Your Only Sure Protection from the Tragedy of Moral Collapse

We’ve been tackling some much-needed cleaning projects here on the hill, and it feels good to move furniture, vacuum up accumulated dust, and throw away the things we don’t need. Big jobs require time and a certain amount of elbow grease, but the results reward the investment.

Routine tasks are less exciting: wiping down the counters after a day of ordinary meal prep, keeping up with the laundry and the dirty dishes, sweeping up the detritus around the woodstove. While these mundane tasks don’t deliver a big dopamine rush, if we ignore them, the results will soon be pretty obvious.

The same could be said about our spiritual life, the “housekeeping” of our hearts. Regular communication with God, confession of sin, and receiving daily grace for the “normal” Christian life doesn’t look very heroic. It can even seem monotonous, stale, and stuffy. But this is how we “wipe down the counters” and “load the dishwasher” in our following life.

The Tragedy of Moral Collapse

I was saddened to read Philip Yancey’s confession of an extramarital affair that had been ongoing for eight years. It’s always disappointing to discover that one’s idols have feet of clay. His books have been one of the steady voices in my ear for over twenty years, and I’ve quoted from and recommended a number of them in my reviews.

I don’t usually interact much with the comings and goings of the news here, but I feel compelled to point out that moral collapse happens in the same manner in which Ernest Hemingway described bankruptcy: “Gradually, and then suddenly.” A series of seemingly small compromises will undermine the bedrock of years of faithful living.

A series of seemingly small compromises will undermine the bedrock of years of faithful living.

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Perhaps Yancey’s parting gift to the evangelical world as he withdraws from public life will be the realization that there’s not a one of us who is immune to the siren call of sin. Every one of us needs to examine our own hearts and pay attention. At age 63, I still have plenty of time to make an unholy mess of my life.

By grace, we can finish well. We can add our voices to Paul’s in this pledge of allegiance:

Brothers, I do not consider that I have made it my own. But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.” (Philippians 3:13-14)

Grace to finish well will come to us through humble, routine habits of holiness. Wiping down the daily grime and exposing the dust of our disordered loves protects us from the tragedy of moral collapse.

The prize is not a good reputation or a stellar legacy. The prize is Christ, and the commitment to pursue that “upward call” produces the benefit of a life well-lived. Thanks be to God for the cross, our sacred starting place and our only hope for a faithful finish.

Holding You in the Light,

Grace to finish well will come to us through humble routine habits of holiness. Wiping down the daily grime and exposing the dust of our disordered loves protects us from the tragedy of moral collapse.

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