What happens when the thing we’re doing becomes the thing?
Recently I read something about a church that was commended for doing some really great things for helping the poor. They received some significant recognition from someone who is deeply active in world affairs. And I commend them too.
But as I read the article, I couldn’t help wonder (mostly because I’ve felt the trouble in the act of giving) if the giving had become the thing. It got them praise. It made me wrestle with why I give and how I give. It was as if my own giving had become magnified in front of me and I had to wonder why I gave the way I do.
If you read this blog for any length of time you know that I write a lot about the concept of love. Much of my own theology is deeply bent towards understanding love as the solution to the root problem in humanity. Jesus clarified an entire theology with what scholars call the Great Commandment, which came down to love. Giving can be a deeply loving act.
But there is this tension with the doing part of love that I wrestle with. What happens when our doing a thing becomes the thing? Peter Rollins has a parable about this that explores the idea of a group of people who take Jesus’ command to “go another mile”. They end up thinking that going another mile, is the thing we’re supposed to do. It’s becomes the ritual that morphes into the religion they chose to leave. Giving becomes the act designed to earn praise and love.
What happens when the very act of love becomes the religious practice that once again becomes the thing we think will earn God’s love?
1 cor 13:3 – If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames, but have not love, I gain nothing.
Think about that. Paul seemed to understand that the risk of what we do could lose the very heart behind it. The act, or action of the body, could lose the very motivation behind it.
I seriously wonder if this is why Jesus said:
“But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your giving may be in secret. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.” (Matthew 6:3-4)
What if Jesus understood the very nature of our brokenness was to continually distort our perspective in a way that would rob us of a true experience? I would seriously hate to think I was being love to someone simply for a religious act.
