“And I Will Dwell in the House of the Lord Forever”: The End of the Moral Life is Now
tenth in a guest series by Myles Werntz on Psalm 23 and the moral life
The Transformation of Our Agency
As the flock approaches the house of the LORD, we are reminded that whatever else we mean by the “end” of our journeys, it does not mean the ending of our existence as creatures. To be a creature of God is always to be a creature of God, not an angel, nor a god. We are joined together in eternity as we are in time, by the work of the Spirit, mediating the face of the eternal God to us. But there are creatures, and then, there are creatures, and in eternity, we bear resemblances, traces of our figure as the creatures we were in time. But what kind of agency does this mean? What does it mean for a human, in eternity, to desire, to long, to will?
These are things in describing this which we must only gesture toward, what it might mean for the human to be exalted and healed. We can say with some confidence that our will, chief among these aspects in needing repair, will desire unerringly the things of God. In doing so, it would seem that our act of deliberation comes to an end: there is no need for evaluation or for deciding when the One toward which we move is before us. With the fullness of time, there is an ending—of a sort—of our journey. But en route to our end, we pass along waters and must ask questions such as how long to rest, how much to drink, and who should eat first: prudence and deliberation help us to sort through the ambiguities and competing goods of time. What of these things now that we approach the end?
In time, our approach to our end is a diagonal one. As we journey with the Shepherd-LORD, there is no straight-forward approach, but stops and starts, rests and long deserts. And all of what we pass through along the way will stay with us: just as Paul says that there is a way to sin against one’s own body, the scars in Christ’s resurrected body tell us that bodily life—and our moral knowledge—is not a disposable element. The diagonal advance to God is one which, by God’s Spirit, hones our soul, such that we approach wisdom as we approach seeing Wisdom face to face. We are, in our deliberations, being made fit for the Kingdom.
In this flock—this communion of the saints—the sheep are united, but not the same: they will have drawn up into this house of the LORD various things, experiences, times, taking captive different dimensions of creation in time which are now their offerings to the LORD. We should hesitate to say that this “expands” eternity, as if something could be added to God to make God moreso than He is. But these endless offerings create a proflierating worship, an ever-building fragrance and aroma, the fruits of the wisdom which the Shepherd-LORD has worked out among us.
The Complexity of Time and the Simplicity of Obedience
For us to dwell in the LORD’s house, we must journey there, and to journey, we must deliberate, even if deliberation is only for a time. But if the end we seek is the house of the LORD, in which our deliberations end, then our journey must be one in which deliberation is not front and center. We must, as it were, be participating in the end of our deliberation now.
Bonhoeffer, in Discipleship, names our struggle by referring us to the simplicity of obedience: that we take the Scripture’s call at face value, and respond accordingly. He is not, here or elsewhere, arguing for a naïve reading of Scripture: many an abuse have taken place when the Scriptures were seen as God’s past, rather than God’s present word. Our simple obedience treats the Scripture, like Jesus’ call to Nathaniel, as an invitation to step through a door: only once we say yes do we understand what exactly it means to keep saying yes. There is no way of saying yes to everything at once, except by stepping forward first, knowing that how we step forward is a different question from if we will.
In saying yes to Christ’s call, before we deliberate on how to live that call, we begin the ending of the moral life. We begin participating in the quieting of our deliberation, not by denying that we need it, but by placing it in perspective. Christ, the high priest who mediates for us on high, continues this eternal work, and so, our agency continues as well—we continue, even in the eschaton, to desire, to will, to love. For we are creatures, and to be a creature is to know and desire as creatures know. But the shape of this willing and love will no longer have to ask questions of provision, of approach, of evaluation of goods: the feast will be before us, and the Shepherd-LORD will be our host.
If the moral life is moving toward an end, then it should come as no surprise that, over time, our moral life itself moves toward that simplicity. In moral theology, we hear the distinctions of virtue, commands, and deliberation, but what we find is that these ultimately are not competitors, but friends. To say yes—to enter into the way of the Shepherd-LORD—means that we find ourselves compelled into that way, learning how to be wise travelers as we go. What starts off as difficult, causing us to ask many questions of how and when, becomes more second nature; what starts off as a call never ceases to be a call, but becomes a call which becomes the rhythm of our walking. Commands kiss the face of virtue; deliberation helps to ask questions of commands, that we might be the kinds of people the commands envision.
The House of the LORD: A Vision Within Time
The moral life is not something which abruptly stops, then, but one which is being led toward its perfection. And if we are being led toward the house of the LORD, it should not surprise us that we find houses along the way to rest. The Shepherd-LORD inclines our ears to hear our calling to him, thus, in this way: as building a house upon a rock. To exercise obedience and to put the ways of the LORD into action is not to abandon the moral life, its deliberations and questions, its practices and habits. It is to give them a proper form within which to rest, regroup, and have their wounds tended to. In our building of a house on the rock, we are anticipating the house which awaits us for all time.
These houses, on the rock and in eternity, give life to all other houses and homes—houses of hospitality, of families, of the single, of the afraid and the abused. These houses—on the rock and in eternity—take root, apocalyptically reconfiguring all ofthe houses of the world, among children, among enemies calling themselves families. For our lives in all of these many houses are made possible by these two houses—the rock and in eternity—that every house might point to the shape that our habitations in the world should have.
In the same way that, when we eat meals, we are reminded of the Supper, or when we are washed, we are reminded of our Great Washing, so the goodness of our little lives directs us to the unending ways, proliferated in time, of the house of the LORD. Our moral lives pull us, push us, compel us forward diagonally in time, that there might be no divide between the world and God, but that all of the world might be lit up from within by the house of the LORD which is always and coming.