Vol. 2, Issue 3

Summer 2008

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by Paul Lytle

I wonder sometimes at what I have earned. Sometimes I throw the word around in my mind, sometimes with great indignation, and sometimes with great shame. I recently changed jobs, for instance, and I decided that I had earned a better paying job and, in fact, deserved one. When I got to the new job and sat at my desk, I smiled, because I felt as though it was something I had earned, and I was a little proud of it.

Honestly, I don't know if I deserved it or not. I got one, but now here comes another period of earning, of proving myself, because I have to earn my place at this company and then earn a better one.

Sometimes I feel as though I've earned things, but strangely, they are always the things that don't terribly matter much. Perhaps I earned this job, but let's face it, for most of us, a job is something we do because we have to. I'm enjoying it so far, don't get me wrong, but I'd much rather stay at home and watch episodes of Firefly.

When I get my paycheck, it is something that I have earned, and it is gone relatively quickly. There are too many bills, too many expenses. Even if I manage to hang on to it beyond a month, a year, or a decade, I'll leave it behind when I die, if it does not disappear in retirement.

These things matter, but not all that much.

The grades I got in school were earned. I don't even remember what they were specifically. I know I did well in most of my classes, but if you ask me which was an A and which a B, I probably couldn't tell you. I earned grades so I could advance to the next grade, where I worked more to go to college, where I worked to get the previously mentioned job to get me some money that will not last.

There is so much striving, and so much earning, but the more I do it, the more I begin to think in the lines of the Preacher, who said, "I have seen everything that is done under the sun, and behold, all is vanity and a striving after wind" (Ecclesiastes 1:14). Striving after wind. Isn't that what is going on? I get the grade to get the college to get the degree to get the job to get the money that disappears. Whoosh. Gone. Grasping at wind, and all I have earned equals nothing.

I moved very recently, and as I was mowing the grass at the old house for the last time, I wondered at how my yard had transformed over the last several years. When I got the house, the grass was spotty and not very pretty. I took a great amount of care shaping the yard and guiding its growth. Now it is very green and one of the best looking yards in the neighborhood. But how quickly would that fade. How quickly could the next owner not water it during a drought or mow it too close to the ground and kill it. Through my years of work, I earned a good lawn, and it would dry and fade within weeks if the new owners do not keep up that effort. The part that I earned is already gone, mowed away the first time the new owner cranked up the lawnmower.

Striving after wind. But it's not always so . . .

I got to see my fiancée this last weekend. I have to say, we live very far apart, and every chance I get to see her is something extremely special. It's something I look forward to for days and weeks, and something I dwell on for many days and weeks once it is over. Sometimes, especially when the day is drawing near, I get giddy. I can't sit still, you know? Here is this wonderful, kind, beautiful, intelligent woman who wants to see me, and wants to be near me, and I just start fidgeting and giggling and smiling all the time. It's really quite a spectacle, really.

So I got to see her, and the weekend was wonderful, and I began to think, "Now, here is something worthwhile. Here is something that is special and lasting and wonderful. Here is something I am part of that does not feel like striving after wind."

Here is something that does not slip out of my hands as soon as I've taken hold of it.

And I got rather excited, you know? After all this musing about the futility of all these things I have earned, I finally found something meaningful.

But you know what? I didn't earn it.

No, the whole reason that this relationship is so special to me is because it is something greater than I am. It did not come about because of my wit and wisdom, or my ability to impress a woman. It came about despite all of that.

And do you know what else? She feels the same way.

We have entered into something that is greater than the sum of its parts, and when we look upon it, we are just struck with awe that something so special has formed between us. We feel so small because of it. We feel unworthy, and we feel like bettering ourselves to live up to the challenge of it.

Have you felt this way about a person? I know a lot of people who do not. Have you known a man who acts like his marriage or relationship is something he has earned? He will probably begin treating his spouse or girlfriend as though she had been bought with a price.

And it seems to me that those relationships are only worth what one member can put into it. It becomes something like the wind, and we are striving after it.

