Being Right & Being Holy

I like being right.

Luckily, I’m right a lot. Just ask me and I’ll tell you it’s true. Or you can ask my husband. He’ll tell you I’ll tell you it’s true.

But here’s the thing about being right: it isn’t the same thing as being holy.  

In my rightness, I’m tempted toward every variation of condescension, pomposity, and judgmentalism.  I can be sharp-edged, self-protective, braggadocios, and demanding.  If I’m being honest (and why shouldn’t I just lay it all out there in my first Reformed Journal blog after a lengthy hiatus?) this is what makes being right so much fun. 

Stating my opinion and brokering no dissent offers immediate relief from life’s uncertainties in a way that the slow, steady cultivation of something like the fruit of the Spirit just doesn’t. Being right is easier than being scared, unsettled or sad. Not to mention, being right is a whole lot easier than being like Jesus. Being right serves as both trigger and justification for all manner of unholiness in me, maybe in you and, certainly, in many of the institutions and organizations we work to build together. 

In his Institutes of the Christian Religion, John Calvin contends against something like this. Stoics believed they could transcend the limitations of human emotion, circumstance, and suffering through the dispassionate application of exactness and precision. Even some Christians thought it might strengthen their faith to adopt the “objective” and “neutral” rightness practiced by the stoics. But Calvin is not having it. He throws down. “Yet we have nothing to do with this iron philosophy which our Lord and Master has condemned not only by his word, but also by his example.” (Book III, Chapter VIII, 9, vol. 1)

Calvin points to the story of God who, in Christ, set aside transcendence in order to enter into immanence, wanting to know – yes, even to feel –  human emotion, circumstance, weakness and suffering. This gospel redeems what an “iron philosophy” most desperately wants to ignore: our humanity. 

Building on Calvin’s turn of phrase, practical theologian Johan Cilliers tells the story of the Dutch Reformed Church in South Africa (DRCS). Originally an immigrant church – outrageously outnumbered in language, religion, race and culture – the DRCSA understandably sought certainty in an uncertain world.  Cilliers’ outlines his observation of a church that

resists the movement from form to re-form, because it is set in stone. . .because it professes totality and finality; it circles the wagons because others might endanger this theology’s grasp on ‘truth’. . .In such a theology, nothing is fluid; all is solid. (Preaching Fools; 65)

Over time, this approach – what Cilliers’ calls “iron theology” – consumed the preaching, discipleship and polity of the DRCSA. It extended beyond the walls of the church, motivating the exercise of political power, ultimately ushering in the apartheid government in South Africa and offering safe harbor to racism by its teachings. 

Whether facing down unyielding categories of apartheid policy, incurious doctrinal pronouncements or authoritarian political candidates, it can be tempting to fight rigid certainty with even louder, more unbending certitude.

The gift of the South African case study, however, comes in the surprising guise of a diminutive cleric with an infectious laugh. Archbishop Desmond Tutu knew that the best weapon against iron theology: irony. An Anglican priest under apartheid, Tutu had the opportunity to speak around the world and in his native South Africa. He had a remarkable capacity for, as poet Emily Dickinson would say, telling the truth “but telling it slant.” With a twinkle in his eye that could be fairly misidentified as a glint, he would say what no one else could say because he told it as a story and as a joke. According to Cilliers, “Humor like Tutu’s contributed to the liberation of South African society in the grip of an iron theology that represented solidified truth, without a shadow of uncertainty—a theology that suffered from a serious lack of humor.”  (Preaching Fools; 137)

If Tutu is right, perhaps some things are too serious to be taken seriously. This is, it seems to me, a valid paraphrase of the Apostle Paul’s argument to the church in Corinth, where Jewish Christians are asking for religious signs and Gentile Christians are asking for philosophical certainty and Paul is not having it. With a twinkle in his eye that could fairly be misidentified as a glint, he throws down.

Where is the wise person? Where is the teacher of the law? Where is the philosopher of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not know him, God was pleased through the foolishness of what was preached to save those who believe. Jews demand signs and Greeks look for wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those whom God has called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For the foolishness of God is wiser than human wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than human strength. (I Corinthians 1:20-25)

Some things are too serious to be taken seriously. That sounds right to me. But you know what? 

I could be wrong. 

Header photo by Min An