In Defense of Pious People
“And it is my prayer that your love may abound more and more, with knowledge and all discernment,so that you may approve what is excellent, and so be pure and blameless for the day of Christ,filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ, to the glory and praise of God.” (Phil 1)
In the Scottish Highlands where the river Canon sups from the Cromartie firth, there's a house up a hill built in 1776. Its path to the firth is barricaded by pasture belonging to the church of Scotland, where dozens of healthy sheep nudge along maintaining the meadow, tucking their legs in to rest from time to time beneath a sky the color of trout in the shallows bunting the bald hills of Dingwall, as summer recedes in the UK. Those sheep prattle the sunset onward like a crowd at theatre before curtains. The sunset lingered and I was able to take as many photos as I wanted, each one a disappointing effort, like describing the Sistine Chapel on a barstool in Fort Wayne. What I experienced was something like the way things are supposed to be. A righteousness we can still find in the created world on holiday, but struggle to see in humanity. This is something of what Paul prays for in the Philippian church. May they be human beings of creative beauty that both stir and rest the souls of men.
It sounds lofty, especially given the world in which we find ourselves. I've been asked a dozen times if I've watched The Righteous Gemstones, a show about Evangelical grifters. I haven't, not because it isn't well-done, but because I don't need another reminder about how Christians have failed to live righteously. I have a mirror, after all. When St. Paul prays for the righteousness of God's people, he does not pray that they would begin by cleaning up their act. Stop sinning and be an example. Rather he begins simply: love one another and grow in the knowledge of God. This is exceptionally good news for those of us who feel overburdened and anxious by the news of the day or last night's failures. The complexities of living righteously in this world make us feel like staying in bed, which is what many of us end up doing, whether literally or figuratively through a life composed of well-timed distractions.
The Bible does not give up on the promise of righteous people living righteously. And it hasn't given up on personal piety. We tend to think of piety as false piety; that is, pious living to be seen and recognized, or as a fig leaf over the hidden impious lives we live. Instead this piety begins with our abundant love of others in concert with the knowledge of God and his will.
If there's an objection to be made, it's that as soon as Christians think of themselves as righteous they will immediately cross into self-righteous moralism. One of the great, seemingly impossible statements the Bible gives about the life of righteous people is in 1 Thessalonians 5: “...always seek to do good to one another and to everyone. Rejoice always, pray without ceasing." Pray without ceasing? Surely no one takes that kind of command at face value. Yet I love the way Henri Nouwen explains it:
“Our prayer can only become ‘unceasing’ communion when all our thoughts—beautiful or ugly, high or low, can be thought in the presence of the One who dwells in us and surrounds us.”
The righteous lives of righteous people must be lived in the presence of God, recognizing that our greatest and most pious actions in service of others are those which are done in the knowledge of God's mercy and forbearance toward us.
There are so many places to begin, and so many needs of the hour. A world of people who could benefit from our righteous lives rolling into theirs like a firth of God's own mercy. They need our trustworthy ethics, even our commitment to good and right Biblical boundaries, like the stone walls providing pasture for anxious sheep to mew and eat and drowse. Paul calls it "approving" what is "excellent." But for the one you love who does not know Jesus and is full of self-sabotaging sin, your piety is not some cheap trick but life itself. Your approval of what is excellent matters. The righteous lives of Christians matter the way a streetlight matters when you're driving an unfamiliar road late at night. The way a good home matters when yours is filled with violence. The way a lifeguard's training is a kind of piety that can save you from drowning. This is Paul's prayer for us. May we be full of love that knows God, so that we can be full of righteousness that serves God.