Just finished watching “What’s in your bucket?,” a sermon given by Greg Davidson Laszakovits this past Sunday at University Baptist & Brethren Church, because I was out of town but want to drink from the same wells as fellow UBBCers when I’m away. Its point is simple: In light of James 2:14-20, your bucket list ought to contain goals of service.
I write about it neither because it was an amazing piece of oratory, although it was perfectly fine, nor because it changed my life. I’m not even necessarily recommending anybody else watch it, although it is only fifteen minutes long. Instead, I write about it because:
of how well it jibes with a drumbeat I’ve been trying to sound since my period of religious doubt in 2015–2016 and how happy it makes me to hear this sort of thing from a pulpit: What God really wants from us is good fruits and the good works that lead to them. Moral performance, or at least earnest moral effort. Following Jesus is first a moral demand, not an affective one. Affect can help. A lot. But affect can also disguise corruption and complacency; and also because
it’s an example of a holy expansionism on the part of God’s kingdom that makes me smile. Culture has a newly popular aspirational concept like a “bucket list”? Great! “You may keep it,” says the Lord. “But it’s Mine.”
As I recall, on the basis of a misinterpretation of Romans 4:17b (“calleth those things which be not as though they were”), Charismatics have been trumpeting fake news as a disciplined, God-mandated spiritual practice for decades. This makes them unusually comfortable with and skilled at newspeak and doublethink—about current events and moral performance both—as well as prone to interpreting everything they claim and hear as being of heavenly import.
This helps me understand part of our current national political scene.
A way to actionably summarize part of my June 1 post: If it’s not for the sake of someone else, then do it in thanksgiving. If I stick that two-part rule for behavior, I’ll be doing everything in love.
“For others.” As I was concerned last night about whether my inclination to stay home on a Saturday night instead of socializing—not that I had an invitation—and in a more general sense about whether my current stance of what seems to me to social passivity, at least relatively speaking, as well as my choosing to read books or listen to recorded music by myself is OK, I went to bed pondering how to rephrase “Let everything you do be done in love” to be more incisively helpful in making daily decisions about what to do.
“For others” is the thought I woke up to this morning, as in, “Let everything you do be for others.” I have since expanded that slightly for clarity to “for the sake of others.” Let everything you do be done for the sake of others.
Staying home last night in particular fits this criterion just fine: I’ve been underslept since hearing about Frank’s cancer last Tuesday, and I’m well aware that sensitivity to suboptimal sleep volume is my behavioral Achilles’ heel. Going to bed early last night has set me up to contribute more heartily and happily to the wellbeing of others today and during the upcoming workweek . (This kind of thing is what prompts me to regard self-care is a necessary evil.)
But can I honestly say it’s for the sake of others that I, who have some capability as a community organizer, adopt of stance of not initiating social plans beyond ambulatory or telephonic tête-à-têtes? And can I honestly say it’s for the sake of others that I read books by myself or listen to recorded music by myself?
An observer will naturally reply to these questions, “Scott, I think you’re taking 1 Corinthians 16:14 too literally. Relax a little, will you?” To which I will naturally rejoin, “Dear observer, thank you for your concern. But no. That’s not how my brain works. Plus, the last thing the world needs or that God wants is for Christians to start compromising on the Royal Law in the name of self-care and inner peace.” (Okay, maybe the last thing is for us to start compromising on the Royal Law in the name of political success. Oops. Too late.)
To answer my first question about whether it’s OK for me to avoid throwing myself into organizing social gatherings and local political mini-movements, I must remember that I have decided to adopt this relatively passive social stance on purpose for the short season that remains when my children are guaranteed to live under my roof. I made the decision for their sakes. So yes, it’s perfectly OK because it’s done for the sake of others. And when my kids do move out, I already have an overlong list of civic, environmental, ecclesial, communally musical, charitable, preferential-option-for-the poor interpersonal, and public philosophical ideas for what to undertake then. My current avoidance is purely seasonal (and it’s not absolute anyhow).
Now, my second question about whether it’s OK for me to read books or listen to recorded music alone—well, this one is harder for me to answer in the affirmative. I might posit that reading books equips me to be a sympathetic human, which it does, or that listening to a symphony trains my capacity for the type of long attention that makes for being a good listener to other humans, which it does. But that kind of thinking is too close to the eat-your-broccoli approach to reading that Jacobs rightly disparages, at least if it’s underpins all my reading and listening.
What about reading or listening just for the joy of it? Can I faithfully substitute “Do everything for the joy” for “Do everything for the sake of others (i.e., in love)”? Again, observers will say to me, “Scruples, man. Of course you can! You are definitely way too serious.”
