My thoughts have been totally preoccupied with the concept of "grace" lately. Conversations in the month of May really got it started for me again (after being preoccupied with the concept of the "Good News" for much of my last semester of seminary), and spending this time in a period of grace for me- or perhaps it's called unemployment- has really got me deeply questioning it again.
The usual question I debate about grace is the obvious and typically-American question: since we cannot earn or deserve grace, can people experience grace without a special prayer, a contrite heart, a public profession, etc? The Baptist part of me says: "you have to be humbled and willing to profess faith in Jesus before grace and salvation come." The Presbyterian part of me says: "the contrite heart and public profession come as a result of having truly experienced grace already- those things are really part of sanctification rather than justification. Finding grace is a realization, not an action, precisely because grace is something undeserved and unearned. Grace was already there and equally legitimate before you knew it was there as after you discovered it." (You can tell my Presbyterian self is far more verbose than my Baptist self!) The words: "we are saved by grace through faith," also come to mind.
Keeping those two positions a little in tension with each other, though honestly standing with the Presbyterian side, I now question a more communal aspect of grace, not that the previous paragraph is strictly an individualistic understanding. What does it mean to show grace to others, in like manner of the grace God has already shown us- and continues to show us? For the moment, we can take either understanding of grace that I mentioned above- if we are professing/baptized Christians who have experienced grace, what does it mean to show grace to our neighbors?
A trend in many churches, one that sticks out more to me in a place like the Midwest- where the Protestant work ethic is king- is the way charity is offered only to the "deserving." When I am a visitor and observer in some places of charity, I see how some people are offered charity for what seems like two reasons: 1) the server has all power and wealth and guilt, and feels the need to destroy the guilt by doing something for someone else, but 2) that receiver must do something to deserve it first. Lazy people don't get freebies and handouts. Still, the receiver can't become deserving by becoming a fellow server.
So with the obvious questions around showing grace to our neighbors in like manner that God has shown grace to us, can we call that sort of charity "grace," or is it something else? If something else, what is it?
I suppose I would be dishonest if I did not just say that I don't think this is an example of grace, particularly for the defined precondition of being undeserving while receiving grace. So if it is something else, what is it? Whatever it is, it seems to be burning a lot church people out. I feel like this is a massively common thing that holds onto many churches and holds much power, so perhaps naming it could be part of an act of liberation from it and the resulting burnout. I have already called it the Protestant work ethic, but I think it is not simply synonymous. Is it guilt? Is it the evangelism of particular society and culture upon people with a different culture, even if both are thoroughly Christian? Where is the presence of the Triune God (Creator, Redeemer, Sustainer) in all of this exactly?
I asked some of these questions while I was reading this article today, again from CNN's Belief Blog. To be blunt, are we charitable in the likeness of Ayn Rand or in the likeness of Jesus Christ? Can we be both, as some people think, or are they opposites? Is it important that Rand was an atheist, or that she used language to describe Biblical ideas in the same strain as many Americans would use to describe socialism?
My favorite Rand quote from the article: "There is nothing wrong in helping other people, if and when they are worthy of the help and you can afford to help them. I regard charity as a marginal issue. What I am fighting is the idea that charity is a moral duty and a primary virtue."
Sound familiar?
Photo credit: Scott Hill, M.Div.
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