Psalm 15: 1-5 (links validated 1/11/23)

It can be exhausting to live a duplicitous life or to keep track of your own lies. A clear example of this came at the courtroom climax of the film A Few Good Men. The hard-bitten Colonel Jessup (Jack Nicholson) is in charge of a Marine platoon in Guantanamo Bay. One day he secretly ordered that a troublesome Marine private named Santiago be given a “Code Red,” which was when fellow soldiers would rough up a given individual to motivate him to straighten up and fly right in the future. But the Code Red went south and the private died. To cover up the incident, Col. Jessup tells the lie that he had actually arranged to have the private transferred so as to prevent him from being harmed by fellow soldiers who did not like him—Santiago was slated to move out the very morning after he ended up dying. But Col. Jessup also told the lie that he had given all of his troops strict orders not to touch the private. But when the prosecuting attorney (Tom Cruise) puts 2 & 2 together, he saw a disconnect he could exploit. Col. Jessup prided himself on the fact that his orders were always followed. So if Jessup had ordered the private not to be harmed, why did he also have to order him transferred so as to keep him from being harmed? Both things could not be true, and in this explosive and now-famous scene, the Colonel is trapped in his own words and ends up confessing to the truth: he had ordered the soon-to-become-fatal Code Red (and so had perjured himself earlier and had suborned perjury from his other officers). That’s the thing about lying—you have to work extra hard to keep track of it all. Those who always tell the truth, on the other hand, live with no such unsettling thoughts. They will never be shaken. (But as noted above, even for believers, even that can come only with Jesus’ help!)

Frederick Buechner once helped to explain the theological meaning of “justification” by referring us back to the literal meaning of that word when it comes to printed documents. On our computers today we can “right justify” or “left justify” or “full justify” any document. Mostly we opt for left justification which means that unless you purposely indent a line to start a new paragraph, the first word of every line in the document will begin at the same place—in the same column—such that they all line up. “Justification” for those lines mean that they stand in a right relationship with the straight edge of the paper itself...

Years ago on the TV sitcom “Happy Days” the character of Fonzie tries to get a loan to start up his own business and so a banker visits him in the Cunningham living room. At one point the banker asks him what his collateral is to support getting a loan and when Fonzie says he doesn’t know what that means, the banker gives him a long list of property, bank accounts, and so on that could serve as collateral. “If I had all of that to begin with,” Fonzie retorts, “I wouldn’t need a loan!” Maybe this is a bit of a stretch but something in that reminds me of Psalm 15. We get a long list of moral capital that we are supposed to embody. But suppose you were a kind of seeker wondering how you could be saved and someone gave you the list from Psalm 15. Surely an honest response would be, “If I could become all of that to begin with, I would not need to be saved!” And that’s true. That is why our only hope of being a Psalm 15 person is to become one with Christ and let his benefits accrue to us even as the grace of his sanctifying Holy Spirit transforms us ever more into the image of Jesus himself.

It can be exhausting to live a duplicitous life or to keep track of your own lies. A clear example of this came at the courtroom climax of the film A Few Good Men. The hard-bitten Colonel Jessup (Jack Nicholson) is in charge of a Marine platoon in Guantanamo Bay. One day he secretly ordered a that a troublesome Marine private named Santiago be given a “Code Red,” which was when fellow soldiers would rough up a given individual to motivate him to straighten up and fly right in the future. But the Code Red went south and the private died. To cover up the incident, Col. Jessup tells the lie that he had actually arranged to have the private transferred so as to prevent him from being harmed by fellow soldiers who did not like him—Santiago was slated to move out the very morning after he ended up dying. But Col. Jessup also told the lie that he had given all of his troops strict orders not to touch the private. But when the prosecuting attorney (Tom Cruise) puts 2 & 2 together, he saw a disconnect he could exploit...

Frederick Buechner once helped to explain the theological meaning of “justification” by referring us back to the literal meaning of that word when it comes to printed documents. On our computers today we can “right justify” or “left justify” or “full justify” any document. Mostly we opt for left justification which means that unless you purposely indent a line to start a new paragraph, the first word of every line in the document will begin at the same place—in the same column—such that they all line up. “Justification” for those lines mean that they stand in a right relationship with the straight edge of the paper itself. The paper is a straight vertical line along its edges. For words and lines to be “justified” with that, they line up, they are as straight as the paper’s edge itself. They are in a right relationship with the page. (And if you do “Full Justification,” then both the left and the right columns do this with the left and the right straight edges of the paper on which the document is printed.)...