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Prophets, grace and social transformation
We
may be tempted to demarcate who are sinful and who are not by selective social
criteria. This desire avoids recognition that we all participate in some diminution
of the good. Amos depicts this reality in graphic social terms. Human societies
cannibalise the good as readily as they also seek to nurture it. This has occurred
throughout history. Paul gives the same image—in their best intentions, humans
invariably compromise the holy, just and good.
As
to the good then, if the plougher can overtake
the reaper (Amos), this is not a natural sequence of events. Only God can
resource any enduring social good in the same way that Paul, without equivocation,
speaks of human transformation and true possibilities for the good as being in Christ and life in the Spirit. Humanity before God is a recurring
image in Scripture. This image is expressed as mortality before life and compromise
before righteousness. Recognition of the distinction between sin and holiness,
seemingly unpalatable in our time, is crucial to another possibility—the experience
of communion and joy. We are utterly dependent on grace. Our lives are nothing
without God’s gifts of life and love that by redemption can also make good our
diverse and perennial expressions of human self-compromise or sin. Without this
recognition, we lapse into illusions about ourselves and make
God a liar (I John). By failing to recognise pervasive human
compromise, we join with society in casting each other into lying about life through
competing solutions to perennial human dilemmas. We become enmeshed in mutual
blame about the state of the world and how it should be fixed. We neither offer
a word of human transformation nor genuine community within conflicted humanity. It is as creatures in humility before
the Lord of life that our possibility for integral community in grace is given.
In Christ, God is demonstrably for us in love in our creaturely fragility and
self-compromise. Ultimately, we cannot make God a liar but we do lie in the name
of God by not acknowledging the reality of human life and its possibilities in
grace. v With
the media’s penetration into every aspect of life, we are acutely aware of human
tragedy. Some is self-inflicted. There are tragedies of circumstance. Many tragedies
are caused by others. The possibility of responding to these is moderated by being
here and not there or having limited resources and already giving attention to
other specific needs. It
is possible to bounce from one tragic event to another along with the media, which
having given one exposé of human grief, rushes to the next, propelled by an insatiable
thirst for news. It is possible to pounce on every new expression of tragedy,
imperiously demanding a partisan perspective from others. The media moves on and
with it, verbose casting of blame within every new awareness of human suffering.
Amid
imperatives for instant but fleeting engagement with the media’s latest but selective
focus on human tragedy, the excessive and perennial phenomenon of human compromise
through arrogance or anxiety is seemingly overlooked. This phenomenon exceeds
our most generous responses. These responses are necessary, though never adequate
to human fragility, which also requires transformation beyond the scope of human
resources. Christian
response to tragedy within human fragility and failure consists of deed and word—the
tangible response where possible and the ever present necessity of good news that
can transform human life. Both are inseparable. Jesus
Christ represents the possibility of transformed humanity, which comes to itself
only when it has come to an end of its self-justifying propensities and competing
partisan solutions for human wretchedness. The prophets might be quoted in support
of social change but according to Paul, they give testimony to righteousness that
exceeds any that is given effect by law. It therefore misses the point, at least
for Christians, to cite prophetic expositions of the law as a catalyst for social
transformation. Both
law and prophets give testimony to righteousness that exceeds the law in Jesus
Christ. The prophets yearn for another time when the Spirit of God is present
and transformative as a new trajectory in humanity. This is announced in Christ.
What law as the oracles of the holy, just and good is not able to achieve because
of perennial human compromise, is possible within grace. Codification
of the good becomes a source of perpetual enmity of charge and counter-charge
as to who has failed another and therefore the human community. Only as the gospel
consigns all to self-compromise or sin,
can all become recipients of grace (Romans
and Galatians). Righteousness is not
born of human idealism and its eventual manifestation in legalism that kills not
heals. Transformative righteousness is born of grace. v What
is required concerning the good continues to be a perennial human question.
It is seemingly odd then, that Jesus gives the following response to an inquirer—“Why
do you ask me about good?” Surely Jesus should know and furthermore, surely he
would want to answer this question! Yet the issue is not primarily what is good but who is
good. The focus is personal, invoking a response by contrast to nominating anything
as good, after the question, “What good thing must I do?” (Matt. 19) In
biblical testimony, the spirit of law calls for a response not tasks calculated
to yield a particular status. The commandments invoke a personal response to God
and neighbour in the vocative “You” instead of an agenda. In the absence of personal
response, humans attempt to nominate things and criteria that represent the good.
Yet without personal encounter, there is no imperative to generosity, for true
generosity is motivated by recognising another person’s need. In the occasion
of vocative response to another, a new possibility is also introduced—the personal,
which does not emerge in approaching the law as prescription. The
imperative toward compassion does not occur without grace and transformation that
enables self-giving to become a tangible possibility without obfuscation and evasion.
This is intrinsic to the disciples' astonishment that the good, as a tangible
imperative, exceeds their capacity to accomplish it. Yet according to Jesus, this
is not a human possibility but the possibility
of God. God
alone can transform humans so that the imperative to sacrificial generosity in
love, with joy, fulfils the one thing lacking.
We do not live by bread alone but by the
word that can transform human life, to make possible tangible and sustained
life-giving deeds that exceed the scope of human resources and motivation. The good is eventful in personal encounter and response as compassion and therefore as a relationship that occurs within grace. In the same way, the vocative Word in the beginning calls creation into existence and at its pinnacle, human life created for relationship. This is declared “good.” Everywhere in Scripture, the vocative call to response and relationship in grace exceeds any human nomination or calculation of the good. |
