Amazing Grace

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.

Shaking an angry fist

I came across this article today on CNN's Belief Blog (which is almost always a fantastic read, if you are into American-political/religious dialogue).  Today's post is entitled: "How faith can help and hinder forgiveness" and can be accessed here.

One particular sentence really struck me: “Ultimately, there’s a humbleness that comes when we realize that there’s something or someone out there bigger than myself that ultimately loves me, accepts me, cares for me, can give me grace, and in places where it’s hard for me to do that for myself,” says Richard Shaw, a marriage and family therapist in Oregon who runs Shame No More Counseling and Ministries.

The context of this statement is the "realization" of forgiveness, and in particular forgiving oneself for wronging someone else.  Also, though not as explicitly stated in this article, the context is about forgiving God.  Having grown up in a church where guilt was a cornerstone of life, these two things make sense together.  As a new Presbyterian though, I question how forgiving myself for wronging someone else and forgiving God for not intervening become such related processes.  Then I remember chapter 1 from book 1 of Calvin's Institutes and how knowledge of self and knowledge of God are interrelated.  "In the first place, no one can look upon himself without immediately turning his thoughts to the contemplation of God, in whom he 'lives and moves'...indeed our very being is nothing but subsistence in the one God" (p. 35).  "Indeed, our very poverty better discloses the infinitude of benefits reposing in God" (p. 36). 

I wonder how faith in a God larger than ourselves, this God of love and also grace (the gift we cannot deserve but receive nonetheless), helps us learn to forgive ourselves.  And actually, we come to know this God of infinite grace through our own "poverty," which in this context might reflect our self-hostage when we wrong others.  I make no assumption that this isn't a complicated and delicate issue, with a huge diversity of emotions behind it, but somehow there is self-forgiveness (or our acknowledgement of God's forgiveness of us) all tied up with our forgiveness of God.

But what if holding oneself hostage with guilt does not automatically lead one to accepting or "realizing" one's forgiveness though?  What if, as in the case of Laura Bush and others in this article, it simply leads to shaking a fist at God, either through action or inaction?  This certainly is a common and perhaps helpful way of coping.  Guilt can become unthinkable when the knowledge of self and the knowledge of God become unhinged, and we simply know ourselves as fully responsible for a terrible accident and know God as simply uninterested or wrathful and judging. 

Often though, we are better at forgiving others than forgiving ourselves.  While this is not a universal statement, it seems like a logical first step for many people.  When I remember the works of God in the history of God's relationship with the children of God, I remember a greater story of forgiveness.  Perhaps some small part of me remembers this history and I open the door to forgiving God.  And if God really is a God of love, maybe God really forgives me too.  Perhaps being in *relationship* with God starts and ends with the dialectical tension of knowledge of self and of God ("knowledge" is not to be confused with "brainy-ness" or "intellectualism," as knowledge includes all aspects of life, including the visceral and sensory).  Still, as a musician, I see the way people with no religious affiliation come to hear the B-minor Mass by J.S. Bach, and are overcome with the Divine through the performance of that music, the Divine who is bigger than all of us and what we carry with us.  I wonder if God surrounds us with God's loving presence incarnationally through the Spirit, in the special-ness of worship that is set aside to name and glorfy God, and in the ordinary-ness of the everyday (not to say that Bach isn't special!).

Another telling statement in this article: “When there’s a spiritual dimension to it, there’s a sense that there’s stuff beyond my control and someone in the universe who cares deeply about me, even in the midst of my own shame and my own brokenness," he says. "… That can be, in the forgiveness process, a healing component for some folks.”

What was that Veggie Tales song, about God being bigger than the boogy-man?  Is God really bigger than our deepest pain and guilt?

In Reformed worship, not only do we confess corporately and individually in worship every week, but we have this fantastic time immediately after confession called the "assurance of pardon."  A common liturgy reads this way:

Friends, hear the Good News:
In Christ we are a new creation.
The old life is gone, and a new life has begun.
Know that you are forgiven, and be at peace.
Amen.

The next step of the journey

While I have had every intention of writing a post on this blog lately (the "freedom of God" has been on my mind lately), I have not felt inspired to write.  Sometimes, it seems, I am led more to listen and take in these new experiences than to spill out thoughts and constructions.  I have not had a chance to process this whole transition yet.

Here are a few highlights of the past few weeks though:

-Packing is lovely until you realize that you don't actually see everything that needs to be packed until the very end.  It's easy to skip your eyes over items that have become permanent fixtures.  I was reminded of this when I read this post by Hooked on Houses today.

-Our movers in Atlanta, once they realized that I just finished seminary, took us both by the hands at the end of the day and prayed for us and blessed us on our journey.  It was such a sweet, impromptu act that felt so genuine.  It was a gesture of love from an unlikely place.  I mean, it's nice when a pastor or deacon pulls you aside to pray for you, but it's something special when your movers want to go out of their way to bless you.

-10 hours of driving in one day is overwhelming. 

-We had a great time visiting my college roommate and her mother (who happened to be in town)!  I wish we could have stayed longer, though I'm sure Sammy (the cat) was glad to see Sophie get out of his space.

-Illinois takes too long to drive across.

-Nothing could have topped our little motel in Allison.  It was a perfect place to land for a week.  I knew every moment of the day that we arrived in rural Iowa, because corn fields stretched as far as the eye could see.  Driving into Waverly took us by an ethanol plant and wind turbines. 
-On a related note, life is different here.  These people live close to the land, and they have no incentive to pollute it (outside of pesticide use and the flowing of sediment into the rivers from overfarming, which are growing issues).  Much of the produce sold in stores is organic.  They intentionally keep antibiotics out of the milk and meat.  They started using wind power in the early 90s.  As I've heard a few times, they "went green before it was hip to go green."  Community gardens have been springing up all over the city, in places left abandoned after the last catastrophic flood (2008).

-People are generally quite friendly, rather simple, but very genuine.  They consider themselves people of the earth, even when they aren't farmers (but their parents were farmers).  Common buzz words here: community, neighbors, justice.  We've been invited to numerous welcome dinners since we arrived.  Apparently that's how society flourishes in a small town.  Instead of big-city attractions, you have each other.  Yet most people we've met are from Iowa, or other small towns around the Midwest.  Generally, more people leave here to go to big cities than the other way around. 

-Kati is awesome for stopping by and helping me start my garden.  This place didn't feel like it could be home until she got here and helped me cultivate this new home.  God bless my friends from seminary.  I miss them already.

-My asthma has improved dramatically since we arrived here.  I rode my bicycle the other day, and for the first time in many years, I did not have an asthma attack.

-Our list of blessings has far outgrown our list of concerns.  I feel so humbled by God's providence. 

Speaking of my seminary friends, how are all of you on your new and old journeys?