“The negative ethic forbids certain actions; the positive ethic demands certain actions. To follow the negative ethic is to be decent, to have clean hands. But to follow the positive ethic, to be one’s brother’s keeper, is to be more than decent—it is to be active, even aggressive. If the negative ethic is one of decency, the positive one is the ethic of riskful, strenuous nobility.”
Growing up the son of a pastor, I’ve been to more funerals than anyone I know at my age.
I’ve often wondered if this played a role in the amount of time I wasted contemplating if I’d go to hell if I died on certain days. After all, for most of my life, I’ve believed that the chief goal of my faith in Christ was to avoid hell.
I thought this was my reason for faith. I thought it had to be.
As a result, I let fear take control of the steering wheel of my life. I would seek a new salvation every week, every day, to try to make up for the fact that I didn’t measure up.
If I lived a little better and believed a little more, I’d finally crack the code. I’d feel a greater sense of security.
I never did.
There was always that fear in the back of my mind. There was always that reminder of the sins continuing to pile up.
Fortunately or unfortunately, fear is a lousy long-term motivator.
I’m NOT here to tell you that you are wrong if this is how you came to faith. Quite the opposite. The saving grace of Jesus comes in a variety of ways. It is how I first came to faith as well. Yet, I do believe we are entering a new cultural period. There is nothing new about the grace and power of Christ. They are unchanging. However, as our culture shifts, how we offer and engage with the people in our lives may change.
So many of our cultural tools revolve around how tightly we hold things out of fear. We see this in our changing political systems, media consumption, and the epidemic of loneliness. Individualism guides these areas. Political engagement often centers on what can happen to protect my life rather than maximizing the common good or helping the least of these. Media critiques center more around soothing our expectations than meeting something on its own terms. Our loneliness comes out of fortifying our space, time, and peace rather than a posture of generosity.
On the surface, none of these are wrong or overtly bad. But where do they end?
I came across the work of ethicist Philip Hallie when studying for a business ethics course for my DBA program. His work centers around institutional cruelty, along with a search for its opposite, which led him to Le Chambon, a non-violent village that may have saved up to 5000 Jews and other refugees throughout World War II.
As I began reading his words, I found, as Hallie did, that hospitality is the antidote to cruelty. I believe it is also at the heart of the gospel. I found once again that the Good News is indeed Good not just because of what it saves us from but what it calls us to. The undeserved hospitality of God forms in us a hospitality for our neighbors, a generosity to stand firm in the face of cruelty and evil.
Near the end of the prelude of Hallie’s book Lest Innocent Blood Be Shed, he reflects on an encounter he had with one of the village leaders he interviewed when researching the story of Le Chambon, writing:
What brought me to this ice-covered village high in the mountains of France more than thirty years after the Liberation was the need to understand the story that connected these two kinds of individuals with each other and with their time. I needed this understanding in order to redeem myself—and possibly others—from the coercion of despair.
During the first few moments after Theis and I left the boardinghouse of the Marions, we walked separately through the snowy mountain wind. Two or three times Theis staggered and almost fell. Even I, with my younger reflexes, slipped once or twice. But when he reached out and intertwined his right arm with my left, suddenly the warmth of his thin body and the firmness of our intertwined arms created a new being moving upon four firm legs. Now we were stable, even though the icy road was still there, and even though the broom were still whirling their long evergreen fingers. The world was still cold, confusing, and dangerous. But we were close to each other, parts of a new whole, and we felt suddenly surefooted.
The day before this walk we had been in the home of the Chazots, who had kept a Jewish family in their home for most of the four years of the Occupation, even though their house is on a road that was much frequented by Vichy and German troops. During our conversation Theis had said suddenly, “Oh! Que c’est difficile d’être seul!” At that moment his phrase, “Ah, but it is hard to be alone!” had only the pathos of bereavement in it: Mildred Theis was dead. But now, when I have thought long about our walk and have learned the story of Le Chambon, the phrase means, “Ah, but it is a joy to be together, always joyously good!”
As I read these words, I couldn’t help but think about the beauty of the gospel. The Good News of the gospel is that we are saved through Christ's life, death, and resurrection. Yet, it is also that we are not alone. Much like the icy roads Hallie and Theis traveled through France, Christ is with us in the treacherous storms we face. The danger may not subside. The fear may seek to stamp out our joy. Still, He is there.
As he gives us clean hands, he calls us to walk nobly to the marginalized, our neighbors, our workplace, our friends, and our families. He is there, too.
The truth of Christ's generosity compels us forward. It draws us not only to some vague existence but rather into the lives of the people around us. We intertwine ourselves with our neighbors through generous love and open hands, not rugged individualism and calloused hearts.
Sometimes, I wonder if our concern for saving our own skin and our individual standards causes us to lose sight of the generous grace we receive. I wonder if by practicing that hospitality, we might come to know it more intimately. I wonder if we showed radical generosity, would it open up solutions to our problems?
Just as Christ does with us. So, too, he uses us to illustrate his Good News.
After all, His generosity saved me. My fear didn’t.