Monthly Musing . . . 

IS SINCERITY ENOUGH?

Robert Meyers

 

Whenever one defends the principle of variable accountability, holding that God will judge each of us in terms of our unique capacities and chances, someone usually responds with a touch of asperity: "Are you saying that anybody is all right just so long as he is sincere?"

 

Put that way, sincerity suddenly seems a much less attractive personality trait than it is usually credited with being. In elevating inerrancy, honesty gets pushed lower on the scale of values than it deserves. But the whole question is deceptive. It makes no distinction between the judgments of society and the judgments of God.

 

As a teacher I have had to fail students who either would not or could not do passing work. My "F" in the gradebook recognized no difference between them. But surely no one would argue that God is such a schoolmaster, or is bound by such legal directives. He does not require of any man what that man has no capacity to give Him. No one, as Paul says in 2 Corinthians 8:12 "Is asked to give what he has not got."

 

Jesus upheld the principle when he stated that the poor widow of Mark 12 gave more than anyone else when she cast her two mites into the treasury. Judged in terms of literal quantity, His statement is absurd. But judged in terms of her differing ability to give, it is the only evaluation one can make and still be fair to people crippled by life. The widow gave less but she gave more, and everyone sees that this paradox is true.

 

In the parable of the talents, each man was then expected to accomplish in accord with his gift and his capacity. In one sense, each man's accountability was exactly the same. He had to do the best he could with what he had. In another sense, each man's accountability was different because no two men were similarly equipped.

 

If we remember that God is Father, and relate that saving truth to the life of an ideal family, the principle of variable accountability can be easily demonstrated. Parents learn to their surprise that children close to each other in age, living under almost identical circumstances in the same house, can be poles apart in personality characteristics.

 

They know that this difference affects the nature of their children's' response to any given stimulus. For example, Betty is moody, introspective, a dreamer. She may not even hear the command the first time. She is so absorbed by an inner world that when she does hear the command she may not hear it with perfect clarity. This happens over and over, so that her parents learn that when they give Betty orders they must do so with infinite patience, and with the realization that she may miss something here and there.

 

Johnny, on the other hand, is quick, practical, alert and extroverted. He senses what you want almost before you speak. He lacks Betty's sensitivity and idealism, perhaps, but he can obey your spoken wishes almost instantly and perfectly.

 

Some parents would praise Johnny as the "good" child and the shining example of obedience. Others, recognizing inherent and developed changes in personality, know that Betty and Johnny simply have to be judged differently if one is to be fair. As children of God, shaped by a million hours and events, we all have unique capacities for responding to His Word. Things that seem clear to one child may not be clear at all to another. If God does not require the impossible, their responses can never be exactly the same.

 

At about this point someone usually says, "What about the threat of Jesus that if the blind lead the blind they will both fall into the ditch?" In the hush of expectation which usually follows this remark, one realizes that it is supposed to mean that God excuses no one on the grounds of blindness, neither the leader nor the led.

 

It is clear from the contexts in all three Synoptic gospels that Jesus has in mind a moral blindness which has grown out of deliberate choice, rather than some constitutional or intellectual inability to grasp an idea. Ironically, the blind leaders of his remark are apparently those very souls who smugly believe that they are models of rectitude.

 

Falling into the ditch, of course, is tacitly equated with being damned a piece of explication not many careful readers are likely to accept. What the verse certainly must say is that blind folk should not be unduly eager to become guides nor too quick to become followers. Blindness, whether accidental or self‑imposed, runs some risks in this world. What the verse surely cannot mean is that innocent ignorance (there is such a thing) gets exactly the same punishment as deliberate ignorance — except in our world where we cannot make perfect judgments.

 

However much men may suffer here because of their innocent blindness, however much society may punish them, they will get off scot-free with their Maker if they really are incapable of "seeing" His will for them. "If you were blind, " Jesus said to the Pharisees, "you would be guilty of no sin." Their ego was such that they would doubtless have preferred being punished for deliberate sin than being forgiven on the grounds that they were ignorant!

 

A good friend once put it this way: "It is the tendency of all who would squeeze and refine God's grace and mercy through their own legalistic strainers, to make our hope dependent upon knowledge and understanding, almost to the exclusion of love, motive or intent."

 

And lest any should misunderstand, he wisely adds: "To willfully disregard any command of God which is known to be His command is to defy the authority of God, but there is a difference between willful defiance and lack of compliance through imperfect knowledge."

 

So what is left for us but to be charitable toward those who have not yet attained to our measure of knowing? We see that a man cannot walk in any more light than he has, and that when he does this honestly and sincerely, he stands in exactly the same position with God that we do.

 

Being a little farther up the road makes no difference. God measures hearts, not miles, and when He gathers in His people they will not all be found standing complacently in a terminal. — Wichita State U., Wichita, Ka.