“At thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore” (Ps. 16: 11)
Growing Dominion, Part 33
As evangelical Christians, we know that we are saved by grace through faith, and it is not of ourselves, lest any should boast. Our salvation, in other words, is gracious, and completely detached from any notion of merit or earning on our part. Salvation is a gift.
The fact of this glorious justification must be applied everywhere, but it must be applied judiciously and in all wisdom. This means that we must find the proper place for works; we are not to duplicate “free grace” all the way down to the ground. To illustrate, say there is a Christian school entirely dedicated to the proposition that salvation is by grace through faith. How do the teachers in that school grade the spelling tests? They grade them according to works, and this does not contradict the school’s statement of faith.
The fact that we are saved by grace does not grant us the right to do slipshod work in the business world, circulate bad theories of education, administer bogus medicine, and so on. If a Christian carpenter builds houses that fall down, or cabinets that fall apart, it is not an affirmation of grace to insist that Christian customers have an obligation to continue to patronize him. And when the word gets out and around about his poor work, this is not gossip. I write letters of recommendation for former students regularly-this is not meddling in the private lives of others. It is acknowledging the public nature of parish life together.
Living in community is difficult because it involves knowledge of one another’s faults and failings. And this is why the commuter approach to church in our larger towns is so appealing. We can go do the worship thing, and sing along with poor carpenters, half-baked educators, cranks on various subjects, and it is no skin off our nose. But living in community, life together in the parish, means that we no longer have a right to our own private realities. We have to deal with one another, as the phrase has it, 24-7.