Chapter 1: Refrigerator
Art
Oddly enough, Crowe
opens this chapter with a humorous analysis of why hanging kids’ pictures on
the family fridge ever became a thing. Seems like a strange place to hang
artwork, right? …Especially when the art is, perhaps not the most aesthetically
pleasing. But parents display it proudly, in the part of the house that gets
the most traffic and where it is sure to be seen by everybody.
This is where
Crowe starts his discussion of what it means to be “in Christ,” writing that
“in the end, the best I can offer God is nothing more than refrigerator art”
(18).
To be in Christ
also means that Christ is in you – what was once sinful, empty and spiritually
dead, Christ redeems and brings to life. But it is through no merit of our own
– instead, it is the grace of God that causes this change in us. As we’ve read
in Romans this semester, “God shows his love for us in that while we were still
sinners, Christ died for us” (5:8). Even
on our best days, we wouldn’t be able to accomplish what is necessary to make
us on good terms with God. Crowe writes, “we have nothing to offer God but
empty and messed-up lives without purpose. In other words, refrigerator art”
(18).
Besides being a
harsh criticism of refrigerator art, I’m not sure this analogy is quite appropriate
for the nature of the situation he’s trying to describe. When I think of
children’s art, I think of it as imaginative and genuine - perhaps “ugly” by
certain aesthetic standards, but wholly pure and therefore beautiful in its own
way. Regardless, Crowe uses it to bring in the idea that before we were
redeemed by the act of salvation, “the best you could offer God was but filthy
rags (see Isaiah 64:6). He’s using it to try to describe how God takes our
messy, chaotic, “ugly” lives and somehow awards us the new identity of being
“in Christ,” which is a place of the highest honor and favor.
Moving on, Crowe
takes the rest of this chapter to explain three premises about what it means to
be free and how we should approach our freedom:
·
The Reality of a Life Made Free: We Are
New Creations
Here’s the big
idea: our status as “new creations” means “no mere mending or improvement but
an actual ‘creation’ . . . God created something completely new; he didn’t
simply upgrade or improve on an already existing life” (19-20). This is
significant because “the sacrificial love of Christ is not to reform morals but
to transform, not to improve life but to grant life to all” (21). The old,
sinful nature has passed away – we no longer have to be enslaved by the force
of sin in our lives.
When I read this
section, especially the quotation above about how Christ did not simply reform
morals but transformed them, I was reminded of our discussions in class about
Christ’s statement that he came not to abolish the law but to fulfill it. As
we’ve discussed based on our readings of the Gospels, Christ “radicalizes” the
commands – he brings what was created to the full expression of what it was
intended to be, emphasizing the heart and not external behavior. I don’t think
his purpose was to make the laws impossible to follow or to add more strict
rules – instead he wanted to teach people that the purpose of the law was to
change hearts.
Crowe expresses
a distinction, however, in that while the creation that “took place ‘in the
beginning’ was characterized by God’s all-powerfulness,” the “new creation of
an individual spiritually is characterized by God’s grace” (20). My main
problem with this distinction is that it may give the impression that the first
creation was somehow detached from grace, and the act of making us new
creations is somehow not a demonstration of God’s all-powerfulness. I don’t
think Crowe intends for this interpretation to happen, but his writing is a
little unclear here. What I found to be so beautiful after thinking about this
issue is that in both acts of “creation,” God’s powerful and grace were working
together. Afterall, it takes divine power to recreate a human heart.
·
The Reason for a Life Made Free: The Love
of God
In this section,
Crowe emphasizes the concepts of reconciliation and imputation. The main idea
is that in Christ’s salvific work on the cross, God himself took the action
necessary to reconcile us to himself. Crowe writes, “Because of imputation – or
rather because of the debt and enmity that had been built up due to humanity’s
transgressions and because of the demand of God’s holy law – reconciliation is
God’s solution to humanity’s problem” (23).
·
The Responsibility of a Life Made Free:
The Ministry of Reconciliation
This section
describes the mission of the Christian as that of being an ambassador – one
who, as a new creation and therefore free from the bondage of sin because of
the imputation of Christ’s own righteousness, is charged with sharing the same
message of reconciliation that he or she has found. Crowe asserts that
“Christian freedom is not passive, but proactive” (24). When we are saved, we
inherit a responsibility to help save others. This is the “ministry of
reconciliation” (24). One of my favorite ideas of this section is related to
the title of an ambassador: the “individual has all of the authority of the
state he represents backing his presence in the country where he serves” (24).
