I confess I've always found the idea of imputed righteousness hard to believe. Reading George MacDonald in college deepened my prejudices here. It never has rang true to me that God would impute a holiness, purity and righteousness to me--seeing me through "Jesus-colored glasses" as the sermoners like to say--yet leaving me constitutionally the same wretch I have always been. Imputed righteousness seems the most bizarre switcheroo.
Consequently, though Protestant and evangelical I was raised, I've always found purgation more plausible than imputed righteousness. Holiness wasn't imputed or borrowed in some strange metaphysical shell game, holiness was actual effort and work, the journey of having my life purified from the inside out.
To be sure, there are just as many theological problems and issues with purgation as there are for imputed righteousness. I'm not making a theological argument here, I'm just sharing which theology rings more true to me, which feels more right to me in my gut. If I snap at my son today, I'm happy to believe God sees Jesus' holiness in me rather than the "filthy rags" of my many failed moral efforts. Still, what I really want in this instance, as George MacDonald taught me, isn't the forgiveness for the consequences of my sins (e.g., the wrath of God) but freedom from my actual sins. I'd like to become the father that doesn't snap at his son. I don't want an imputed purity. I actually want to be, myself, pure.
Of course, one doesn't have to choose here. Grace and purgation can and do go together. They actually need each other.
A really lovely way to think about this is to view purgation as becoming more fit for divine community. That's really the idea at the heart of the Divine Comedy. The Pilgrim is climbing Mount Purgatory to prepare himself for entry into Paradise, into the life of the Trinity. And we can't just be dropped as we are today, snappish, selfish and irritable, into the middle of that divine dance. We're radically unfit for divine communion. So we have to be made more fit. That's a large part of what we're learning in this life, especially within the community of saints. We're preparing ourselves for participation in the Triune life and love of Father, Son and Holy Spirit. And as we climb the mountain of holiness, the way becomes easier and easier. As Virgil shares with the Pilgrim in Canto IV:
This Mount is not like the others: at the start
it is most difficult to climb, but then,
the more one climbs the easier it becomes;
and when the slope feels gentle to the point
that climbing up would be as effortless
as floating down a river in a boat--
well then, you have arrived at the road's end,
and there you can expect, at last, to rest.
