Posted in
culture by Mariah Secrest on 4/18/2009
When we talk about grace on Sunday morning, we often couch it in sacrosanct sentiment. We gloss over our (or others') bevy of shortcomings with a wand of detachment, daring only to acquaint ourselves with some vague and perhaps grandiose notion of grace. When we depart into Sunday afternoon traffic, however, the thin vapor of grace as something lofty and intangible tends to evaporate.
Does grace really show up in the crevices of our lives? Grace looks pretty on paper, but is it just like the inflated legal tender of our collapsing economy - a currency that promises much but is backed with little value? Grace seems like something we should talk about only once we don't need it. Do our inadequacies punch holes in the righteousness that Christ champions?
Grace seems like something we talk about in the sanctuary, not the bars. We speak of it as though it is lightweight, floating around in the clouds as some ephemeral nicety. But grace is meant to go hand-in-hand with experience. It's meant to be the flower pushing up through mud and grit. Grace is the cupful of water running over the dusty lips of those who are facedown in the desert. Grace is for sinners.
Serena Woods' autobiographical account of her experience with grace minces no words. The opening chapter of Grace is for Sinners picks up her story with her on the bathroom floor, shutting her kids out from her so they won't see her crying about the affair she was having with her friend's husband.
She writes, "I was a Christian for nine years and never did anything like this before. I didn't think I ever would. I had strong feelings and biting words for people who do what I did and there I sat, being who I hate and still being me, whom I loved. Two separate identities in one small body... I wondered that night, if hell was just separation from God."
We have a difficult time extending grace to fellow believers. All manner of tangled questions arise as to how much God really forgives and what that means to those who sin and their community around them. Of course, we know in our heads that we are all sinners saved by grace - we can quote the verse - but sadly that often does little to prevent us from stratifying our degrees of righteousness for a handy reference point.
This was very much Serena's encounter with the church, and catching a glimpse of her heartbreaking experience of rejection shines a glaring Mag light on the high price of judgmental predispositions. Certainly, our failures bring enough devastation on themselves. But self-righteous judgment and moral stratification within the church can extenuate the damage beyond recovery.
Grace is for Sinners is the story of a woman who found grace where it was most needed and from the purest source-God Himself. But it came through the most painful of voyages across the wilderness of guilt, misguidance, and isolation. Christians who didn't know how to handle grace on an industrial level burned the bridge that Christ meant to bring Serena back into restoration. Serena freely admits her guilt, but so convictingly reminds us, "Jesus didn't hang on the cross in case you need him, he hung on the cross because you desperately need him."
This is, and has always been, the essence of the Gospel. Death to life. Brokenness to restoration. The very experience of the Resurrection represents the transformation that each of us who claim Christ has undergone. We don't get to hang on to just a little bit of our own moral status. He asks us to completely swap our attempts at holiness with his own.
If we are still sitting in judgment of one remorseful believer's failures over and against our own with no posture of restoration, it can only be because we ourselves have not found the profusion of healing that God aches for us to take from His scarred - over hands. Perhaps we are still cowering from our own guilt, covering it up by pointing at the decoy of others' guilt. Grace levels the playing field. Redemption is meant for all.
Grace, in short, is for sinners.
You can find out more about Serena Woods and Grace is for Sinners at http://www.graceisforsinners.com.
Mariah has currently landed herself in Tucson, Arizona, where she just finished a philosophy degree from the University of Arizona. She thought life was supposed to get easier after college, but she's keeping way too busy working as a musician, editor for this magazine, and occupying other sundry roles. She enjoys writing almost as much as she enjoys making music. Almost. You can hear her music on Myspace.
I learned more about grace, sin, and my own depravity when I started spending time with the homeless and poor. I realized that as I came blazing into their lives to fix their financial and lifestyle problems that I was as much in need of mercy and grace as they were. While it may sound trite, I was reminded of my own poverty of spirit by being exposed to the poor. Maybe that's why Jesus calls the poor "blessed" and makes such strong statements about why we need to reach out to the poor, hungry, thirsty, and naked (Matt. 25). Only then, do we realize that we're sick and in need of much more healing than our well-off lifestyle tells us. Spending time with those who realize they need grace is the best way for me to remember that grace isn't a one-time transaction between us and Jesus but a lifelong process.
Thanks, Mariah - you're right, grace is experiential.
I'm just saying, consider your givens. You may be comforted in saying your just human. Make heaven here and now. Hurt nobody. Love your kids and show them all facts and beliefs in the world. Give them choice. Judge nobody. We are just humans. Humanists are both agnostic and atheist. Not religious. It's really a comfort not to do or think what other humans tell or have told you to believe.
I have not read your book and won't since I can't relate to the premise. I've done too much of that. My time with my kid, wife and me are too valuable. I have come to my knowledge/belief balance on a similar path.
Two interesting books to think about beliefs without bias, is "50 reasons people give for believing in god" also "Parenting Beyond Belief".
They really helped me align my beliefs with what is known.
Good luck on your search for the MOL. We all need it. Please don't use my email to share with anyone. We do have mutual friends. I try to stay away from FB as much as possible.
Since the discovery of non-Aristotelian, Modern logic it has been shown that any thought system contains within it a single premise which cannot be proven and must be simply taken as a given. You point that out (in regard to the Christian), but it would be just as true for your own beliefs. Embedded within all of your comments is the belief that all metaphysical claims are merely human constructions (viz. Kant) and that the belief in God is merely wish fulfillment (viz. Freud, et al).
In addition, it is not necessary for everything in the Bible to be completely original. The Bible itself teaches that there is a law written on men's hearts, places there by God, which is called Natural Revelation. It is further clarified with Special Revelation, but that other people may have discovered truth is not surprising, nor does it contradict with Christianity. The claim that there were other books in the Bible prior to Constantine is based on the fallacious assumption that books that were not at all widely used by the church in the first few centuries before Christ should be part of the canon. That would be similar to saying that any book on astronomy is legitimate, even if it propounded a geocentric universe. And that the Bible is based on Greco-Roman theology is impossible with a proper understanding of either.
The Bible would likely not be written the same way it was when it was given to those who received it. And what we now know as fact will surely evolve in the future, so anything written today would be largely unintelligible to the reader 4,000 years from now.
Sorry for running on. So much to counter organized religion. Unquestioned beliefs is the biggest sin. (If I were a believer in sin that is.)
I would be curious on your thoughts of those two books I recommended. The authors' are thinkers and writers. I, obviously, do not combine those well. I am also continuously evolving my view of the world. I don't have all the answers, for sure the questions. I do recognize flaws in thought and inconsistencies in beliefs.
The intended audience for this book is at a very primary level of themselves. They are at risk of losing hope completely. They aren't discussing theology, mythology or psychology. They are DYING (spiritually speaking). Leave the debates to those who enjoy them and have time for them. There is a time and place for that, but the context of 'Grace Is For Sinners,' is not the time or place. 'Grace Is For Sinners' is a finger pointing them to scriptures in the only source of information that they believe. They are scriptures that will give them hope, show them grace and love them. All of these things end up giving them the strength to not let their faith fail.
There will be many who won't agree with the message because it's bold and gritty. It kicks religion where it hurts. There are some who won't read it/finish it because of what they think it might say. However, the lives that have been changed by the message in this book are worth so much more than the controversy it could potentially create.
As the dedication states: 'This book is dedicated to those who have fallen. If you've been there, you know. If you're still there...hang on.'
Serena Woods
www.graceisforsinners.com
Praise God
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