A Terror-Free God

 

Introduction

The attack on good works

Jesus tells a parable about a farm hand who works hard all day long plowing the field and tending the sheep.  He returns to the farmhouse at sunset feeling good about himself.  But his master says to him, “No big deal!  You’ve only done your duty” (Lk 17: 7-10).  It makes a guy cry out “foul.” Jesus also tells a parable about laborers in a vineyard who work hard all day long in the heat. When sunset arrives, they feel good about themselves, and are expecting to receive more pay than the others who came to work much later. They too are told, “No big deal! You’re getting the same pay as everyone else”(Mt 20: 1-16).  That too makes you cry out “foul.”

 

Strange as it might sound, both parables are an attack on "good works"!  Both shout out a strange message that "good works don't work!"  They didn't work for the farm hand's master.  They didn't work for the owner of the vineyard.  And in the parable about the two men who went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector, the good works didn't work even for God. When the Pharisee got up to pray, he reminded God of all his good works: “I fast twice a week and I pay tithes on all my income.”  When the tax collector (the sinner who had nothing to brag about) got up to pray, he got down to pray, that is to say, he bent down low to the ground where humility gets its “humus,” and he confessed saying,  “Lord, be merciful to me a sinner.”  When sunset arrived, the parable says, the tax collector, not the Pharisee, went home that evening “justified in the sight of God” (Lk 18:9-14).

 

 

 

The good works didn't work even for God!  Now that, indeed, is quite unbelievable, especially for us Catholics, because from mother’s milk on our elders always told us to  “Be good, and God will love you.” 

 

The attack on good works is an age-old battle in the Christian religion. It began already with Jesus; you can hear it in his many “woes” uttered against the religious piety and practice of his time: “Woe to you Scribes and Pharisees! You scrupulously wash cups, pots, and copper kettles” (Mk 7: 4). “Woe to you Scribes and Pharisees! You scrupulously pay tithes upon mint, cumin and dill, but all the while you neglect the weightier matters of the law, like justice, compassion and honesty” (Mt 23: 23).  St. Paul makes the attack on good works part of the very substance of his preaching, which he crystallized into one simple phrase: “Saved by grace alone” (“Sola Gratia”) (Rom 3: 24). That is to say, we are saved gratis-ly. That is to say, we are saved freely, not by works.

 

The problem of terror

The parable says the tax collector went home that evening “justified in the sight of God.” In theology “justification” has a very special meaning of its own.  The burning issue of the Protestant Reformation of the 16th Century was the “Question of Justification:  ”How do I become justified in the eyes of God?”  Or to put the question in less lofty theological language but in a more meaningful but slightly corrupted form: “How do I get God to feel good about me?”  The answer is always assumed to be this: “To get God to feel good about you, you must do good works.” So the Jews were doing the good works of the piety and practice of Paul's time.  Catholics were doing the good works of the piety and practice of Luther's day.

 

But why attack good works? Aren’t there better things to do, like attacking terrorism? Well, for one thing, some of the good works, to which we dedicate ourselves, can sometimes be rather shabby, like paying tithes on mint, cumin and dill, or like washing pots, pans, and cooper kettles.  How in the world can such petty stuff make God feel good about us?  But more importantly and more profoundly, most of the time our good works aren’t as good as they appear to be; their goodness is always ambiguous. All virtue is really flawed: there’s always some pride in our humility; always some selfishness in our generosity; always some self-centeredness in our God-centered lives. Paul Tillich writes: “If it weren’t for the mercy and grace of God, all our works would be basically tragic.” If it weren’t for the mercy and grace God, our consciences would be terrified not only by our vices but also by our virtues.

 

Strange to say, it was terror which was the underlining problem for Martin Luther. He was terrified not only by his vices (like the rest of us) but even by his very virtues.  As a devout Augustinian monk, he worked his head off trying to get  “justified” in the sight of God; trying to get God to feel good about himself. He prayed and fasted, and then prayed and fasted even more. He scourged his body, and then scourged his body even more.   He scrupulously performed all the monastic observances. But to no avail.  At the end of the day, he discovered that the good works hadn’t worked for him.  Exhausted, he ended up terrified by the thought that his good works were either not good enough for God, or there weren’t enough of them to make God feel good about himself.   Luther himself referred to this dark overwhelming shadow in his life as  “terrores conscientiae,” “the terrors of conscience.”  You ask, “Aren’t there better things to do than to attack good works, like attacking terrorism?” Believe it or not, in attacking good works, Luther was actually attacking the terrorism that was terrorizing him.

 

 

The solution to terror

 

 How did he solve his problem of terror?  He who in fear and trembling was working his head off to gain salvation discovered the Good News, the Gospel, that there is nothing that he has to do to gain salvation, because there is nothing he can do.  And what’s more, there is nothing he has to do to gain salvation because Christ has already done for him all there has to be done. What Good News indeed that was!  What Luther could not do for himself that Christ did for him!  That Good News freed him from his terror, and it opened the very gates of heaven for him.  To this very day, you can see that Good News, chiseled with two words into the cornerstones of many old Protestant churches: “Sola Gratia,” “By Grace Alone,” not by works. That Good News became “The Battle Hymn of the Reformation.” It was immortalized in that hymn of all hymns: “Amazing Grace,” a favorite not only for Protestants but even now for Catholics. A hymn favorite even for the nation, especially in its tragic moments; as it weeps and mourns, it consoles itself with “Amazing Grace.”

