Martin Luther, the 16th century German reformer, is one of my heroes. Among many things, Luther taught that there are two fundamental stories in this life: the glory story and the story of the cross. The glory story is the natural story of all of us, fueled by our desire to secure some kind of identity and security and significance for ourselves in the face of what we know is there: our finite limitations and, ultimately, our death. The story of the cross, on the other hand, teaches us that the glory story is essentially a lie. There is no path to self-glory, to self-security. It's a myth, a closed circle that ends in death. In fact, my addiction to my glory story is my real problem. It chains me to myself, curves me inward selfishly. But what the cross story offers us, in our union with Christ, is freedom through death to the glory story and resurrection to the new creation where we now belong to Someone and something bigger than ourselves, being rescued from the final, futile end of death to be with and know our Creator forever.
In the glory story, the world around us becomes the raw materials we use to focus on our project of self-elevation, of self-actualization. If we can find the right success, the right education, the right role in Church, the right love partner, the right career, turn out the right children, or whatever, we will be and feel like somebody, we will secure the life we think will provide us what we're searching for. In this sense, everything around us, including other people, becomes objects we either use or discard to serve our quest. We even seek to employ God to serve our story.
In this vein, Luther was careful to observe how we can try to hijack Christianity to make it a servant of our glory story. I notice some of examples of this, today. We turn the good news into a mere story of self-affirmation and finding our significance, to fill our need to feel valuable. We mix in non-Biblical elements to help us find ourselves, like personality tests, enneagrams, etc. We can sometimes even turn good Biblical emphases on marriage or roles as husbands and wives, or the importance of ministry roles within the Church, into a kind of glory story that serves our status and image and self-esteem.
But, while there is some real truth employed in many of these applications, overall the gospel is not meant to do these things in this way. It is not meant to fulfill our quest for self, to merely assist our weakness, to help us "find" ourselves in that sense. Jesus said that we find ourselves by losing ourselves, by forgetting about our glory story, dying to self, finding life in wholly belong to Him and looking to the needs of others. He's not an attendant to fulfill our story but calls us to die to our story to find our life in His. The Law is intended to be the voice that hauntingly reminds us that our quest is futile, so that we will give it up, die to it, and find true forgiveness, love, and new life in Christ's death and resurrection for us.
This might seem like something too high-brow and academic, but it is eminently practical. When I read and write this, I think of myself and I think of many others. I think of how distortions of the Gospel hurt people. I think of how we already have a hard enough time with the story of the cross, allowing it to take us over, and how being able to distinguish between the two can provide liberation to us as we struggle.
I think of that wife in a painful marriage. Her marriage and call to serve her husband out of service to the Lord is difficult enough. How much worse does it make her anguish when she expects her marriage to be part of her glory story, wanting to just be like everyone else who appears to have such a thriving, beautiful marriage. It robs her joy. It steals her confidence. It fuels her bitterness. She needs to know that none of us all called to that story except to die to it, and that her cross story just looks differently from someone else's. But we all have one. Yet we can all grieve together at the pain of this world as we set our sights on the bigger story.
I think of that woman who is painful uncertain of who she is. She feels like she should be so much better, so much stronger. She works in ministry, but she feels so off and so inadequate. So she latches onto the latest fads in Christian women's circles. She looks into enneagrams and other things like this, as handy tools to understand herself and others, thinking that might give her more insight and confidence and clarity. But in the end it doesn't help. It's like reading a horoscope and identify with some of the things said. It doesn't go much beyond that to help a person grow in Christ.
Life is painful and confusing enough, as it is. This is why we as believers must be clear on the cross story. We must be clear on what it is and how, by faith, we are called to liberation through participation in it.
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