Your Best Behavior

Here’s more positive faith for you. I think. I hope.

Last Sunday I talked about this idea that I think is pretty common in faith circles: That if you’re not afraid, you won’t behave. 

There’s a few things to unpack here. The first being the assumption that fear gets people to behave how you want them to behave. The second being that faith is ultimately about your behavior. Let’s take these in reverse order.

Obviously, behavior plays some kind of a role in a life of faith. If we lived like Vikings just landing on shore and taking what we want and destroying what we want then we’d be hard pressed to consider that any kind of reflection of God’s love. But the question is- how much “behaving” is necessary in order to be a person of God and what kind of behaving are we looking for. 

There aren’t easy answers to these questions. I like to start with the principle: It is our calling, as the people of God, to reflect God’s love to the world around us to the best of our ability in whatever circumstances we can. We are not, as individuals, going to do this perfectly. I happen to believe, others may disagree, that as long as we are trying then we can have confidence that we’re living our call even if we fall short of our goal quite often. 

And, I think it’s part of our responsibility to run all of the ethical scenarios we’re confronted with through this lens. When it comes to your sex life, are you reflecting the love of God? As a parent, are you reflecting the love of God? As a coworker? As a boss? And so on. I am assuming, again, that we’re not going to be perfect and that is okay. The idea here is that we’re being intentional to try to use God’s love as a guide in each of these areas. 

But here’s the important thing: A life of faith is not ultimately about behaving, even the kind I’ve just described. A life of faith is ultimately about the God who is constantly at work in His creation to bring about a new reality based on His ideas about justice, forgiveness, mercy, love, grace, and so on. Faith is not ultimately about us, it is ultimately about God and His work. His son was the final sacrifice- making it possible for people to remain at peace with God without further sacrifice. And, in this, we can take comfort. So that’s my take on the second thing. Let’s back up to the first. 

Faith communities, in America, have long operated under the assumption that fear leads to compliance (and, per the second thing above, compliance to faith). There is an element of this that is probably true, for some, for a time. Fear can get people to stop doing certain things- sometimes. Does it create more faithful people? I have my doubts. 

I think it makes scared people. Scared people don’t thrive- they’re not pursuing a meaningful life where they have a strong sense of their calling and what it looks like to pursue that in their ordinary day-to-day lives. Scared people feel trapped between what they want to do and what they believe they should do. This creates anxious people who are paralyzed and who don’t really have a clue how to make decisions for themselves or take ownership of their lives or their faith. In my opinion, being scared isn’t good for us. 

I can remember being in youth group in high school and, on a particular Wednesday night, a group came to speak to us about sex. They paraded a series of teens before us who had already had sex and who shared their stories of how it happened and how they wished it hadn’t happened. The final speaker told us that having sex bonds one soul to another- they become one- and so when those souls break up, they split, meaning that you lose a piece of your soul. In short: having sex before marriage costs you a piece of your soul that you never get back. 

I sat there imagining myself one day in heaven walking around without an arm or leg or some such thing- because I was surely going to lose a piece of my soul at some point. At the time it made sense that that piece was like a body part. 

I don’t pretend to know all the in’s and out’s of how God views sex and it’s not my point in this post to get into it. What I want to point out is this: That group believed that if they made us afraid of sex, we wouldn’t do it. And, I believe this is the sum total of the message about faith in many circles. Stay away from the “bad” stuff or you will be punished.

In Jesus’ words, he came to give us abundant life (John 10). He also came to point to the work of the father who sent him. The father who sent a final sacrifice so that people may live at peace with the father without constant need to make further sacrifices (Romans 5). All of this was done because God chose to operate this way, out of love for His creation (John 3, and many other places). 

Faith isn’t about individuals behaving, it’s about a God who is designing creation so that, one day, there will be no pain, no tears, no suffering. We are called to faith so that we can see this God at work, so that we might be witnesses to the work, and so that we can point other people to that work. Not so that we can point others to the ways in which our behavior does or does not align with this work. 

And so, for this reason, I encourage you to think of ways you might be excited to demonstrate God’s love. Where does it bring you joy to reflect God’s love to others?

Are there areas of life where you would like to start reflecting God’s love, if you could? 

You are as God made you. That’s good news! Now, given who you are, where do you want to spread the love?