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| Making a mess in pursuit of sourdough donuts |
In chapter 7 of John Piper's book "Brothers, We Are Not Professionals," Piper introduces a concept he calls the debtor's ethic, otherwise known as the gratitude ethic.
"The debtor's ethic has a deadly appeal to immature Christians. It comes packaged as a gratitude ethic and says things like: 'God has done so much for you; now what will you do for Him?' 'He gave you His life; now how much will you give to Him?' The Christian life is pictured as an effort to pay back the debt we owe to God. The admission is made that we will never fully pay it off, but the debtor's ethic demands that we work at it. Good deeds and religious acts are the installment payments we make on the unending debt we owe God" (Piper 49-50).
If you are anything like me, the gratitude ethic is not only familiar but deeply ingrained. What makes this ethic tricky is that there is a very real element of truth to it--we should be so moved with gratitude that our good deeds flow from us naturally, without pretense.
However, Piper argues that nowhere in the Bible is gratitude ever used as an explicit motive for obedience.
"Why is it this explicit motive for obedience--which in contemporary Christianity is probably the most commonly used motive for obedience to God--(almost?) totally lacking in the Bible? Could it be that a gratitude ethic so easily slips over into a debtor's ethic that God chose to protect His people from this deadly motivation by not including gratitude as an explicit motive for obedience? (Piper 50).
After reading that chapter, I gently closed the book and set it beside me in bed. As I stared up at my ceiling, I felt like something in me had been violently upended.
In very large part, the gratitude ethic was what motivated me to become a missionary in the first place. I had, with full conviction, said phrases like, "God gave me His life, so I will give Him mine."
I knew being a missionary meant making sacrifices, but I felt that God was more than deserving of them and that my sacrifices, however big and painful they seemed to me at the time, were only a drop in the bucket compared to everything He had given me.
I had made God the grateful beneficiary of my sacrifices without even realizing it.
And what is even more humiliating, is to realize that I haven't made a single sacrifice that God has not given me back one-hundredfold. All my efforts to make Him the beneficiary of my "sacrifices" only made me the beneficiary of even more of His gifts.
"He guards us from the mind-set of a debtor's ethic by reminding us that our Christian labor for Him is a gift from Him (Rom. 11:35-36; 15:18) and therefore cannot be conceived as payment of a debt. In fact, the astonishing thing is that every good deed we do in dependence on Him to 'pay Him back' does just the opposite; it puts us even deeper into debt to His grace" (Piper 50).
Mark 10:29-31 teaches a similar concept.
"'Truly I tell you,' Jesus said, 'there is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or fields for my sake and for the sake of the gospel, who will not receive a hundred times more, now at this time--houses, brothers and sisters, mothers and children, and fields, with persecutions--and eternal life in the age to come."
A couple months ago I read another John Piper book titled: "Desiring God: Meditations of a Christian Hedonist." The impact that book had on me was a huge motivation for me to seek out other books by Piper and ultimately what led me to pick up "Brothers, We Are Not Professionals."
"Desiring God: Meditations of a Christian Hedonist" had already begun chipping away at this debtor's ethic and sacrificial attitude.
Piper argues that it is not sinful to seek our own happiness and pleasure, and even more than that, to desire our happiness and pleasure is exactly how God created us. Everything we do, in fact, is based on this cost/reward analysis. However, Piper argues that in order to seek that happiness and pleasure to their highest potential, we must seek after God in obedience.
God knows we are motivated by reward and so He constantly promises reward for obedience.
We are told to honor our father and mother so that it will go well with us (Ephesians 6:1-3).
We are told that God rewards those who seek him (Hebrews 11:6).
We are told that those who fear the Lord and delight in obeying His commands are given joy (Psalm 112:1).
I think we shy away from talking about the rewards of obedience and of seeking God because we think it somehow takes away from our obedience as if we have tarnished it with selfish motives.
But disinterested obedience isn't a virtue.
"Consider the analogy of a wedding anniversary. Mine is on December 21. Suppose on this day I bring home a dozen long-stemmed red roses for Noel. When she meets me at the door, I hold out the roses, and she says, 'O, Johnny, they're beautiful, thank you,' and gives me a big hug. Then suppose I hold up my hand and say matter-of-factly, 'Don't mention it; it's my duty.' What happens? Is not the exercise of duty a noble thing? Do not we honor those we dutifully serve? Not much. Not if there's no heart in it. Dutiful roses are a contradiction in terms. If I am not moved by a spontaneous affection for her as a person, the roses do not honor her. In fact, they belittle her. They are a very thin covering for the fact that she does not have the worth or beauty in my eyes to kindle affection.....If I take my wife out for an evening on our anniversary and she asks me, 'Why do you do this?' the answer that honors her most is, 'Because nothing makes me happier tonight than to be with you.' 'It's my duty,' is a dishonor to her. 'It's my joy,' is an honor" (Piper 72-73).