To which I reply: Look, I can’t substitute “do everything for the joy” for ‘do everything for the sake of others’ except if by joy we mean “the joy of knowing others are flourishing in part because of my efforts.” But you’re probably right: I probably am overserious. If no social plans have presented themselves to me for a given evening, if I don’t feel up for trying to make social plans myself, if calling my sisters doesn’t feel like the thing right now, it is OK for me to opt for a receptive activity I enjoy. I might still take this little round of introspection to tilt a little further toward a bias for social engagement, but opting to read or listen nevertheless falls squarely in the “self-care is a necessary evil” bucket, and is therefore OK. Except maybe it’s an “enjoyment is a necessary evil” bucket. And maybe it’s not even that. Paul writes “do everything in love,” which is not precisely synonymous with “do everything for the sake of others.” Enjoyment and thanksgiving can be a form of love for the Creator of the good things I’m enjoying. So if the impulse of my heart is to read a book or listen to recorded music, I will read a book or listen to recorded music, provided that I can do so in thanksgiving and that I’m not ignoring some more pressing matter of love. After all:
“Do not go on drinking only water, but use a little wine for the sake of your stomach and your frequent ailments” (1 Timothy 5:23).
“My son, eat honey, for it is good / Yes, the honey from the comb is sweet to your taste” (Proverbs 24:13).
(But also: “Have you found honey? Eat only what you need so that you do not have it in excess and vomit it” (Proverbs 25:13). Or as Harrison put it: “All the world is birthday cake, so take a piece, but not too much.”)
One final, little question: How do I choose between competing “sakes of others”? I will simply choose whichever sake I sense to be more pressing.
The distinction I’ve been seeking between the kind of amends the Father has declared no longer necessary by the cross of Christ and the kind of amends still required may be well captured by calling the former “symbolic” and the latter “proving.” Apologies, gifts, animal sacrifices, and Jesus’ cross are symbolic. That doesn’t mean symbolic amends aren’t necessary: It is impossible to prove repentance immediately. Hence, a token that’s symbolic of our repentance often must be extended in order to proceed, and hence, our impulse to make cultic sacrifices to God is a good instinct.
But God desires to skip such symbolic amends, which run too high a risk of masking an absence of true repentance, preferring instead to get straight to the heart of matters. He wants us to live lives characterized by earnest attempts at obedience to the law of love—amends that proving, not merely suggestive, of repentance.
“Law is laid down not for an upright person, but for…slave-dealers…“ (1 Timothy 1:9a,10b). How have I never seen this before? At least some followers of Christ have been opposed to slave trade since at least near the beginning?
Just finished reading: The Extinction of Experience: Being Human in a Disembodied World (2024) by Christine Rosen. Its main idea is that it’s inadvisable to allow the ascendance of smartphones and similarly attention-sucking entertainment and communication technologies to extinguish the non-mediated experiences they often replace, all of which have benefits. The threatened experiences she covers are:
face-to-face communication,
working with your hands,
waiting, idleness, and boredom,
interpreting our emotions with our own senses,
expressing our emotions with our own bodies,
direct intake of pleasures (travel, art, sex, cooking, eating) instead of their simulacra or attendant digitalia (constant communication with one’s existing social network while traveling, repros, pornography, and cooking shows),
serendipity, and
a sense of place.
This is one of those reads that’s preaching to the choir. But I’m in that choir, and I like it. It prepares me to make my case with evidence. Here are some of my notes from her chapter on the value of face-to-face communication:
It’s demonstrably easier to lie and be lied to via communication that isn’t face to face. This helps explain our current political climate. Rosen claims that Hancock’s studies even shows that when liars use screen-mediated communication, they are more motivated to lie.
Face-to-face communication is also a demonstrably more reliable way to get a request fulfilled.
Frederickson claims that the more attuned to others you become, the healthier your literal heart.
“Looking someone in the eye is a subtle gesture of inclusiveness, a small but significant act of civil attention.”
Empathy development is stunted in the absence of face-to-face communication.
However, after the chapter on face-to-face communication, and especially after the chapter on working with your hands, the precise, evidentiary quality of the argumentation all but dissipates. Additionally, it became difficult for me to take her seriously after I read the following phrase: “the passage from the New Testament book of Ecclesiastes.”
So mostly, I wouldn’t recommend reading the book, but I do strongly recommend the overall idea.
“Mere faith alone is not sufficient for salvation…Yea, I confess…that mere faith does not deserve to be called faith, for a true faith can never exist without deeds of love” (Balthasar Hubmaier).
Just finished reading: “The Nonviolent Atonement: Human violence, discipleship, and God” (2006) by J. Denny Weaver, which I summarize as follows: All previous accounts of the role of the Cross in how God brings us back to Himself, except for most Girardian explanations and the cosmic battle version of Christus Victor, implicate God as in some way needing violence to get the job done. Yet such a need stands in unacceptable tension with the consistently nonviolent life lived by Jesus, God’s perfect and authoritative image. Thus, we should to what I call “narrative Christus Victor,” by which I posit that neither the Father nor the Son in any way willed the Son to die, and that God brings us to Himself instead by vindicating Jesus’ way via the Resurrection. If we need forgiveness, we need only repent.
