heart be pure.  Sounds big, right?  It is.

We have to understand how important sin is.  It is not something that crops up and is excusable because God will forgive us.  It is atrocious.  It is something to root out.  It is something that will still happen because we are still fallen and have not fully entered into glory, but it is not something to let slide.  We are encouraged, maybe even commanded, here and elsewhere to take sin seriously and to root it out.  So when we are tempted to sin, we must not allow ourselves to entertain the temptation.  We must not allow ourselves to dwell in sin or to rebelliously plunge into it.  We must fight with everything we have to resist temptation.  Those who will see God are the pure in heart.

Yes, it is almost inevitable that we will fail.  (Some reading this may be so near to both perfection and death that they will manage to resist every temptation between now and heaven, which is why I do not make it an absolute certainty.)  We will fail, and God will forgive us when we repent.  As I have said before, this does not give us the right to presume upon his forgiveness.  But we can take comfort in the knowledge that he does not cast us out for being weak.  All the same, we can and must fight as our Lord has called us to, with the certain knowledge that the Holy Spirit will also fight with us and for us.

God, give us the grace and strength to flee temptation.  Guard and preserve us by your Spirit, that we might be pure.

Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God.

Where do I start?  In America, we fancy ourselves peacemakers.  Sometimes even global peacemakers.  Within our nation, we also like to sometimes consider ourselves peacemakers.  We bring down oppressors and uplift the downtrodden, often with extreme force.  Okay, yeah, we also do a fair amount of oppressing and treading down, but that isn’t exactly the point here.  The main point is the word “peacemaker.”  So let me Americanize the beatitude and then jump to 2 Corinthians.

Blessed are the pacifiers, for they shall be called sons of God.

The American way to bring peace is generally through resistance, either non-violent in the best cases or (more commonly) violent resistance.  We see that there is a non-peaceful situation and we bring peace to it.  We quash all rebellion and dissent, insofar as we are able, and declare that peace and freedom have been established or defended or upheld.  Leaving my obvious bias about the efficacy of this approach aside, let’s look at the most important word that St. Paul gives us with regard to this:  reconciliation.

In 2 Corinthians 5:18, the Apostle declares that God has reconciled us to himself and given us the ministry of reconciliation.  Yes, this ministry is primarily one of bringing reconciliation (or peace) between God and men.  But taken along with Jesus’ statement later in the Sermon on the Mount that we should not resist an evil person and that we should love our enemies, the ministry of reconciliation does seem to apply to the call to be peacemakers.

This is another American value that just exists in its entirety within the American church.  We support war for the sake of defending freedom or American security or fighting terrorism or a host of other reasons.  Christians in the pews and in the pulpit are in favor of stamping out resistance through violent means.  And at home we are happy to stage aggressive protests or insist on legislation that elevates one party over another and leaves the losers out in the cold.

We have a big hatred problem in this country.  We’re obviously not the only country with this problem.  How can we respond to it?  Well, we could violently resist and breed more hatred, or we could passively ignore the problem and breed more hatred, or we could insist on legislation that will change the socioeconomic balance and create more hatred.  Or, perhaps, we could find a way to make peace.  We could work to reconcile the warring parties, to help those driven by hatred to overcome their hatred and see the humanity of their fellow man, to help those driven by fear of hatred to overcome their fear; obviously if we’re helping people overcome fear, we’ll need to start by overcoming the hatred or else we’ll be helping the fearful to be more scarred and create more hatred.  But ultimately our goal is to produce reconciliation.

I don’t have many practical steps to offer here.  The most practical thing is, of course, prayer.  The next is to examine our own lives and discover what people we need to be reconciled to.  This should probably focus more on those we have sinned against than those who have sinned against us.  Then we can work to challenge those who are doing things that breed more discord, gently correcting them and helping them to understand their actions.  We can work to understand ourselves.  We can go outside of our homogeneous communities and actually build relationships (not just meet people and become facebook friends) with people who are different from us.  And when we do this, we can not flatter ourselves by pretending that the work is done.  We can work to foster peace.

As a white man in America, I feel I have the responsibility to point out that white men have experienced incredible privilege in this country for its entire history and we still do.  This privilege has led to a significant breach of peace, particularly as we have used our privilege to take credit for things that were made easier for us by our class and shamed those who do not achieve “success” while ignoring the obstacles caused by deeply rooted systemic oppression and segregation.  If we hope for peace, we must acknowledge our privilege and take active steps to bring about reconciliation, beginning with learning to treat other human beings as human beings and not potential criminals or societal leeches. 

The same can be said of the wealthy in regard to the poor.  The great lie of Capitalist America is the myth of the self-made man.  Anyone who thinks logically about those who first achieve wealth will see that many circumstances outside of the wealthy man’s control contributed to his success, even if it was simply the fact that he was taught as a child that he was capable of achieving success.  But as Christians we have it spelled out for us in Scripture and the teachings of the Fathers that no man is self-made; what wealth and success you have is a gift from God.  Further, we are instructed to use that gift to help those who do not have wealth; we are not permitted to hoard it or use it on ourselves without regard for the poor.  The wealthy, then, must also acknowledge their privilege and take active steps to reach out to the poor.  And I suggest that this must first happen by reaching out to the poor in our churches or the churches in our community, recognizing the necessity of money in our society and the great difficulty many have in acquiring enough to live on, and giving them some money.

How do you know if you have the privilege of wealth?  There isn’t a number on this.  I have the privilege of wealth.  If you make more money than you need to cover your basic expenses then you have wealth.  Many in our churches do not have the money they need to meet their basic expenses.  Things like food, rent, utilities, gas in the car to get to work.  The hoarding of wealth by the wealthy is hurting the poor in our communities and driving wedges of frustration, bitterness, and resentment between Christians; economic hardship for many drives them away from God so that they no longer believe and no longer follow him.  This cannot go on any longer.

“But Dan,” you say, “if God wanted to provide for the poor then he would provide them with money.  Maybe he wants them to suffer financial difficulty for a reason.”  I would echo St. John Chrysostom here; God has provided them with money, but he provided it by giving it to you.  The wealthy are stewards of the wealth of the poor.  To let the poor suffer in their poverty without lifting a finger to help is to rob the poor of what is theirs.  By pouring money into your own comforts without helping those in need, you have become a thief.  And when you give to the poor, you have no right to a smug sense of satisfaction or superiority; when you give to the poor you are giving to them what you owe them, simply making good a debt.

More generally back to peace:  The key to remember here is that making peace is not done through the use of force.  We are not looking for a shift in the balance of power.  We are looking for those who are in power and those who are not in power to not simply stop fighting, but to actually get along.  Maybe even to love each other.

Look, I know it’s a lot to ask.  I know it seems impossible.  Jesus knows it too.  How can I tell?  Because he says that those who do this will be called not simply great men, but sons of God.

A Call to Divorce, Part 2 (cont'd): Blessed are the merciful

Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy.

Mercy is a quality that incorporates several elements.  One is to relent when it is within one’s power to punish.  Another is to be kind to the vulnerable and those in need.  When many pastors talk about God’s mercy in reference to God’s grace, they talk about mercy as “not receiving what we deserve” and grace as “receiving what we do not deserve.”  We see God’s love shown in things like sending the rain on the righteous and the unrighteous, which I will suggest is also an act of mercy.  While I may be conflating mercy and grace, I will include the idea of “giving what one has not earned by merit and is powerless to gain by his own action.”  Mercy, I believe, includes the notion of alms-giving.

Honestly, I believe this value is essentially present within American culture, although its application may be deficient.  We believe in helping the weak and powerless, we extend an invitation to the poor of other countries to come here to be free and successful, albeit a limited invitation into a system where they might not find the freedom or success they are offered.  At heart, we do as a nation value the concept of mercy.

Where we break down is that our mercy is generally shown in ways that will offer the least inconvenience to me and we are not inclined to show mercy to those who we perceive as a threat.  So if showing mercy means giving a few dollars to a homeless man on the street or even supporting a charity that works with the homeless we are likely to do it, but if it means opening my house to a homeless person we are not.  Similarly, if mercy means allowing people to immigrate here and work we might be likely to be in favor of it, but if it means allowing immigrants to compete for jobs in my field we are far less likely.  We will be merciful to those beneath us as long as they stay beneath us.

We are also more likely to show mercy to those who are on our side or who are completely separate from us (such as the poor of other nations) than we are to those who are in our world but somehow opposed to us.  That is, if a homeless man is in my town I am likely to see him as a nuisance, but if a homeless man is in a city that I am visiting I am likely to see him as one in need of mercy because he does not stand in opposition to my regular comfort.  If a friend or family member is in need, I am likely to help him because we share a bond of friendship or blood and are thus together in some sort of community.  But if someone, whether inside or outside my community, is adamantly opposed to my views (political, religious, ideological, or what have you) then I am likely to see him as an enemy and will seek to find a way to protect myself from him instead of seeing him as a candidate for receiving mercy.

