October 3, 1999
James R. Gorman
The Apostle Paul had a serious problem. And it was a problem different from the ones the rest of us have. It's a problem typical only of Paul.
First a word about Paul. Paul was not one of the original twelve Apostles, but he called himself an Apostle, so that's what we'll call him.
He comes to the Christian scene fairly late. Jesus had suffered, died and was resurrected. The first Christian community is just beginning to form. They're picking their leadership. They're trying to figure out who they are and what they are supposed to do. And along comes Paul.
At first, of course, Paul is a persecutor of the Church. He was a Pharisee (a lawyer). A deeply learned man, zealous in his inherited faith, Paul was a man on a mission. His mission in the largest sense was to get himself right before God. But he couldn't do it. No matter how hard he worked, he felt inadequate. He felt unworthy.
Now, to be honest, most of us feel unworthy at least some of the time. In this we have the problem in common with Paul. We never feel perfectly right with ourselves or the world around us. There always seems to be a sense of inadequacy. Usually that inadequacy presents itself in the form of there being something missing from our lives. A sense that no matter what we have achieved, something is missing. No matter how much money we make, no matter how many diplomas we have, no matter how many people admire us, no matter how much weight we have lost, no matter how many friends we have, there is something enormous missing. That was Paul's problem.
But Paul's problem is somewhat different from most of ours.
Most of us feel inadequate because we feel (quite against the evidence) that we cannot do enough to earn our own respectability; our own righteousness before God. Paul tells us (and I tend to believe him) that he was able to obey all the laws and commandments, he kept kosher, he was born to the right set of parents, he was a zealous persecutor of this new band of seditious Christians. He knew all the laws and commandments and he obeyed them perfectly and was blameless before the law.
On the other hand, Martin Luther was probably more like us. Martin Luther, the great 16th century reformer was an Augustinian monk who lived in a well-regulated monastic community. There were many rules to follow. Holy days of obligation; prayers to say at certain hours; money to contribute in order to get loved ones out of purgatory; duties to perform in order to keep the community running.
In this rule-oriented community, Martin Luther was a failure. He couldn't obey all the rules; there was always one or two that he missed. And he then assumed that God was displeased with him. He was ashamed. He had the opposite problem before God of Paul's. But both agree that there is nothing that either of them could do to feel completely at peace before God and themselves. Thus, these two great leaders felt the same great existential problem, for opposite reasons.
But their solutions were the same.
Our acceptability before God, the only acceptability that really matters, is God's work, not ours. What we might want to call real "wholeness," a sense of being a part of the whole, is a divine activity, not a human one, in the final analysis.
Baptism has always been the sign of that acceptance. That's why we baptize little children. They are not able to do anything to earn their baptism, so their baptism is a sign of divine initiative and human receptivity.
The Christian faith reverses the order of this most troubling existential problem. We are not put right with God by our hard work, or fate or fortune. We are justified by a gracious God who has done for us that which we cannot do for ourselves. We are loved because we belong to God.
And the final reversal is that we do good works not so that we will feel good about ourselves or be the more loved by God. We do good works, we are generous, we work for a just world, we love the unlovable because we have been loved by all that matters.
I call this wholesale vs. retail ethics.
Retail ethics is about trying to behave rightly at the point of purchase. It's an ethics of rules and signs saying keep off the grass, do not enter, private property, keep out, and the like.
The Christian tradition believes that forgiveness and reconciliation is a once in a lifetime thing. And once having been assured of your acceptance and having accepted your acceptance, right behavior will follow.