Some people may have a perception of Christianity that it must be overwhelmingly polite and “nice.” This is certainly not the case. In a previous post, I talked about how moralism (legalism/perfectionism) and grace are truly different religions. In the first part of this series, I addressed the question “Who is God?” Let’s dig further into this topic.
What does God care about?
MORALISM: In moralism, God cares most about people doing right. If the world was ideal according to moralism, people would follow the moral rules. The worst problems in moralism are when people are not “nice” or fail to follow the rules (whatever those rules may be). It is not an exaggeration to say that “nice” moralism would prefer a “Leave It To Beaver” or Mayberry view of the world. This vision of the world certainly seems appealing in particular ways compared to the chaos, insecurity, and complication of our current situation.
I grew up in a strict and hard version of Christianity, an independent fundamental Baptist church (think King James Version). For theology nerds, it was a separatist fellowship committed to old school dispensationalism (think 1917 Scofield Bible and Rightly Dividing the Word of Truth). That church took hard stances on many issues. Church members were prohibited from playing cards, drinking alcohol, attending movie theaters, dancing, and listening to any music with a backbeat. Divorced people were allowed to work in various ways in the church, but were prohibited from serving as pastors or deacons and from teaching adults. It was not codified in church documents, but it was expected that women would not work outside the home and would not wear pants to church. It was common in those circles for people to break relationship even with family and closest friends over beliefs and behaviors that differed from the church’s narrow views.
The reason I give all this background is simple. Even while holding and promoting hard stances on many different theological and social issues, that church was still very “nice.” My point is not that “niceness” or moralism is an entirely bad view of things, but that it is distinctly not a biblical or Christian frame for viewing things.
GRACE: In contrast to what moralism thinks God cares about, what God actually cares about people being made right, being connected, and being on mission with him. This is fundamentally and categorically different from people following rules and being “nice.”
Where moralism focuses on making, keeping, and breaking of rules, God is concerned with the process of making things right. The Christian worldview is that every person bears the image of God and all creation bears the fractures of sin and sin’s effects. God is not nearly so concerned with people being polite and nice and following moral rules as he is with repairing the effects of sin. According to the New Testament, the moral standard set by God is actually impossible for sinful people to attain. So all pretense of moral purity is false. And only Jesus has truly and rightly “followed the rules” of morality. God does not toss out morality. But he understands we are deeply flawed as human beings, and is deeply committed to remedying the situation.
The reason morality matters to God, as it applies to human beings, is not that God wants people to perfectly follow an arbitrary set of rules. What matters to God is how human behavior fractures and breaks relationships between God and people (a vertical relationship) on one hand and among people (horizontal relationships) on the other hand. To be a truly righteous person is not to have followed all the rules, but to be in right relationship with God and others. This is what God cares about.
God’s ultimate concern according to the Scripture is to see human beings returned to his original purpose for humanity. God’s work making things right, caught up with themes such as redemption and righteousness, is toward the purpose returning humanity to be on mission with him. God created Adam and Eve to be his co-regents on earth, roughly to serve as kings and queens here on earth joined in purpose with him and representing him through the work of their own hands.