A Youth Pastor shared of the time he reconnected with an old youth group attendee. The young man recounted encouraging memories of fun and community. In the midst of tall tales and laughter he threw out a haunting line, “It’s really great how you teach young people good morals.” This left the Pastor puzzled. How did this young man get the impression the core Christian message is about rules to become a good person?
It is a common summary I hear from people, the Church’s primary message teaches people to be moral. In 2011 atheist A.C Grayling wrote ‘The Good Book’ intending it to be a secular bible. The purpose was to provide wisdom for people to live for our “chief and highest good”. It is essentially a book exhorting moral living. The chapter titles have echoes of the Christian Scriptures structure and themes: “Genesis”, “Lamentations”, “Proverbs”, “Acts”. There is a Chapter “Lawgiver” yet fascinatingly, there is no “Gospel”. In mimicking our Good Book, Grayling misses its point.
Living by rules for being good enough, working hard enough to hopefully earn life’s blessing is a dreadful deceit. It ignores our personal fragility in dealing with our own fractures. It ignores global and historical evidence that humanity en masse excels at horror, not morality. It ignores our capricious universe picking off the just and unjust under its heavy hand of suffering. It ignores our damaged and distant relationship with our Creator. While Christian faith has teachings on obedience and how life works best, we need something far, far better than good morals. We are too deep in strife for that. We desperately need rescuing. We need grace.
Thank God this is exactly what is offered to us in Jesus. Our Bible has Gospels with their tragic accounts of our Lord’s sufferings by us and for us. We see at the Cross God offers his best in exchange for our worst. The Gospels have the extraordinary account of Jesus’ resurrection. Suffering, sin, death, is no match for God’s loving, life-giving power. Through Jesus, this power and hope are fully on offer for us. Life no longer needs to be lived by our efforts alone, but with the presence and power of God. God is for us, just as the Apostle Paul writes in Romans 8,
He [God] who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all—how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things?
This is what we hope people in our pews and old youth group members hold in their hearts. This is our most vital truth: through Jesus, God gives grace. This is the point.
Jason