Last week’s Planet Money Podcast unknowingly stumbled upon a Law-Gospel goldmine! Exploring the economic dynamics of “free” (see also here!), the podcast specifically looks at what happens when something that was free is now no longer free. What happens when you charge money for something that was once free of charge?
Ask any veteran of WWII about the Red Cross and surprisingly to this day many distrust and despise what most people consider to be a beacon of benevolence (Katrina debacle notwithstanding). Apparently it all goes way back to the Red Cross’s decision during WWII to begin to charge soldiers for the coffee and doughnuts it served to solders overseas. The Red Cross had previously given coffee and doughnuts away for free, but when the presence of free doughnuts created dissension and envy between Allied forces, President Roosevelt insisted that the Red Cross must charge a small fee for its doughnuts and coffee. The backlash was fierce. False rumors began to spread that other goods the Red Cross provided for free would now be charged as well: cigarettes, knit sweaters, and even blood were all thought to now cost money. Surprisingly, seventy years later, the Red Cross is still trying to recover from its doughnut blunder. No matter how many free doughnuts it gives out, the charity is still viewed with suspicion.
The mistake of the Red Cross that lead to such irreparable harm was that by charging a small fee for what were free doughnuts the nature of the relationship between soldiers and the Red Cross categorically changed. What was once a place were soldiers could go for a small piece of relief became just another corner store looking to make a buck. A relationship of free charity now became a commercial relationship founded upon supply and demand.
The analogy to the church and its preaching is pretty obvious. Most churches preach differently to non-Christians than it does to Christians. Non-Christians need to hear the Gospel of free grace, Christ’s unmerited and unconditional love for unworthy sinners. The Gospel is not about what we have to do, but what God has already done. In a world overwhelmed by voices of conditionality, the unconditional message of the Gospel powerfully sounds out loud and clear. However, the message of the church is altogether different once one becomes a Christian. Christians need to hear about things like responsibility, obedience and 10-steps to live the Christian life. Becoming a Christian is easy, being a Christian requires discipline and effort. One may be justified by faith alone, but a true Christian goes to the 7am Saturday morning men’s Bible study. While most church wouldn’t separate the two messages so sharply, I would argue that it is still (rightly) heard as an abrupt bait-and-switch.
This type of duplicitous double-speak can irreparably change the nature of the relationship between the church and its converts. What was free now seems to have a cost. What was once the gospel of grace becomes just like every other self-help book at Barnes and Noble.
Theologically, this is why the Law must only ever precede the Gospel and never the other way around. The reintroduction of the law categorically changes the relationship of Christians to God; to move from Gospel to Law is to implicitly introduce the exact kind of conditional relationship which the gospel overturns. Like some twisted game show, the return to the Law after the Gospel undermines the power of Gospel as it calls into question the reliability and truthfulness of the Gospel itself and plays into the inherent incredulity toward anything which seem too good to be true.
If Christianity is to survive at all, we must cling to the word of the Gospel to the unworthy as our only source of life, never again submitting to the yoke of slavery (Gal. 5:1).
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Po0NF2HssIk&w=600]
COMMENTS
10 responses to “The Perils of Bait-and-Switch: or Why do WWII Veterans Still Hate the Red Cross?”
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Can’t agree with you here. The 12 Steps are on the wall of every A.A. room you’ll ever step foot in. It’s all there, out in the open plain as day, right from the start. “Here are the Steps we took, which are suggested as a program of recovery….” the sign says. There’s no “bait-and-switch”; if the church is pulling one, the problem is with the “bait,” I’d say. People are coming to the church of their own volition, in any case – they’re looking for something, it seems plain to me.
The Steps are not slavery; they are freedom. I was certainly happy to do whatever it took to emerge from death and insanity – and into peace and joy; I’m sure I’m not alone.
bls – perhaps I should have been more specific… By saying 10-steps, I don’t mean to reference the 12 step program – far from it! I’m thinking more of this book: http://www.amazon.com/Become-Better-You-Improving-Every/dp/0743296885/
The 12 steps begins with the confession of powerlessness and the necessity of divine intervention. That, to me at least, is the exact sort of unconditionality which is found in the christian gospel.
The 12 steps begins with the confession of powerlessness and the necessity of divine intervention. That, to me at least, is the exact sort of unconditionality which is found in the christian gospel.
That’s true – that’s where they begin…. 😉
Perhaps one important clue about all this is contained in the word “suggested.” The reason for using this word is laid out in some of the literature (where, exactly, I can’t remember at the moment); the idea is – and we are totally in agreement on this! – that if instead they were “required,” they would become “Law” – which will only make people rebel. For alcoholics this would be deadly – so they are “suggested,” instead. And, of course, they are in the second person plural: “here are the Steps we took which are suggested as a program of recovery.”
A.A. says: “If you want what we have, and are willing to go to any lengths to get it, then you are ready to take certain Steps…”
Those are the two keys, I think. First, the Steps are “suggested”; second, they are “reports of actions taken,” rather than actions prescribed or commanded. They are entirely voluntary – and the decision to proceed is left up to the individual. (Of course, the other options are jail, insanity, and/or death.)
