Faithfulness and Effectiveness - The Dialectic

We are, by nature, actors—creatures who act, who do, who make things, who make things happen. As Tolkien remarks in an essay, we are “sub-creators.” So, making things come about—whether an object or an event or a result—is natural to us in both passive and active senses. Passive: by our very nature, we act. Active: by acting, we fulfill and perfect our nature—that is, potentially we fulfill and perfect our nature, for it is possible to act such that we negate, pervert, degrade, and destroy our nature. Effectiveness then is natural—right and good—insofar as it means (a) accomplishing or achieving what was intended, and (b) accomplishing and achieving that which is right and good, and (c) accomplishing and achieving that which is right and good by right and good means.

However, effectiveness has several temptations—all oriented around pride.

(1) The ignorance or refusal of humility as we act and seek effectiveness in our action. Effectiveness becomes an expression of the desire or will to dominate. The self confuses its will with God’s will. The self ignores or rejects God’s will. The self confuses its will with everyone else’s wills. The self ignores or rejects everyone else’s wills.

(2) Effectiveness can become our attempt to usurp Jesus as the lord of history. We seek to control history. We seek to determine history (what is true, valuable, useful, etc.).

(3) We lose the suffering character (the cross-centeredness) of faithful living and acting in history.

(4) In the quest for effectiveness, all other effects of acting are ignored, utterly subordinated, disparaged, or simply unconsidered.

(5) The legitimate recognition and application of effectiveness can lead to a myopia. In that myopia, realities and activities not easily susceptible to effectiveness criteria are ignored or dismissed.

I think the dialectic between faithfulness and effectiveness can best or most rightly and fruitfully be captured—though not resolved—in this way. God creates and calls us to act, as a fundamental part of our nature, but to act chiefly to be faithful to who God is and to how God acts, and to who we are and how we should act in God’s sight, with effectiveness as a part of the description of whether or not we are faithful (particularly if we apply senses [b] and [c] above as to what effectiveness means).