You steward your own faith…

 “Owe no one anything, except to love one another; for he who loves his neighbor has fulfilled the law.” Rom 13.8

    I would rather explain to God why I sinned in my effort to be righteous than to not have sinned because I was obeying someone else. I think God would prefer that as well. I keep bumping into conversations about Moral Absolutism versus Moral Relativism. Absolutism is the idea that there are moral absolutes, thou shalt not kill would be one of the more popular ones. Relativism is that morals are contingent on circumstances.

    Much of Christianity is devoted to Moral Absolutism. In fact many would have us believe that it has been God who has created absolute morals. If we were left to our own devices we not have absolute right and wrong. I do believe that, for the most part, there are some absolute morals. There are not as many as we think. Take, for instance, “Thou shalt not kill.” Is it always immoral to kill someone else? In the Goat Herder’s Guide, the God who told us, “Thou shalt not kill,” is the same God who apparently calls for his people to kill others. I think most of us can recall situations where taking a life to stop an act of evil was the morally correct decision. World War II comes to mind.

    I wonder if Paul had pondered this as he refined or reduced our faith to some pretty simple concepts. “If you declare with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.” (Rom 10.9) There are those who might read this and be tempted to say, “Then I can do anything.” That is simply not true.

    In conversation with a friend of mine, this idea came up. He talked about how we still need hard and fast rules. I disagree. The issue of adultery came up, and the question was, did I think it was okay to have sex outside of marriage. My answer, better refined in hindsight, was that if I need a rule to tell me not to cheat on the Feisty One, then I am missing something. I believe that.

    Our faith does not push us toward obedience. It pushes us toward stewardship. In my marriage, I am not called to just not have sex outside of my marriage; I am called to live within my marriage as God would want me to do. The same in my career, the same in how I drive, the same in how I manage conflict. Jesus taught, “In everything you do, do to others as you would have them do to you; this is the sum of the Law and Prophets.” (Matt 7.12)

    Our faith calls us to have the same sense of stewardship in our relationship with God. In the letter of 1 John, we are told that when we love, we are in God, and God is in us, AND that we fulfill God’s love (1 John 4.12). Often, it is through how I treat others that I develop my relationship with God. 

    I have been in many churches that foster a consumeristic approach to faith. They are well-orchestrated events. While I have no objection to this approach to community worship, this approach can lead to a passivity in our faith. We go to church to receive. Thus, there is an over-emphasis on the authority of the Pastor. I have had more than a few conversations in which I am told, “My Pastor says.” I am more interested in how you see living your faith out. I am more interested in how you are being a steward of the gift of grace you have been given.

 

Anyway, that is my opinion.