We also have a strange relationship with those who are not of the lowest classes when we consider mercy.  We wonder how to show mercy to those in power, or even whether it is appropriate to show them mercy.  Is it good to extend kindness to the wealthy and to corrupt politicians, or to those whose beliefs lead them to do things we consider atrocious?  The marriage equality debate comes to mind.  One side often sees an oppressive regime squashing the rights of a minority community while the other sees a self-centered and sex-crazed minority trying to sink our country into depravity and damnation.  (There are as many sides of this particular debate as there are people in it, so please forgive the caricature of the “two sides.”)  Is it even right for those on one side to be merciful to the other when their desired aim appears so heinous?  If it is, how do we show that mercy?

Unfortunately, I fear that the nation as a whole might be better at mercy than the American church as a whole.  Yes, the Church has some wonderful examples of mercy that exceed anything the nation might offer and the nation has some hideous examples that exceed anything the Church might do.  But for the most part, the nation is more adept at practically showing mercy (which often includes tending to physical needs) than is the Church, which is often too focused on spiritual needs to consider the importance of meeting physical needs.  So I will offer a few things that might help to correct our view of mercy and help us to consider how we might be more merciful.

If mercy is essentially “giving to those in need” as I described in the first paragraph, then we can broaden our view of neediness.  An important doctrine of most of the Church throughout the world is the dignity of man.  Everyone is in need of being treated with dignity.  So when others are opposed to us, we can treat them with dignity.  This means that we do not demonize them and we do not make them into animals.  The person holding an opposing political view, even if it is a view that may threaten my rights or my comfort, is still a person worthy of dignity.  The homeless person begging on the street corner is still a person worthy of dignity.  The person who commits a crime is still a person worthy of dignity and not some wicked beast called a “criminal”.

Another helpful consideration might be the command to treat others as we would have them treat us.  Which of us would not like to be shown mercy when we mess up at work or in a relationship?  When we legitimately wrong someone, we tend to want that person to cut us slack, understand what led to the problem, and forgive us.  We can extend that same mercy to those who legitimately wrong us.  To take the example of crime, rather than seeing crime as a result of depravity and greed, we can understand that it is often done out of despair and lack of perceived options for survival.  A man might not be able to feed himself and his family on the job he is able to get, so he might steal or peddle drugs simply to make ends meet.  That understanding in itself is merciful, and it will shape our response to crime.

As for the question of whether it is always appropriate to show mercy, I would say yes.  However, I would add some caveats.  I can treat another person with dignity and understanding and still conclude that they shouldn’t do what they are doing.  A sex-trafficker, for instance.  (I’m talking about the people responsible for the trafficking, not the slaves who are being trafficked.)  There is no amount of mercy that will make that injustice excusable or understandable.  Those who are trafficking in slaves ought to be stopped and punished for what they’ve done.  And this is not a violation of mercy.  Similarly, the exploitation of the poor by the rich is unjust and should be stopped.  I can treat those doing it with dignity, recognizing their humanity with its dignity and its brokenness, by I can still only conclude that it is wrong and must be stopped.  This is also not a violation of mercy.  Perhaps it does not violate mercy because it elevates mercy for those who are most in need of it above those who are less in need of it.  I’m sure a great theologian has already explained this somewhere, but I am neither aware of where it has been treated nor myself a great theologian, so this is the best explanation I can offer.

A good guide for showing mercy to those in power is, in my opinion, Justin Martyr.  He entreated the emperor to stop killing Christians, which he explained as an unjust act.  In his Apology he explained what Christianity is and why it was not a threat to the empire.  He asked the emperor to reconsider his policy of killing Christians, essentially to repent and do the right thing.  He also warned that the emperor would be in danger of God’s judgment if he continued this oppression.

Perhaps the point of Justin Martyr’s example here is that we can be kind and gracious while also pointing out an injustice and working for its correction.  He did submit to the emperor by asking rather than insisting.  He did also warn him of the consequences of making the wrong choice.  It is notable, however, that the consequences mentioned were not the vengeance of Christians but the vengeance of Christ.  Justin continued in loving his enemy and not resisting an evil person despite the danger he was in.  He submitted to the persecution even while encouraging that the persecution end.  He did not die with declamations of injustice on his lips, but proclamations of the gospel.

