I mentioned the Jonathan Fisk book Broken: 7 “Christian” Rules That Every Christian Ought to Break about a week ago, where, in the first chapter, he takes on Mysticism. I’ve moved along slowly in my reading to the second chapter now, where his target is Moralism. And he has some excellent thoughts on it.
First, he defines Moralism as “The belief that access to God can be achieved through your personal efforts or attempts to improve yourself. Moralism, then, is nothing more than the worship of your works [my emphasis].”
Then he gives a barrage of excellent observations that make for good pondering:
Moralism lies in wait for you to lower the bar. In fact, Moralism can’t really exist without it. Once he has taught you that your hands are the answer to all your problems, he must also teach you to cheat. Just a little. Just for you. If he didn’t then he would only be morality, a belief in good and evil.
What matters is your belief that by following those rules you will alter the course of your life or the universe or both. What matters is that when you find you can’t follow those rules perfectly, you find a way to make it look like you did.
So when you fail just a little, you change the definition of “good” just a little to convince yourself that you are succeeding in making the world a better place.
The more you bend the “good” to fit yourself in it, the more you believe you actually have been a good person. You convince yourself you really have done the right thing most of the time. You buy your own illusion that you really are making the world a better place. But the more this happens, the more you also begin thinking everyone else isn’t quite living up to their end of the bargain. When you look around, you start to get frustrated that no one else can measure up to the new, mostly good measure of all things: you.
He’s got us pegged. It’s always the other guy.
But I’m the other guy’s other guy. I’m the idiot that cut him off in traffic (although I’ll insist that I wouldn’t have, if he wasn’t such a bad driver, right?).
But there is a difference between moralism and morality, and we shouldn’t confuse them. Morality is what tells us that there is a right and wrong. Moralism is us thinking that we’ve got the corner on how right and wrong apply to everyone (else). Morality tells us that there are behaviors that are wrong, Moralism tells us that we’re so much better than those who do them (conveniently ignoring the other behaviors that we do).
This is one of my biggest struggles, but I try. I try not to be judgmental of the person who does the wrong thing without first trying to understand why…and trying to see the same in me. Maybe not the same behavior, but the same excuses for different behaviors.
Just as we are all sinful, we’re all also works in progress. For the Christian, it’s known as “sanctification” – the process of being made holy. I like the Chinese (and Korean, derived from the Chinese) word for it: 圣化 (sheng4hua4) (성화 in Korean), literally translated, “holy-ize.” For the non-Christian? A dead-end. Their work in progress is simply a spinning of wheels; or if progress is indeed “made” (more like “perceived”), perhaps a journey through the maze of life that simply leads to the samae place — an eternity separated from God.
For the Christian, just knowing that God is working on us (working for the good of those who love him and are called according to his purpose) should bring joy even in the hard times. Recognizing his work in our lives should make us want to love more and let him take care of the hard stuff. This is part of the freedom for which Christ has set us free — that we don’t rely on our own works; our own (sinful) moralistic tendencies — to gain God’s favor. That should certainly take the pressure off.