And the more we love God, the greater reward we will feel to obey Him. To take away the reward is to stop loving God altogether.
I think another reason why shy away from talking about the rewards of obedience is that we like to think we are capable of what C.S. Lewis in his book "The Four Loves" calls "Gift-love."
"Gift-love," is love that needs nothing and asks for nothing, and is able to give solely for the sake of the other. However, the only one capable of this kind of love is God Himself. In our pride, we make ourselves gods, believing that we can love God and others without needing anything in return.
However, all humans are only capable of giving God "Need-love."
"Every Christian would agree that a man's spiritual health is exactly proportional to his love for God. But man's love for God, from the very nature of the case, must always be very largely, and must often be entirely, a Need-love. This is obvious when we implore forgiveness for our sins or support in our tribulations. But in the long run, it is perhaps even more apparent in our growing - for it ought to be growing - awareness that our whole being by its very nature is one vast need; incomplete, preparatory, empty yet cluttered, crying out for Him who can untie things that are now knotted together and tie up things that are still dangling loose...it would be a bold and silly creature that came before its Creator with the boast 'I'm no beggar. I love you disinterestedly.' Those who come nearest to a Gift-love for God will next moment, even at the very same moment, be beating their breasts with the publican and laying their indigence before the only real Giver" (Lewis 1-2).
We want to be able to claim that we give God our good works and obedience because we want to honor Him, not because we need anything in return. However, fighting against this is fighting against the very way God created us. He created us to need Him.
"And God would have it so. He addresses our Need-love: 'Come to me all ye that travail and are heavyladen,' or, in the Old Testament, 'Open your mouth wide and I will fill it'" (Lewis 2).
It does not honor God to act as if we do not need Him. It honors Him to need Him more every day, to admit that we can give Him nothing that He is in want of or needs, even our good works.
The moment we master this is the moment we kill our pride for good.
I feel inclined to make a quick side-note about this idea of "Gift-love" and "Need-love" particularly in what I have observed in the non-Christian, new-agey culture.
I see a lot of messaging about the highest form of love being "Gift-love." Not only is that type of love to be admired, but we should be capable of displaying that type of love to each other, especially in our romantic relationships. Those who fall short of that divine love haven't yet been "enlightened."
I find it fascinating because all of us are created with an instinctive knowledge that we can be loved completely selflessly, but fail to realize the only place that love will be found is in God Himself. And instead of that instinctive knowledge ultimately pointing us to the only divine and needless Creator, we try to play the role of God to others and expect others to play the role of God to us.
Piper writes about the first time he ever read C.S. Lewis' sermon "The Weight of Glory."
"There it was in black and white, and to my mind, it was totally compelling: it is not a bad thing to desire our own good. In fact, the great problem of human beings is that they are far too easily pleased. They don't seek pleasure with nearly the resolve and passion that they should. And so they settle for mud pies of appetite instead of infinite delight. I had never in my whole life heard any Christian, let alone a Christian of Lewis's stature, say that all of us not only seek (as Pascal said) but also ought to seek our own happiness. Our mistake lies not in the intensity of our desire for happiness, but in the weakness of it" (Piper 16).
Piper writes that he consistently sees validation for the concept of Christian Hedonism in the lives of missionaries who know the benefit of giving up lesser pleasures (family, country, comforts) for greater pleasures (purpose, intimacy with God, fruits of the spirit). They aren't sacrificing anything; they are hedonistically striving for more fulfilling pleasures and happiness!
It wasn't my obedience and sacrificial attitude that led me here in the first place, and it isn't my obedient resolve to grit my teeth and suffer for the gospel's sake that has carried me through these past two years.
What brought me here was the divine hand of God who loves me so much that He desired to give me more of Himself and thus increase my happiness and pleasure in Him. What has carried me through these last two years has been the abandoning of lesser pleasures for higher pleasures, and not "higher" in the sense of holier, but "higher" in the sense of they fill me with greater happiness than those I abandoned.
"The chief end of man is to glorify God by enjoying Him forever" (Piper 14).
And as I near the final months of my time here in Brazil, I am convinced that I have not made a single sacrifice. I have been lucky enough to experience pleasure and happiness on a scale I never could have if I had never become a missionary. And while I am firmly convinced that it is time to close the door on this chapter of my life, I know I will deeply miss this kind of happiness in the Lord.
You are loved and you are not alone,
S