I have neglected up to this point to rephrase the beatitude into an American beatitude, partially because it is so close to the original.  But if I must characterize it, it would be Blessed are the condescendingly merciful, for they shall be seen as good people.  Where the Church must depart from this is in its condescension.  We are called to consider all others as greater than ourselves, to become slaves to all, and we are also called to be merciful.  This means that our mercy will always be extended to those above us.  When I help the homeless man on the street, I am helping someone more worthy of honor than myself, not less worthy.  I do not have to dignify him, because he has been dignified by God.  I have only to recognize his dignity and to treat him accordingly.

As for the reward of our mercy in America and in the Kingdom, the Lord did not teach us to show mercy for the sake of our reputation. Often, quite apart from being seen as good people for showing mercy, we will be seen as weak or foolish or even hateful by some that see us.  But when we show mercy, we do not do it in order to receive the praise of men, but the mercy of our Father in heaven. So our mercy, while being of a similar nature to the world’s mercy, should exceed it in every good thing knowing that the reward for our mercy is infinitely greater than the highest praises of the world.

A Call to Divorce, Part 2 (cont'd): Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness

Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.

First, let’s think about the words “hunger and thirst”.  I recently had a day of walking through a zoo in 95 degree heat with a blazing sun, there were few places to stop for a drink, and we didn’t eat while we were there.  I’d had my heart set on seeing all the exhibits and particularly my favorite animals.  I’d also skipped breakfast that morning.  Shortly after climbing the hill to see the rhinos around one o’clock, I’d had enough.  I was tired, I was weak, I couldn’t focus on anything around me and even my favorite animals couldn’t excite my attention.  I was hungry.  I was thirsty.  All I wanted was to eat and drink.  Even walking through the grocery store with my friend, when he asked what I wanted for lunch, the best response I could give him was “I don’t care, is it made of food?”

What we hunger and thirst for is nourishment, it’s the thing that keeps us going and enables us to do everything else.  We hunger and thirst for meals.  It is essential to us, and without it nothing else really has value.  It is not a simple preference, it is a thing we need.  It isn’t something we would like to have.  When we hunger and thirst, we feel like we are dying.  And eventually, if our hunger and thirst are not satisfied, we will die.  The righteousness for which we hunger and thirst is not dessert.

If I Americanize this beatitude, I come up with something like Blessed are those who satisfy their hunger and thirst, for they shall be whole.  It doesn’t particularly matter what we hunger and thirst for, simply that the appetite be sated.  We might long for wealth or leisure or comfort or sexual gratification.  It might be anything.  What is important isn’t what we crave, but that we crave.  And given the nature of hunger and thirst, the thing we want becomes vital.

Here’s the tricky part for Christians: the thing we crave actually does become vital.  We have the sense that if we do not have this thing, we cannot be a whole person and the rest of life is irrelevant.  It doesn’t matter how good everything else in life might be.  All that matters is that this craving is satisfied.  This craving becomes an essential part of our identity.  If this craving is not met, then we believe we are being wronged.  This essential thing is being withheld from us, and that is a violation of my rights and my dignity.  It is a violation of the very present American ideal of the inalienable right to the pursuit of happiness.

Where this spirit creeps into the church we tend to reframe our values or our views of righteousness itself, allowing our hunger and thirst for other things.  We believe somehow that God wants to satisfy our desires and wants us to find wholeness through satisfying our desires.  We have often forgotten that God wants us to find our satisfaction in righteousness as he has defined it and our wholeness in him and our union with him.  So we reexamine long-standing teachings to determine how scripture might support our desires and we ask ourselves “Does the bible really teach that?”  And if we work hard enough, we can always find a way to say that the bible teaches exactly what we want it to teach.

So before everyone jumps immediately to their pet sin that other people do and gets on their high horse about how they should long for righteousness instead of sin, let’s stop immediately and think about our own appetites.  And since my audience is primarily evangelical Protestants, I’m going to focus this on a thing that we tend to value above all other goods: marriage and family.  If you stick with me, I’ll show you the disordered nature of the value as it plays out in many of our churches.

