I have picked up Eugene Peterson’s work Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places again. I have picked at it for the past several years and find myself drawn to his words again.

In the chapter “Christ Plays in History” Peterson deals with the threat of “moralism” in our lives. His contention is we have a tough time dealing with Christ in history, especially when it comes to his suffering and death. So, to avoid having to deal with the implications of Christ’s work in our lives, we tend to build other systems to make us feel good about who we are, and still think we are Christian.

Moralism is one of those threats. It’s our way of explaining things when the world goes wrong. We look for reasons: disobedience or ignorance of biblical commands, etc. Often we hear things like, “America has turned her back on God, so this is why such and such is happening.”

Our conclusion here is that if we only educate people into right thinking and behavior all will be right with the world again.

We WANT to educate people on right and wrong. That is not Peterson’s point.

His point is this:

“But the moment this becomes our basic orientation for dealing with what is wrong with this world, we have turned our backs on the cross of Christ, on Jesus our Savior.”

This is not to be confused with “moral,” because we are all moral creatures. Right and wrong is embedded in creation.

“Moral codes are used as stepping stones to independence from God.”

Moralism works from the outside, imposing right behavior on oneself or others. We want nice and easy categories. We want to have slots to put people in so we can more easily define the world.

But the world is a mess. It is not easily defined. And this is where Christ works and “plays.”

The world is messy. Life can be disastrous. And we long for straight up answers. We don’t often get them, try as we might. But if we will surrender our desire for easy answers, we may just find the presence of Christ.