Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing there is a field. I'll meet you there. When the soul lies down in that grass the world is too full to talk about. —Rumi1
This is a deviation from my planned posting schedule, but I thought perhaps I could put this together quickly enough to get away with it.
My inspiration for writing is an excerpt from another Substack publication called The Upheaval which I quote and link below. I am not sure the connection between my essay and the quote which inspired it will be evident, so I will explain further.
In The Great Divorce, C.S. Lewis writes about an artist whose purpose for painting has become idolatrous. At first this painter caught glimpses of Heaven, and by capturing them in his paintings, enabled others to catch these glimpses as well. His first love used to be light itself and he only loved painting as a means of telling others about the light. But the painter’s affections are pulled away from this purpose, and he falls in love with the paints themselves.2
My inspiration is something like: We have a beautiful message to share, but it is not our message. We cannot show it to each other; we can at best only enable each other to see it properly through what we say and do. Truth is not a flower that we can press between the pages of a book, but is the entire cosmos in which it is possible for such a flower to bloom. Truth is not words on a page or paint on a canvas, but that which such things enable us to see. And now for the quote which kicked this all off.
I was converted by Dostoevsky and Tolkien, Lewis and Solzhenitsyn, by people who in their genius showed the Truth rather than told it. And, even more than that, by witnessing people I knew and admired who, even when the world was falling apart, even in the face of personal trial and persecution, remained unbowed and undaunted from speaking truth with courage and doing right with love. Invariably I discovered they were people of faith—a quiet, happy, steel faith. Theirs was an evangelism that didn’t need words. —N.S Lyons
Over breakfast some months ago, I observed to a friend that my Christian experience does not merit much telling. There is a kind of dramatic, breakthrough conversion that people love to hear, like that of a violent substance abuser whose life is upended and repurposed for Christ. That experience is not mine. Mine is messy and convoluted in a rather boring way, and anyway, I cannot really get into specifics in a public way because of the other parties involved. It is far from being the narrative equivalent of photogenic.
I am not talking about the time at which I chose to become a Christian, but more recently, when the gospel became more real, and precious, and beautiful to me. I think of it as a breakthrough, perhaps similar to what we read in Job—I went from a “hearing of” God to “seeing him” with my own eyes.3
The realization I was harboring as I talked to my friend over breakfast, was that as instrumental as the last number of years have been, as much impact as these events have had in my life; I cannot say with absolute certainty that I did the right thing at any point along the way. The gospel, which frees me from needing to earn my own righteousness, also deprives me of any claim to having done anything right. It severs me from my body of work.
It is not difficult to understand that our sins have been forgiven. My kids grasp the concept of saying “sorry” and “that’s okay”. Their grievances are quickly forgiven and forgotten. But it is more difficult to understand that it is not only our misdeeds which the gospel removes from us, but our good deeds as well.
This is the cost of the gospel. In order to move beyond ideas of rightdoing and wrongdoing, I have to relinquish my grip on what I have done right as well as wrong. All deeds that I have done—right, wrong, good, or bad—are my body of work. They are not me.
I am redeemed. The body of work by which I AM measured is gifted to me, namely, the work of Jesus Christ. I have to let go of my body of work, to where my deeds no longer show up in the “debit” or “credit” columns on the ledger.
But this is hard to do. In the messy events of my journey, I made choices and took action in ways that I still believe were correctly motivated. But no matter what I did, no matter how good my motivations, there were always people who looked on in disapproval. This grated on me. If only they understood then surely they would approve.
However, the truth is that these people had every right to disapprove, because how people score my performance is not the score that matters. The gospel frees me from the most demanding scoring method of all, the law; with Christ’s sacrifice placing me beyond where any score can be ascribed to me. In this place, I am free to look at what I have done and concede that my actions were a tad rash or mean; and that better alternatives almost certainly existed.
The delineation between me and my body of work seems important to understand and easy to forget. I am quite fond of some of the things I have done and would like to take all the credit to myself. Also, I can rationalize the things I am not so fond of until they are really not so bad. But I can only truly be free of my sins if I also give my goodness (so-called) over to Christ. That is the cost of true freedom, but it is the freedom most worth having.
If I cannot recognize the difference between me and my body of work, then I am defined by it. It will be part of my identity, blending me and my body of work into one entity. My flesh is quite comfortable with slipping into this well-worn groove, because there I place myself in control. I can craft a persona. I can build an image which people recognize as particularly mine. He’s the guy that pours concrete, or he’s good with money, or he’s a Ford guy. These sorts of things are somewhat inescapable, but when we embrace and internalize them, then they limit and ensnare us.
But if I identify as a “good guy”, then I am really trapped. Identity is about perception, and if I need others to perceive me as good, then my work is really cut out for me. If I do something that does not fit the image I would like to portray, something I consider to be out of character, then I need to retrace my steps and set the record straight. Maybe I find out after the fact that I said something untrue, and being someone who covets the reputation of being honest, I am now compelled to apologize to the other participants in the conversation to re-establish their perception of me. I need to maintain my image as being honest.
Knowing the difference between me and my body of work, and especially knowing that Christ substituted his work for mine, sets me free from needing to maintain my track record. I am not saying that my body of work can be excused in any way. Not at all. But instead of being held captive by the need to set the record straight, I can just be accountable for it. I can admit wrongdoing out of a place of freedom. I can confess my sins and apologize for how they hurt others instead of in protecting my image. After all, my redemption is secure in One whose work cannot be undone and his image is unassailable.
I have been savoring this realization for some time. It seems to me that the freedom which can be found here is at the heart of the gospel’s beauty and appeal. I also find this to be where the cost is the steepest, a cost which I have to confront often.
To me the beauty of the gospel can certainly be found in a conversion that is dramatic and unique, but the beauty that sustains has to be found in the mundane. When I look back on my own timeline—a panorama of experiences that most would find entirely unremarkable—I see a lot of ugliness. It’s enough to make me wince, even now. But alongside that, a sort of beauty emerges. I see evidence that all things can work together for good.4 Where I am at today is not the sum result of my past actions but so much more. Stuff happened, and it was not all good stuff, but the result is something not to be traded away at any cost.
In closing, let me say that this is indeed a testimony, but also an aspiration. I want to be the grounded in the way I describe, but the realization is maybe not always so real, and its memory has to fill in. That is to say, I am not always victorious but I do remember where my victory comes from. I believe though, that some form of this realization is necessary to prepare us for the most important works of our lives—those that Christ wants to do through us.
Beauty will save the world. —Fyodor Dostoyevsky5
Scriptural basis for this post is found primarily in Romans 7:20-25
A certain amount of credit must also be given to this piece by Cameron Combs
Coleman Barks, The Essential Rumi - Reissue: New Expanded Edition (Harper Collins, 2010), 103, accessed via Everand. This is not an endorsement of Rumi’s theology. As far as I can tell, there is no reason to presume that he was even Christian. I nonetheless repurposed it in a way that made sense in my understanding of the gospel.
C. S. Lewis, The Great Divorce (Harper Collins, 2009), 66, accessed via Everand.
Job 42:5
Romans 8:28
Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoyevsky - Delphi Classics (Illustrated) (Delphi Classics, 2017), 574, accessed via Everand.
“To me the beauty of the gospel can certainly be found in a conversion that is dramatic and unique, but the beauty that sustains has to be found in the mundane.”
Amen. Some get a Damascus road—but my own experience of awakening to the full beauty of the gospel was more like the sun slowly rising.
Lovely article Fred