Christianity is not about ethics or morals

When I talk to unbelievers about matters of faith I always hear that they agree with the teachings of Jesus. They love the phrase "forgive your enemies", and think it's obvious that one should love ones neighbour as yourself. They have lots of respect for the ethical teachings of Jesus, and they try to be a good and loving persons.

"I'm not really into organised religion", they say, "but I believe that what's most important is trying to be a good person, and I just hope that being a good person is enough. "

Yeah... It's not.

We try really hard though. We really do. We try to bear the burdens of our fellow man and heal the wounds of this world as best we can. I'm sure many of you share the experience of your own inadequacy, when your own wounds are to great for you to start healing your fellow man. For when have you actually succeeded in being an adequate healer and helper? When have you been able to fullfill the criteria of goodness, like upholding the Ten Commandments? If you have, then do tell, but then you'd be the first person in the entirety of human existance to have succeeded at that staggering feat.

For to every person who feels self-satisfied in their magnamity and loving-kindness the word of Jesus comes like a sucker punch in the face. To those who feel secure in their virtue as a loving spouse who treasures fidelity above all else, Jesus say "Oh yeah? Anyone who has ever looked upon a married person with lust in their heart has committed adultery." To those who think that they are virtuous enough to give of both their time and money to those less fortunate than themselves, Jesus say "Then go ahead and give everything you own to the poor".

Whenever we try to check off the Great List of Virtues we find that Jesus calls us out to a more earnest scrutiny of ourselves so that we immediately uncheck whatever moral excellence we believed we had achieved. The demands of God are too radical, and too harsh. We crumble before it, and either we become despondent or prideful in our non-existant goodness, or we crash into despair.

When it comes to salvation plans, abandoning your vices in order to grow more virtues is actually a fairly crappy one, as the ship that can be built from our virtues is leaking and tattered and unsailable. That's not only because it's impossible to pull off, but because it is a completely self-centred solution to the problems of sin and suffering. Because the brokenness of this world is, after all, not just about you.

It's not about you, for you will never heal the wounds of this world by virtuous action. Hell, you aren't even able to heal your own wounds. So who are you to be others Messiah? In the end, the treatment of religion and faith as some sort of self-help program that will result in personal growth and whatever we desire as reward in our spiritual quest, is completely empty and hollow. What is left is the realisation of our utter need of God and a Messiah that matters.

The Messiah that matters is the one who shunned the idea of self-made virtue and rule-following. The new order that he brings, as God who walks among us, is not a better and more helpful set of laws and rules, or teachings that are more effective in creating saints. Jesus is not here to uphold us to even higher standards and condemn us for our inevitable failure. Jesus brings an entirely different paradigm by coming not to create saints, but to forgive sinners.  That is my identity as a Christian, a forgiven sinner.

As Christians, our righteousness is not our own. It is the righteousness of Christ, given to us by a merciful God who comes clad in vulnerability and suffering as a broken body on a cross. And I think that for us, who are the homeless, the addicts, the diseased and mentally ill, the lonely, the proudful and well-adjusted, the abused, the gays and transexuals, the neglected, the shunned, for us who are the church, that broken body of Christ is Life everlasting. Only the God-in-flesh-and-crucified can stop us in our self-aggrandizing ambition to climb the ladder of holiness to an all too holy God. For he is already down here, among us, and he has taken all our suffering and sin into his body on the cross, and exchange it for his holy intimate blessings.

The Gospel is not a marketable and helpful set of teachings on ethics or morals. That is not what Christianity is about. Not if we preach Christ. Not if we preach Christ crucified.