Grace Found

I've been cleaning up my doc files this morning and stumbled across this forgotten draft written a couple of years ago. In light of the dust storm being kicked up from Rob Bell's Love Wins new book that challenges the theology of eternal damnation, I decided it was timely to find this forgotten writing and to polish it up and post it. There is some great dialog in this about the nature of God's grace. I hope it will provoke you to add your thoughts about it.

(2008)
Ok, one of my fave bloggers recently posted up about one of my fave topics: Grace. Here's an excerpt:

But for His grace we would not be Christians, right? However, I've discovered that many Christians are afraid of the real message of grace, especially those in MFI type churches. Why? Well they don't like the notion that we are all equal before God. Telling the prominent pastor who's spent 40 years dedicated to serving the church that he is no more justified in God's sight then the drug addicted, gay stripper who genuinely turned to Christ, doesn't usually sit too well. That message scares many Christians who feel they've paid their dues and deserve a "special" place before His throne. I even heard someone once say that in heaven the Mother Theresa's of the world will get to sit at the feet of Jesus, while the newly converted convicts will have to stand in the back. 

 Here's a bit of the comment I posted over there:

I love this post. Grace, grace and more grace. It is, I believe, the single most underrated attribute of God. What you’ve said here is so true, that we know the bible verses and how to talk up grace, but living it out with ourselves and with others is a different story.

Here’s the thing: I thought I was a grace kind of girl, until my spiritual disciplines withered up. My flaming prayer life became barely a glow of smoldering coals about to die out in a rain storm; my bible became suspect, I didn’t trust how I read it or what was in it, so I put it aside. For not months, but years. And my service in church was stripped away. “Do you love me now, God? Is that grace for real when I’m not productive, when I’m watching too much tv and letting cynicism overtake my tender heart?”

Over and over I hear a resounding Yes. “My grace is more than enough for your effed upness, whatever that is, how ever much of it there is, and for however long it may last. Your humanness cannot outrun my God-graceness.”

Grace to me is simply defined as mercy undeserved. When can I possibly ever earn or deserve mercy? If I could, then it wouldn’t be mercy anymore. That would be called a paycheck.

I just love reflecting and writing about grace. It's the most beautiful and stunning attribute I see in God. And it is one of the most debated. How gracious is God? How far does that grace extend? For how long? Past death? Into hell? Is there grace for the unrepentant? For the rebellious? These are the questions that ineveitable get raised when a dialog about God's grace is engaged.

I myself brought it up when I took one of the blogger's comments went a bit deeper into Graceland:

I want to take your post, though, one step further. I am of the perspective that the grace that the new testament teaches is not just reserved for the elite who say the prayer or have the right beliefs. I reckon that grace, or undeserved mercy, is extended even to the gay pagan stripper whether he knows it or not. The grace, or mercy, of the cross was for all humankind, not just bible thumping christians.

I don’t want to veer off into a debate about Christian reconiliationism (or universalism as some call it). I’m just wanting to highlight that if grace is undeserved mercy, and I think it is, then all of us are getting the rain of it. Buckets of it. We just probably don’t know that.

As ambassadors of Christ, we are meant to be ambassadors of the kingdom of grace and mercy. Can I hug the gay pagan stripper and say Hey, you are already loved and forgiven and getting rained with grace?

What if he doesn’t get cured from gayness to straightness? What if he keeps stripping to pay his rent or buy his lover’s meds cause he has HIV? What if he won’t give up his pagan ways (at this point at least) because he is convinced that the polytheism paganism offers is more inclusive than the monotheism of Christianity? Does grace, or undeserved mercy, find it’s way into those chambers?

I think so. Which is why I think the grace of God is the most underrated thing about God that we know. And I like to imagine that even in the timeless space of eternity that the beauty of that grace will enthrall each of us forever.

Oh my, the discussion that then ensued! Here are a few comments and questions that some of the other commentators  raised:

Pam, that’s just silly. You and I both know that if Christians really believed Grace like you described it then they couldn’t hate sinners any more. They wouldn’t have anyone to judge so that they could feel better about themselves.

{this comment cracked me up. But I think he's onto something...not ON something, but onto something!!!}

The blogger, who goes by the handle, The Reformer, wrote this in reply:

Yes, Pam grace does find it way into the darkest chambers of all people. However, my bible does tell me that Christ is the only way to eternity. If one does not believe in Him one cannot be saved. You see grace is abundant and unrestrained. Its always there for everyone at all times, but if you reject it by living in conflict with Christ, then there’s no truth in you.

I totally get this. Really I do. I just don't agree with it. Not anymore. How can grace, or mercy undeserved, be grace if it has conditions?

Someone posted about their misgivings about hell (which is where many dialogs about grace seem to veer off into, at least with me) and wrote this:

Whenever I hear Christians talk about Hell, I have a picture in my head of Nelson Muntz saying, “Ha ha! You’re going to burn forever!” Christians know that their friends and family and neighbors are going to eternal damnation and they act like they’re cool with it, just as long as they have their own ticket punched. Does that strike anyone else as being really twisted and mean?

I think he makes a good and honest point here. We Christians, if we truly do believe in hell, have been far too glib and casual about it. Hell... people, it's hell. How can I sleep at night if people I care about are destined to burn forever and ever without any hope of ever getting free from that place described as having "much gnashing of teeth?" It is absurd...and those who do not believe in eternal damnation, or eternal hell, stand in the meadows of grace and hope and wonder, "How can you think of your own flesh and blood condemned to eternal fire, yet live in peace with that horrible knowing?"
One particular poster, Jeremiah, had a lot of disagreement with me about grace. He wrote this:

I believe that the qualifications for receiving grace is being born again. Haven’t read thru your stuff, but I think when Jesus says that whoever does not believe in Jesus is condemned already, He is making a distinction between believers and unbelievers, those who love light and those who love darkness. Those who experience the Kingdom and gladly submit to it’s King, and those who do not and are not under the grace of the King.

Is there grace, or mercy for the unrepentant? Is repentance a requirement to enjoy the benefits of living in God's good grace? Is that therefore grace, or earned merit and favor?

What is Grace? Is it undeserved mercy, as I like to define it, or have I sugar-coated the gracious nature of God into a big doctrine of free love and flowery dogma?

I am a hopeful reconcilationist.

This means that I hope in the ministry of reconciliation of God to continue beyond the grave.

This means that I am hopeful that the redemption of God's love as demonstrated through the life of Christ overcomes the gates of hell.

This means that I am of the hope that the banquet table of grace and mercy is forever open to anyone.