 

Who are right in that historic theological conflict over “Justification” which down through the centuries often turned into Jihad: the Lutherans who stress faith or the Catholics who stress good works? The steam of that hot dispute has run out for all of us, and we either don’t ask the Question of Justification anymore (because it simply doesn’t bother us at all) or if we do ask the question, we’ve now come to see that the both of us (Lutherans and Catholics) are right. We always see better when the steam is gone.

 

Terrorists people and a terrorist God

Bad religion, whether it be Islamic, Judaic, or Christian, makes terrorists out of people. At this historic moment of ours, we remind ourselves that the unspeakable Tragedy of the Twin Towers torn down in Lower Manhattan was perpetrated by

bankrupt human beings who did what they did  “in the name of Allah, most merciful and compassionate.” It was perpetrated by people made terrorists by bad religion. [1] (I did not say “by a bad religion;” I said by “bad religion.”  The difference is immense.)

 

But bad religion makes terrorists not only out of people but also out of God.  In the wake of September 11th, Jerry Falwell spoke those infamous words of his which he later toned down mostly with his lips: “I really believe that the pagans and the abortionists and the feminists and the gays and lesbians (who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle), and the A.C.L.U. people, and the People for the American Way --– all of them who have tried to secularize America, -- I point the finger in their face and say, you helped this happen.” The problem with such a position (that God punished American immorality by means of those Islamic terrorists) is that it now makes God a terrorist too.

 

Bad religion makes God a terrorist.  The God before whom Martin Luther stood, trying to work out his salvation in fear and trembling, trying to get God to feel good about himself; the God before whom he stood, terrified at the thought that his good works weren’t good enough for God, or that there weren’t enough of them for God, such a God terrified Luther. Such a God was a terrorist for him.  But when Luther discovered the Gospel, the Good News that good works weren’t necessary for salvation because man is really incapable of them in the first place, and secondly because whatever is necessary for salvation Christ has already done for us,   --- that took the terror out of God for Luther.[2]  That’s why he called it “Gospel”: it was the good news that God was not a terrorist. Good religion takes the terror out of God, and in its place puts love. “Deus charitas est,”  “God is love,” says St. John, not terror. (I Jn 4: 16).

 

 

Terror yesterday and today

Many of us remember the old days when God, the terrorist, was alive and well.  As I look back on many years of priesthood, I see that I spent a lot of time and energy ministering to people whose God was a terrorist terrifying them. Of course, I first had to get over my own terrorist God before I could be of any good to others. In those days people were terrified of God because they were divorced and remarried. Terrified of God because of all their “dirty thoughts.” Terrified of God because they had not gone to confession for ages or had hidden something in confession. Terrified of God because they were practicing birth control. Terrified of God because they were   gay or lesbian. And then there were people who were terrified of God for a whole constellation of petty scrupulous reasons, like having swallowed a few snowflakes on the way to mass, back in those days when, from midnight on, it was strictly forbidden to taken anything whatsoever into   the mouth before Holy Communion. Much of that terror still hangs on today, though not in such severe form.  But it is there as a kind of malaise.

 

 Those who didn’t want to put up with such a terrorist God simply left the church for another church or for no church at all. Others, because they basically loved their church, chose to stay where they were, hoping perhaps to enhance their church with a terror-free God of their own.

 

Conclusion

“Amazing Grace”

“Justified, saved not by works but by grace.” Take that ancient theological formula of the Reformation, which has run out of steam for most of us, and give it life. Say it to yourself as though for the first time, and sing a litany of praise to it.

 

Saved by grace, saved gratis-ly:  God doesn’t make me pay up before God loves me.  -- That takes the terror out of God.

 

Saved by grace, saved gratis-ly:  God loves me not because I am good but because God is good. –- That takes the terror out of God.

 

Saved by grace, saved gratis-ly: God loves me anyway, the very same way my dog Simeon loves me: anyway.  -- And that, indeed, takes the terror out of God, and in its place puts the same unconditional love that my dog has for me. That indeed sets the heart a-singing, “Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound…”


[1] The reason why we may blame a religion itself for religious terrorism, instead of simply blaming it on the deviant followers of a religion, is because every religion in some degree must take responsibility for those deviants who speak in its name.

 

[2] This teaching is hard for the faithful to comprehend. They immediately ask: “Does anything go then?” Paul had his fears about a stand against good works. He stated it in Rom 6:1: “Shall we then sin to our heart’s content and see how far we can exploit the grace of God.”  Perhaps there is a useful clarification in stating matters this way: Good works are useful and necessary, but not for salvation.” Trying to figure out what that should mean might shed good light.