In any case, the whole process is evidence of something having to do with the nature of reality, I’d say….
Perhaps one issue is that our definition of the Law is inadequate. What if we substituted this definition of the Law that I think many people work with: “The Law is what God requires of me for righteousness, and which I can never fulfill because of my inherent sinfulness. The Law only condemns.” with this definition of the Law: “The Law is the proper way for me to be as a creation of God. It is how I will be guided once I am perfected after the Day of Judgment. Yes, the Law condemns and the Gospel is the only remedy for that condemnation. But the Law does not only condemn.”
In other words, the Law always has a role to play. For the Christian that role is one of sanctification (what Luther referred to as the Third Use of the Law). The role is showing me the right way to live now that I am redeemed in Christ. Not simply for the duration of my life on earth but for all eternity. The Law is not simply something necessary after the Fall, but was wrapped into creation from the beginning. Its function as limiting evil behavior and condemning evil as evil (First & Second uses of the Law) only came into play once we had fallen into sin, and those uses remain for those who are outside the faith. When that sin is removed from us in the new heaven and earth, then the Third use of the law remains – showing me how I was designed to live and be as the truly good creation of my creator.
This requires us to broaden not just our definition of the law but our definition of the scope of salvation history as well. I suspect that the popular idea of heaven as our ultimate destination away from an icky and inferior earth is inadequate and misguided. Scripture speaks quite firmly of a new creation, of the story of salvation involving all of creation and not just particular human beings. When we begin to think of our eternal destiny in that sense, perhaps the Law makes more sense and is no longer the bait and switch it ends up being through shoddy preaching or cursory understanding.
Paul, thanks for the engaging comment! Where are your quotations coming from? As John points out, this is a debate that goes all the way back to Luther/Calvin, if not before!
The writing of the Law into creation is not without precedent (Philo -among others- makes a very similar exegetical move), but I have trouble finding in the Bible – and this is certainly not the option chosen by Paul. If Paul speaks of the Law in the creation narrative at all, this only seems to happen in Romans 7 and the linking of “desire” with “death” or even more obliquely in his speaking of the “stoicheia” in Galatians 4:3. These are tedious links, at best, and even these highlight the negative function of the law.
So the trouble with the suggestion that the Law is “showing me the right way to live now” is that the Law itself is almost never used by St. Paul in this way. When Paul speaks explicitly of the Law, it is always in a negative-pedagogical way. He may speak of love as the fulfillment of the Law (Gal. 5:14), but this should be understood by his following statement: “But if you are led by the Spirit you are not under the law” (Gal 5:18). The ethical works of love, led by the spirit, are themselves the fulfillment of the law, but they happen apart from the law’s jurisdiction. The reason for this end of the law is twofold. First, it could not fulfill its own promise of life and secondly, Christ came as fulfillment of the promise to provide a righteousness on the basis of faith (compactly stated in Galatians 3:18-19).
I’m all for a broadening of the scope of salvation history beyond a type of American personalism. But Paul’s story of salvation seems to give the law a limited validity within a specific epoch of history. His narrative goes something like: Adam/death – Abraham/promise – Moses/Law – Israel/even more death – Jesus/redemption – Spirit/life – Second Coming/Final Renewal of the World.
Paul, Luther never used the term third use of the law. Melacthon did, but they way that you explain is the way the Calvin understands it to function. There is a primary distinction b/w the Lutheran reams reformed camps understanding if the law. It is a difference which hugely shapes one’s understanding of the church and how the church functions. Both approaches have a strong tradition and history.
My iphone typing needs forgiveness.
And, not “reams”
JZ there is an app available that gives the 10 (maybe 12) steps to improved iPhone typing…but when it comes to typing on my phone, I’m afraid that I’m all thumbs. *rimshot followed by silence.
I liked this post for two reasons. One it resonated because in the UK the new series of Peep Show, a v fave comedy of mine, starts tonight on channel 4 and their on demand showing of the previous 7 series is suspiciously unavailable all of a sudden…hmmm
And secondly because whilst I don’t understand why it is so, that churches think it’s their job to make people perfect once they believe, but my experience is that they still do. Even my lovely church which I’m loyal to, isn’t above talking about how to become the person God made you to be…third use of the law?! Don’t know, but after years of feeling judged for my christian life not measuring up, it makes one qary of anything that implies i have a side of the bargain to keep! As if I could anyway, but i spent years trying to!
I find MBird continually nourishing in its insistence that we are saved by grace and there is nothing we can add to that. I miss Tullian, and his way of putting things – because he is strong, we are free to be weak. We need to hear this more every single day. Literally.
By the way, if I wanted a kind of entry level text to Luther, what’s a good one?!
would like to know if this is the only reason soldiers and sailors despised the red cross, as much as i can tell my dad despised them but would never say why, though he never talked about his time in the service. i do know he forced his mom to sign the papers so he could enlist early and he thought MacArther was a coward for leaving his men but this is really all i know