If grace is true, then why is it so hard to believe in? I mean really believe in. Not just write on a creed.
I haven’t blogged in a while. Maybe it’s because I, like so many others, am so ridiculously busy. Or perhaps it’s because I can’t figure out what to say. Or maybe it’s because I’m not sure what I believe anymore.
When I visited my grandmother recently (a dear, sweet woman, by the way), I had trouble focusing on normal conversation. Not because of her or even myself, but because of the preacher that was playing in the background on her television. Thank God, it wasn’t a televangelist asking for money or I might have…But no, he was just the typical, run-of-the-mill evangelical pastor. Old guy. Comb-over hair. 3 point sermon. You know the drill. Obey God and you will be blessed. Rely on the Holy Spirit. All the right Christian terminology. Not too far to the right nor to the left.
Honestly, I know enough of that talk—I probably could have written that sermon.
But it wasn’t the pastor or the familiarity that was so distracting. It was the message underneath his words. And, oh God, how it disturbed me.
It sounds innocent enough—obedience, faith, divine blessings—God this and God that. But what was that pastor really saying? What are so many churches and Christians really communicating once you tear down the theological jargon to the bare foundation of their message?
From my vantage point, he seemed to be saying basically this: be good and do the right things for God and God will be good to you and do the right things for you. (If you don’t believe me, sit through some sermons, take some notes and think about what the speakers are essentially saying.)
And that message is something I simply cannot and will not give credence to.
There’s so many things wrong with that kind of thinking. What about all the people who seek and serve God, but their child still dies, they still lose their job, they still live out their days in disappointed dreams and failed endeavors? They did good, but God did not do good for them. That may not fit with your theology, but it’s reality.
Or what about the people who aren’t good? People who are broken and messed-up and sinful. Like me. Maybe like you. People who have tried to do good and failed. Or people who have done so much bad that they wonder if they even could do any good or if it would even matter if they did. They’ve done wrong and God will not do any good for them.
What kind of God is this anyway? Is such a fair God even worth loving? Worth living for? Or dying for?
The only people this God loves and blesses are the good little boys and girls of the world. That’s not a very compelling message for the nonbelieving world, people who haven’t been good for a very long time and have a hard time ever imagining themselves as such.
In essence, I think I’ve thoroughly discovered what it is I don’t believe.
So what do you do when you don’t actually believe in the things you thought you believed in?
Believe in something better. And I do. Or at least I sometimes do. Or…at least I want to.
What about those moments when something wonderful happens to you, completely out of nowhere, and you know with every sinful bone in your body that you sure as hell don’t deserve it? But it still comes anyway. Like when the sun rises on the just and the unjust—on your just and unjust days, making you believe that you just might become a just man one day. You’ve done wrong, but God does you good anyway. It’s like, “Blessed are the spiritually poor for theirs is the kingdom of heaven” finally come true.
I have a confession to make. Neither legalistic religion nor nihilistic atheism makes any sense to me. Both extremes are so lifeless and dead. (One person dies running from God; the other, by trying to reach for Him.)And I try to write about grace every chance I get, like I really believe in it.
But honestly, true grace is hard to believe in.
A sacrificial death that destroys all my sins is simply so amazing. And yet, it happened so long ago and it seems so distant to me sometimes. A beautiful, restored universe of joy and life and rest and adventure—eternal life as a free gift—no strings attached—is just truly amazing. But this invisible world I cannot see and it seems so far into the future—does it even exist? Can a small and broken man such as me really get in for free? Where’s the catch? Or a God who is good and kind and gentle—deep and strong and wise—a father who loves with passion and abandon, commitment and unswerving devotion? It’s phenomenal. But have you seen the world we live in? The cruel, unforgiving, dog-eat-dog world, where people kill each other, disaster strikes, and no good thing can ever really last? And you think that the Ultimate Reality behind the universe is good and beautiful and gracious?
The things we Christians believe are incredible. But the things we believe are almost incredulous.
I am so thankful to God that he does not require a perfect faith and that one even as pathetic as a mustard seed can still move mountains and still blossom into something quite substantial within the kingdom of redemption. Now, that’s…that’s grace.
Grace finds us even when we’re not looking for him. He exists even when we do not fully believe in him. And that’s what makes him so amazing, not that he is so lofty and proud that we are always in constant awe of his greatness, but that he is so lowly and obliging that he still remembers us when we have forgotten him, still lives in us when we thought we had all but died, and jumps right off along with us, over the edge, when we have fallen from him—fallen from grace, that is.
Now, that’s something I could believe in. Grace.
gracecoat 