Marriage is a good thing, ordained by God.  It is good for companionship and for procreation.  The church considers it a sacrament, or sacramental, or simply an intrinsic good.  And it is obviously right to do so.  But then it goes so far as to say that it is something everyone should desire.  And it assumes that it is something that everyone does desire.  It teaches young people about how to responsibly find a spouse and marry the person that God has set aside for you.  It creates singles groups so that unmarried people can hang out with other unmarried people (I won’t focus too much here on how singles groups create a class system within the church that essentially consigns single people to a ghetto until they are able to enter into the full life of the church community by getting married).  It will generally refuse to hire an unmarried man as a pastor and sometimes even to give him a position of any authority within the church.  (Obviously the Catholic and Orthodox churches don’t do that last one.  It’s more of a Protestant problem.)  And when unmarried people come to the church with their woes about loneliness or their strong desire to get married, they are often encouraged to pray for God to bring the right person to them or given instruction on how to become suitable for marriage.

So what does all of this communicate?  Simply put, marriage is a thing worth hungering for.  People often sincerely believe that marriage does make you a more whole and complete person, and that without being married, you will not be a whole and complete person.  To that, I would respond thus:  Marriage is not righteousness.  Do not hunger and thirst for marriage, but hunger and thirst for righteousness.  And when someone is hungering and thirsting for marriage (as with anything else) gently correct them and teach them to hunger and thirst for righteousness instead.

Now, I am unmarried and clearly I have some baggage about how unmarried people are treated within the church.  So for the sake of fairness, I will also turn this around on myself.  Celibacy is not a thing worth hungering and thirsting after.  It is not a thing for me to hold up as a highest good or to insist on for all people.  What is worth hungering and thirsting after is only righteousness.

How do I think marriage and celibacy should be viewed in reference to hunger and thirst?  Maybe the best analogy is that they’re dishes.  A plate and a glass might be very useful to me when I want to eat and drink, but I don’t have any desire to eat the plate or drink the glass.  I want the food and drink that they hold.  And I don’t need a plate to eat a sandwich.  Give me the food.  Give me righteousness, because without it I am starving; I am not starving for crystal.

Now that we’ve focused a bit on what I consider the more deadly and insidious problem or hungering and thirsting for good things that do not satisfy, we can turn our attention to hungering and thirsting for bad things that do not satisfy.  These are varied and I don’t plan to name them all.  Again, I would encourage as always that we focus on our own appetites rather than the appetites of our neighbor.

If exalting a good thing is like hungering for dishes, then exalting sin may be akin to longing for dirty dishes.  That’s right, dirty dishes, not rotten food.  Why?  Because God can still work good in us through our sin and I refuse to give any reader the excuse to look down on another as if that failure is significantly worse than their own.  Yes, the dirty dish might mean that you’re eating a lot of filth along with the nourishment and that you might get sick because of it.  But whether you’re hungering after a good thing or a bad thing, if you’re trying to eat the plate instead of the sandwich, you’re doing it wrong and you’re going to die.  Eating the plate is sin.  Eat the sandwich.

That being said, we cannot let our appetites affect our assessment of what is righteous and what is not.  We have very clear teaching in scripture and in tradition about what is right and what is wrong.  No dithering here, the teaching is clear.  We can tell ourselves all day that it isn’t clear, but that won’t change the fact.  We can wonder why this or that thing is righteous, which is fine, but we cannot refuse to accept the distinction between righteousness and sin or call good what is evil.  We cannot reorder righteousness to suit our own perceived needs.  This means that we also cannot take a morally neutral thing and exalt it above its station, calling it righteousness when it is not.  We cannot allow ourselves to hunger and thirst after the wrong things.

I’m using stronger language here than I sometimes do because this is essential.  If we try to satisfy ourselves with things that do not satisfy, we will die.  Our faith will collapse, our relationship with God will suffer and may ultimately fail.  We may divide the church or break fellowship with believers because our appetites are not being met within the church.  An unsatisfied longing for a thing other than righteousness can lead to emotional torment, physical illness, and in some cases has led to suicide.  Hunger is not static.  When a hunger is not satisfied, it increases until it becomes an imminent threat.  We must not satisfy hungers for unrighteous things, but we equally must not allow ourselves to hunger for unsatisfying things lest that hunger grow and consume us.

Now the merciful and understanding part:  It isn’t something that just switches off.  When we hunger for the wrong things, we truly are hungering for them.  It is seemingly essential to us and can even become wrapped up in how we view ourselves, the world, and God.  It is difficult to learn that while we are in a very real way defined by what we crave, we do not have to crave what is natural to us.  It is painful to starve a desire, but we can and must learn to do it and instead to seek satisfaction in righteousness.

Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.  I long for things that are not righteousness and I seek things that are not you.  Teach me to hunger rightly and help me to endure when I do not find satisfaction.