I disagree with Weaver about the Cross and don’t think his argument about it succeeds on his own terms: The Father is still “implicated” in the Son’s death if He knew that Jesus’ death was inevitable and did not rescue Jesus upon the latter’s request. Additionally, even if dying was not an intrinsic part of Jesus’ mission, as Weaver maintains, it is nevertheless untrue that Jesus couldn’t have fulfilled His mission without being executed: He could simply have evaded capture, as He did when pushed to a precipice in Luke 4:29-30.
Still, Weaver and I agree about this: “…the focus of being Christian is a life transformed by the narrative of Jesus.”
A friend asked me how I thought The Parable of the Prodigal Son related to my insistence that forgiveness, rightly practiced, requires amends be made. I initially responded: “This is an excellent question. The Parable of Prodigal Son comes up a lot in discussions of God’s forgiveness, mostly among folks who insist God forgives without requiring anything. So I have some answers percolating.” Later, I replied by subjecting him to a 10-minute think-aloud voice message, which I then revised and summarized in writing as follows: “The Parable of the Prodigal Son demonstrates, among other things, that God is so keenly interested reconnecting with and embracing His people that mere but provably genuine repentance can count as amends. (God’s relative position of power, which the parable keeps in view but which should be noted is not a feature of every relationship, facilitates this mercy.) However, the story is not absent an amends more concrete: Besides your beautiful, literary observation that, obliquely reminiscent of Leviticus and therefore of Jesus, an animal is slaughtered to facilitate the celebration of the restored relationship, the son was explicitly preparing to offer himself to his father as a hired hand. That his father saw no need for that demoting measure does highlight the father’s mercy, but it does not thereby reject the rightness of the offer. True repentance will always prompt the repenter to want to substantiate his repentance.”
Screen addiction, which I define much more broadly than the APA might, is harmful for the same reason suicide is harmful (and thus called by many religious people a sin): It removes people, with all the skills, humor, and other virtues they might bring to bear on the world, from the social nexus and destroys human attachments. It is a hermitage.
Just finished reading: “Contemplation as Rebellion: The case for unenchantment” (2025) by Nicholas Carr, whose main ideas are that to patiently, contemplatively attend to things is to engage ourselves and our world in the best way—especially contra a society rife with stimulation and mere perception. And it has nothing to with “enchanting” anything.
“Can forgiveness find a footing in broader systemic realities?”
“To encourage [Black people] to see their suffering as righteous obedience to God in Christ is to sanctify a perpetual social death.”
“In a moment of racial distress, forgiveness becomes a reflex response that serves the social maintenance of racial hierarchy.”
Some quick reflections: This is why forgiveness without amends is usually bad.
Potts is right that punishment and recompense will always be incommensurate with the wrongdoing (except for restitution, which can come close). That’s how you can say that forgiveness and justice can and do coexist: Forgiveness doesn’t say nothing is due; forgiveness says that what’s been paid is enough. Nothing more is due.
Just finished reading: “Forgiveness ≠ Reconciliation: Wisdom for Difficult Relationships” (2024) by Yana Jenay Conner, whose main idea is well summarized by the title. This was my favorite article in the Winter 2024 issue of Comment. Conner helped me realize that Matthew 18 contains a righteous unforgiveness: “And if he refuses to listen…let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector" (v. 17). And these two partial quotations struck me as beautiful: “I was a daddy’s girl without a dad…” and “Even if I was interested in adjusting my grip on the cross…”
The man who fell submits that both easy acceptance and permanent excommunication are not good, the former creating dysfunctional communities by ignoring the woulds of the aggrieved, and the latter destroying the sinner. (For my part, I’ll add that the latter also creates dysfunctional communities.) His wife forgave him, doing neither of the above. And by that, he was saved. It even elicited repentance, he says.
The wife who forgave says she forgave he husband, and it has cost her a lot. But it’s the way of Christ, and it, she says, has made her holy.
Just finished reading: ”New Eyes: Forgiveness is not erasing” (2024) by Amy Low, whose main idea is that there is danger that forgiveness will unjustly erase the past. There is also a danger that unforgiveness will spoil potential futures for aggrieved and offender alike. Let us avoid both ditches as we walk the path.
“Go, eat delicacies and drink sweet drinks and send portions to whoever has none prepared, for the day is holy to our master, and do not be sad, for the rejoicing of YHWH is your strength” (Nehemiah 8:10, Alters). The enjoinment to enjoyment along with generosity, both in the name of the Lord, warms my soul.
I finally feel comfortable with my grasp of the relationship between non-retaliation, forgiveness, and reconciliation, together with God’s will regarding all three:
