Breaking Ungrace

There's many rational things which would keep us from accepting grace. I value honesty- saying things straight, but it seems to me that grace looks past the bare honest facts of who we have been to the core of who we can be, or who we are meant to be. It is counter intuitive. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Phillip Yancey writes in “What's so Amazing about Grace?” about this contradiction Jesus offered: “At the center of Jesus' parables of grace stands a God who takes the initiative towards us: a lovesick father who runs to meet the prodigal, and landlord who cancels a debt too large for any servant to reimburse, an employer who pays eleventh-hour workers the same as the first-hour crew, a banquet-giver who goes out to the highways and byways in search of undeserving guests.” When we wanted forgiveness, but also justice, God chose what I consider the most profound answer in history. Yancey calls the “hurt-people hurt people” law of tit for tat that marks this world, the cycle of ungrace, and after drawing on examples of pain and retribution, wrote that, “God shattered the inexorable law of sin and retribution by invading earth, absorbing the worst we had to offer, crucifixion, and then fashioning from that cruel deed the remedy for the human condition. Calvary broke up the logjam between justice and forgiveness. By accepting onto his innocent self all the severe demands of justice, Jesus broke forever the chain of ungrace.” ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Breaking ungrace: While like a pithy loanshark I run around with threats and demons built on the bitterness of a few unforgiven cents- a life built on wounds. Yancey concludes, “Only by living in the stream of God's grace will I find the strength to respond with grace toward others. A cease-fire between human beings depends upon a cease-fire with God.” ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ So, why can i expect more? Because God says I have intrinsic value, proved through his grace, manifested in Jesus and through others. Only with this perception can I return to Russel's quote; that “only a life given away for love's sake is a life worth living.” Another quote I heard recently was that “I love you because I love you is the only circular argument that makes sense.” I like it. It goes a little ways to get away from trying to justify myself. Grace says that its not because of what I've done, but because of God's un-sequestered acceptance of me. It comes back to a rather simple concept: that believing this, if only bit by bit, will inevitably change my life. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Back to Lewis: he says that, "If you asked twenty good men today what they thought the highest of the virtues, nineteen of them would reply, Unselfishness. but if you had asked almost any of the great Christians of old, he would have replied, Love." He goes on to say that the notion of desiring "our own good and earnestly to hope for the enjoyment of it is a bad thing... has crept in from Kant and the Stoics and is no part of the Christian faith. Indeed, if we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that our Lord finds our desires not too strong but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased." ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- My philosopher-theologian friend says that saying we are “creatures of desire” is an understatment. “We are all desires” he holds. He asked why we desire. I answered, saying its all biology, that we respond to incentives that are hardwired into our biology as survival mechanisms. He asked that if I believed this, and were, as such, a nilist then why didn't I kill myself and stop being controlled by forces outside myself. I said, because its all i got. He said, what about this: God is glorified when we find enjoyment in Him. How do we praise him? By walking around saying “praise praise praise”? Or by finding enjoyment in the things that He has designed us for? -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Sidenote: lets throw in some interesting Bible, Psalm 37: Take delight in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart. (NIV) -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I went for a walk once, saw a tree, and thought, “that tree has it easy, it just has to stand there and be a tree and by doing so it glorifies God.” (I can, you see, get fairly thoughtful when I walk) Even as I was thinking this, it might be said, i was glorifying God in my enjoyment of the tree-in community with creation as it were. I was meant to enjoy it. Perhaps this is what Milton meant when he wrote that great line: that those "also serve who only stand and wait”. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Because, on a base level, maybe a simple response is all that's required of me. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- like, I'm sure, many other seekers who have wanted, at some time or other, to write Jesus off as radical at least or prophet at most, I have come to see why Christianity is so fundamentally different than just another Judaistic sect. If Jesus was God then God broke the cycle of ungrace. He coaxes us back to the garden. He invites us to give up our hating and bitterness against one another and gives us the ability to heal. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I am not suggesting that this concept will seize me impassionedly every moment. I know myself well enough that tomorrow I might well return to doubt. I know that my doubt may drive me back to compromises. But I keep seeing that this Love slips in through all the cracks of possibility, inviting me back.