My ultimate conclusion to all of this is that we are not worth terribly much in and of ourselves. Those things we can earn are fleeting and fading. Those things we can earn are dying. If left to ourselves, we will strive for the wind all our lives and get nowhere.

So when I am given all these philosophies about God and heaven, some of them seem a little strange to me. People have told me that if you are a good person, you will get to heaven. Others have told me that if I follow a set of rules, then I will reach heaven. Still others have told me that we all make our own heavens.

And all the time I wonder at those things I can earn. Those things I can earn are as the wind, and these people are all telling me, basically, that I can earn heaven. Is heaven so small and so fleeting that I can earn it? Is it like my wage that slips into my bank account, only to fall right back out? It is like a grade that I forget after a few years?

Such a heaven has no appeal to me. I am reminded of the Groucho Marx quote, "I don't care to belong to any club that would have me as a member." Let me paraphrase it. Any heaven I can earn is not worth being called heaven. If it is heaven, it should be larger than me. It should be greater than me.

My relationship with my fiancée is not something I earned, but it is rather a mercy. A mercy is something good I get despite myself and my actions. That love is greater than my ability to earn, and therefore it is a mercy. That's what heaven should be — a mercy.

When I study religions, most of the time I get the same thing that I hear from people around me. Some religions say you can earn your way into God's favor. You must follow this law or make a pilgrimage to this city or be dunked in water and abstain from beer or meditate really hard. Some religions tell me to just generally be a good person, and I'll make it fine. Others tell me that heaven will be of my own making. I'll just create it when I get there.

And in every case, heaven will be something I have earned, and it will fade and die like everything else I have earned. "I have seen everything that is done under the sun, and behold, all is vanity and a striving after wind."

But that is precisely one of the many things that sets Christianity apart. What Jesus tells us is exactly what I knew in the beginning — that if we get what we have earned, it will be dying. Instead, He tells us, He wants to give us what He earned.

He wants to give us mercy.

It is my experience that mercy, or grace, is something worth having, while those things I can earn may be helpful, or may be useful, but ultimately will be like the grass that withers.

In this promise, therefore, it becomes the only religion that makes any sense. The others become an outgrowth of ourselves, but Jesus brings something greater down for us.

Only Jesus promises us something greater than ourselves. Only God can provide a mercy for something so great. I see Him in my relationship with my fiancée. I know He is there, building it higher than I ever could. That tells me something of His nature, and it tells me that my relationship with Him can also be based on what He earned rather than what I could earn.

Gospel means "good news," and Christ is the only one who can offer this good news. Everyone else is telling us that we need to earn heaven or create heaven out of ourselves. That's not good news at all, because I know what is in myself. I know basically what I am worth. I know what I have earned. But like we can find something greater than ourselves in love, we can surely find something greater in God.

It's not going to work if I keep trying to make it myself. If I rely on me and just expect God to clean up where I fail, then I'm going to end up with exactly what I have earned. No, I have to reject my own ways and rely on Him. In approaching Him, rejecting my pride, strivings, and failings, and come in faith in His sacrifice, then we are allowed to tap into his righteousness, and he bears our sin away.

The Bible calls this repentance. In the world, the word has a negative ring to it. I assure you, it is a wonderful word. It's like shedding off all those things that didn't work, and yet we keep trying over and over again, and taking up something new. That something new is Christ. On the Cross, those old failed ways were put to death. And in doing so, Jesus gave to us His perfection.

Sometimes, when I'm thinking about my fiancée, I begin to wonder at all the things I've done wrong. I just think on all the ways that I don't deserve her. If I cry, though, I cry in happiness, because I know she knows all of that stuff, and loves me anyway. In the same way, I know some stuff about her too, things that make her unworthy of love, and I love her anyway. What a mercy that is. Thanks be to God that He works in the same way, and doesn't expect me to earn His love, as so many teach. Thanks be to Him that His relationship with me is based not on my actions at all, but on the actions of Jesus.

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