Practice, Practice, Practice

This is not about the Olympics.

Some have suggested that the last couple of posts and the comments they elicited are worth a longer discussion. I agree. After spending two years in the M.A. program at Southern Nazarene with Dr. Steve Green, the one thing I've absolutely come to believe is that practices are what matter. Practices? Yes, as understood in the MacIntyrian sense. Here's MacIntyre from After Virtue:

'By a practice I am going to mean any coherent and complex form of socially established co-operative human activity through which goods internal to that form of activity are realised in the course of trying to achieve those standards of excellence which are appropriate to, and partially definitive of, that form of activity, with the result that human powers to achieve excellence, and human conceptions of the ends and goods involved, are systematically extended.'

Think of Christianity or Christian praxis as "the form of activity." The goods internal to that form are the virtues for which we strive, and secondarily, the benefits we derive from those virtues. I am assuming that the goal of Christianity is to be Christ-like, or to act virtuously. The beauty of MacIntyre's (and McClendon's) thought on this is that the virtues not only lead to good in the form of character, sacrifice, generosity, community, etc., but it is the development of those virtues through practices that make us better able to develop other virtues. So, apart from the practices which constitute Christianity, there really is no such thing as Christianity. In short, we have to try to be Christian. We have to practice virtue. Practicing virtue leads to acting virtuously.

"Legalism!" Some will say. Again, let's quote the Apostle James: show me your faith without your works and I'll show you my faith by my works. It's not an either/or equation. You can't have Christianity without Christian practices; you can't have virtue without practice; and you can't practice virtue without practicing. This is really simple stuff, but the Protestant movement has been so afraid of legalism that we've sequestered salvation in a cognitive realm which has led to an artificial bifurcation of faith and praxis. It's time to approach the Gospel wholistically again. It's time to say that you can't be a Christian if you don't act like a Christian.

We've focused on atonement theology for so long that we've failed to focus on the ethical side of Christianity. Desperate to preserve sola fide, we've allowed salvation to come to mean a decision made once with little or no change in behavior required. For people who do feel changed, who feel like they should live differently, there are no guides in Christian practices. Read your Bible. Pray every day. Great, but is that all there is to it? Because we've ceased to practice Christian ethics, we have no mentors or models to show us the way. That's what Jesus did for three years with that band of scraggly men. It's what we're supposed to do too. (Incidentally, this is a powerful argument for smaller communities. How do you pull this off in a large church?) It wasn't just his death that mattered. His life mattered too. If it was just his death that counted, Herod might just as well have killed him and gotten it over with. The way he lived mattered because it's the way we're supposed to live.

That'll do for an opening salvo. God bless us all, every one...

Comments

[Brad]

Hell, Greg, you are expecting Christians to be concerned with sins other than sex and drugs! Talk about idealism! :)

[greg]

Brad,

I'm on the verge of becoming a Pollyanna!

[Caleb]

I can't help mentioning Bonhoeffer, since his warning that "cheap grace is the deadly enemy of our Church" is right in line with your two posts.

I love the passage in The Cost of Discipleship where Bonhoeffer skewers the kind of sophistry we Christians use to avoid obedience:

"When orders are issued in other spheres of life there is no doubt whatever of their meaning. If a father sends his child to bed, the boy knows at once what he has to do. But suppose he has picked up a smattering of pseudo-theology. In that case he would argue more or less like this: 'Father tells me to go to bed, but he really means that I am tired, and he does not want me to be tired. I can overcome my tiredness just as well if I go out and play. Therefore though father tells me to go to bed, he really means: "Go out and play."'"

As Bonhoeffer summarizes: "The elimination of single-minded obedience on principle is but another instance of the perversion of the costly grace of the call of Jesus into the cheap grace of self-justification."

I say I love these passages, but it's a fear-and-trembling kind of love.

[marty]

It's rather like AA (which, oddly enough, along with Brendan Manning's books, has greatly influenced my faith rather than the opposite being true, hopefully nobody will spend much time deconstructing that). There are many things that may seem irrelevant or difficult or even silly, but the more you practice it the more it really works. (The AA phrase: It'll work if you work it.)
Perhaps better expressed in Wendell Berry's poem Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front:
Practice Resurection.

[Scott]

What is the practicality of Christianity if it isn't practiced? Christians have become whores of Christian rhetoric. Words mean nothing without actions. Sustained and consistant Chist-like actions in turn are what make a man or woman's words substanitive.