Crowe didn’t expand much on this statement, but I have read other writing by
Corrie ten Boom, for example, which brings out that as ambassadors of Christ,
we do not have any reason to fear the powers of this world – we represent the Almighty
Lord.
Chapter 2: Meat, Idols,
and Special Days
This is where
Crowe really begins to address the issue of ethical controversy. I really
identified with his opening narrative, where he described a friend of his who
had grown up in a “very structured institutional church,” and “was taught that
people could only pray certain sanctioned prayers and that proper behavior in
church was anything but relaxed or joyful” (27). She was invited to a friend’s
church when she was sixteen, and was shocked by the differences – the casual
atmosphere, the worship music, the spontaneity and humor. However, though she
recognized a sense of joy in the people who went there that she was
unaccustomed to seeing at church, she thought it was irreverent and judged the
people there for it. Crowe writes that she “allowed the traditions of her home
church to prevent her from enjoying the company of other Christians. . . . She
left the church building that day empty of the joy and freedom she observed in
the others around her because she made mountains out of molehills” (27).
I appreciated
Crowe’s discussion of this, especially because during college, I’ve come to see
the beauty and freedom that can exist in many different “styles” of church. For
example, I have learned to love liturgy, but I also value the freedom of
contemporary worship. “Structure” can still be conducive to freedom. The point
is not that Crowe’s friend’s home church was “wrong” in its approach, but that
his friend failed to see the common faith that united both churches and
therefore missed out on the fellowship that she could have found. In Hays’s The Moral Vision of the New Testament,
we’ve just read his chapter on other sources of authority besides Scripture
alone, and I agree that tradition should be, to some extent, considered in our
interpretation of scripture and our religious practice. However, Crowe’s
example shows that there are some things that we may see as controversial which
really shouldn’t be a big deal.
Crowe writes
that “If we don’t seek to properly understand our freedom in Christ, we can
cause division and hurt within the Christian community and be poor
representatives of Christ to those outside the faith” (28). I was reminded by
this of the beginning of Mere
Christianity by C. S. Lewis, where Lewis writes that while it is good for
Christians of different opinions should discuss these differences, they should
never be brought up in the presence of nonbelievers, who will only see the
division and be turned away from the faith.
Crowe then
begins his discussion of “gray areas” by focusing on two “case studies” from
the book of Romans: dietary restrictions, whether or not we should eat food
offered to idols, and the issue of whether or not to observe special holy days.
In Romans 14:1-12, Paul provides these as examples of issues that can cause
disunity between those who are stronger Christians and those who are weaker
Christians. Crowe emphasizes that the guiding principle of this discussion is
that “strong believers bear a great responsibility to focus on community and
not allow division to take place over a difference of opinions” (29). This
section was interesting to me because the main point was that even though we
have freedom in Christ, we should never distort this freedom to cause other
Christians to stumble or doubt. Stronger Christians may realize that a certain
behavior is not sin, but if they know that they are in a position where a
weaker Christian (who does believe it to be a sin) would be confused, tempted,
or discouraged by witnessing the behavior, stronger Christians should
abstain. In other words, there are some
instances where what is sin for one believer might not be sin for another
believer; however, what is important is that both are acting out of a desire to
honor God, and each should be fully convinced of his or her own decision.
My favorite idea
from this section is that Christ is Lord over every area of our lives, even in
the so-called “gray areas,” and for this reason, Crowe believes that “there
should never be any neutral or passive areas in a believer’s life” (32). There
are of course issues of ethics that are obviously nonnegotiable based on God’s
word, but “when it comes to decisions that are a matter of opinion, it still
comes down to whether or not you do something in honor of the Lord. Attitude
and purpose can take center stage on whether or not a decision is sin” (32).
Crowe exhorts us to never go against our own conscience, but at the same time,
we should not allow personal opinions to lead us into petty arguments which can
undermine the unity God intends for his church to have. If I think of Crowe’s
discussion so far in terms of the methods of ethical reasoning we’ve discussed
in class, much of this seems to be fitting into the category of virtue ethics:
it’s about knowing the kind of people we should be, and “being who we are.” The
telos, or ultimate end, is to bring glory and honor to God in everything we do,
so rather than placing the focus on a list of rules or moral imperatives, our
focus in deciding issues of morality should be whether or not the end of the
behavior will be God-honoring.
“Jesus is Lord in our
social networking and when deciding what movie to watch. This simple fact means
that when we focus on judging others or when we act arrogantly, we take away
from the focus we should have – that He is Lord and we live unto him.” – Brent
Crowe
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