spiritual detox

Conor and I were talking tonight about church. It's been almost five weeks since Copeland's birth - as of tomorrow - and four since her death. I can't believe she's been gone almost four times as long as she lived.

I've had zero desire to walk back into our church since her memorial service was held there that September day. I haven't totally been able to understand why, although I've chalked it up to the fact that the place now has memories for me that I'm simply not ready to revisit. It's different than the place we went before her birth. Now it feels sad and somehow less whole.

But, after our conversation tonight, I think that's not really what it is at all. At least not totally.

Our pastor, as I've said before, challenged me recently on my legalism - my need to earn grace, to work to please God, to do the "right" things. Since that conversation, when he pointed out the fact that I was extremely entrenched in a works-based theology, I've found that a lot of the things I used to do in life make absolute no sense any more. That what used to feel like the "right" choice is no longer so clear. That a lot of the normal, moral things I'd done before as a Christian almost seem ludricous in light of the actual Gospel.

If, in fact, Jesus is it - if there's no way to the Father except by Him - and if, in fact, the Cross, and what He accomplished on it, was sufficient, then what the heck is all my working supposed to mean? Church, for me, is fun. It's social. I see a lot of great people - godly people - who make me smile. I get to wear cute clothes. I enjoy standing in the midst of a crowd of believers I know and care about singing songs that make me happy. But mostly, church is compulsive. It's what you do if you're a Christian. It's normal. It's required. Required. What else makes that list of prerequisites for people who claim to be followers of Christ? Bible study? Scripture memorization? Prayer? How do I reconcile this incredible need in me to do the normal, "right" things Christians do and still believe in the idea that only Jesus' blood makes me, well, a Christian?

John Donne wrote a poem in 1635 called "A Valediction Forbidding Mourning." It's beautiful, and perhaps a whole lot more romantic than religious, but it seems strangely relevant tonight. Donne ascribes the characteristics of a compass to the people mentioned in the lines below:

If they be two, they are two so
As stiff twin compasses are two ;
Thy soul, the fix'd foot, makes no show
To move, but doth, if th' other do.

And though it in the centre sit,
Yet, when the other far doth roam,
It leans, and hearkens after it,
And grows erect, as that comes home.

It seems to me that these lines could just as easily have been written about the way we, as humans, can view our relationship to Christ. He dwells within us, if we receive Him as our Savior, and we are connected to Him, as the two parts of a compass might be - we belong to Him. He is, indeed, a "fix'd foot" that "hearkens after" us when we "roam."

Jesus is our "fix'd foot." He is the only True thing upon which we can lean. He is that stable point upon which all our journeying can rely for safe homecoming. And yet we get it backwards. We try to allow our own notions, our own ideas - even what we would consider our own, good theologies - to be the fixed foot. It doesn't work, anymore than swapping the ends of a compass would. Only one is meant to stand firmly in the center. It's like letting our "rights" and "wrongs" define Jesus, instead of letting Jesus define our "rights" and "wrongs."

Going to church is a good thing. A right thing. Perhaps. But for a girl who's terribly legalistic, maybe it's not that easy. Maybe doing the "right" thing becomes the "wrong" thing when it isn't based entirely on the Person of Christ. Maybe all the 'good' things we Christians do are just as likely to be strongholds in our lives as the bad.

I'm not saying that we aren't sinners. I'm not saying there isn't plenty of black and white in the world - good and evil, truly wrong and truly right. But for me, as I continue to see the grip legalism - doing the "right" things to make God happy - has had on me, it couldn't be more obvious: Jesus is the only lens through which I need to be making my decisions about any of that stuff. Jesus. He is the fixed foot. He is the cornerstone, the solid rock, the way, the truth, the life.

James wrote that "faith without works is dead" (2:26). Hallelujah! But just as Paul's salutation often began, "grace and peace" for a specific reason - peace cannot be attained with grace coming first - faith must begin the equation here.