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2008-02-05 issue:

It’s not easier with age

Editorial

by Everett J. Thomas

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Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.—Matthew 5:48

The Lenten season begins with Ash Wednesday on Feb. 6. This is the season to reflect on our sins. If you are like me, it will be sobering. No matter how hard I try, the sin in my life just won’t go away.



When I was a teenager, I believed that following God for 30 or 40 years would leave me close to the perfection expected. Now closing in on 60, I discover it’s probably not going to happen. I also understand something an elderly seminary professor once shared in class: any movement toward perfection may be simply organic.

The late J.C. Wenger was reporting a conversation he had with a visiting scholar. When J.C. mentioned that it was easier for him to remain pure in his older years, the visitor said, “Or maybe it’s just that our glands are wearing out.”

I live in a neighborhood with many elderly people. Our large congregation has many older members and retired church leaders. For most of the last decade I watched these folks—most gracious and gentle—and imagined them as examples of the perfection to which we are called. A few seem to be perfect. They are humble, compassionate and Spirit-filled. They never say a negative word about another person. They live lives that are holy. I ask: How did they get that way? Were they born with genetic material radically different from the rest of us?

As part of my seminary training, I learned to anticipate this stage of life called “midlife transition”—a time when youthful idealism acquiesces to mature realism. I held out hope, however, that decades of worshiping God with God’s people, daily devotions—even a master’s degree in “divinity”—would transform this sinful soul into the perfection God intended.

But I keep sinning. The sins aren’t illegal. Some might say they aren’t even unethical. The sins are things like not really loving my enemies, or using verbal skills to win at any expense to the other person. Why do these behaviors persist after so many years of discipleship?
I and a few close friends are able to talk about our sins—we tend to call them “foibles.” We would like to be perfect in a God-filled way. But something keeps tripping us up.

The realities about imperfection cause another problem: Since we are not perfect, we pretend to be perfect. Then we derive comfort in the culture of perfection we construct.

It is a truism that Mennonites “do.” Our work ethic is part of the genetic material we inherit. Older generations called it “works righteousness.” The assumption seems to be that if we work hard enough we can achieve anything—including freedom from sin. If we don’t make it happen, then we are less worthy before God. So we read the commandment to be perfect as God is perfect and try to make it happen.

But Lent is the time to strip away all these pretensions to perfection. It is a time to acknowledge the stain of sin in our souls that just can’t be washed away. It is a time to hear another reality Jesus explained to his disciples: What is impossible for man is possible for God.

Jesus was talking about a camel fitting through the eye of a needle when he said it. His simile referred to another kind of perfection: giving away to the poor all our material possessions. If we don’t, Jesus said, we won’t go to heaven.

The disciples were stunned. “Then who can be saved?” they asked. Jesus replied that what is impossible for man is possible for God.

This is the Lenten message: We are commanded to be perfect; we cannot be perfect. But God accepts us even with our imperfections—sins.

The 40 days of Lent are a time to be honest about our sins and strip away pretensions to perfection. Acknowledging our sins—at least to ourselves—won’t make us any worse. Besides, God already knows about them and offers us grace even before we ask.—ejt

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