Embracing Grace

I use Google Reader to keep up with several blogs that I like to read. One of the ones that I've found interesting is Eugene's blog entitled Paradoxy. What a great title for a blog describing the growth it takes to reconcile one's sexuality and Christian faith.

Several of his recent posts are pertinent to the conversation I've been having on (and off) this blog. In the post entitled Total Surrender, he talks about legalism in the context of normal human nature.

This is a fascinating idea, because I just finished reading the biography of Jay Bakker (son of Tammy Faye and Jim Bakker), Son of a Preacher Man. In it, he describes what happened to his parents in the 1980's. What struck me, though, was the way that his dad's poor choices seemed to be "preyed upon" by other up- and-coming preachers, who turned out to be the bulwark of the Christian Right, the Moral Majority and modern evangelicalism.

Many of these men, and pastors across the country who took their cues from them, openly ridiculed and mocked the Bakkers during their time of greatest personal suffering (both personal and private). They used their pulpits as literal bully-pulpits, instead of pronouncing the amazing grace of God--God our Father and Redeemer!

It's interesting to see the inherent need we humans have for creating "rules, boundaries, and concrete structure." Eugene goes on to point out that this tendency extends to an attempt to manipulate others to comply and follow the rules.

In his book, Jay tells about the weight of this manipulation by godly, well-intentioned people, after he began his return to God. Attempting to lay aside the bitterness and hatred that he'd harbored all through his teenaged years, he found that when he came back to the church as a wounded and hurting spirit, he still could not "measure up" under the expectations of others.

But then he experienced God's grace! Jay says that before that time it had been "nothing more than a song." Grace truly is amazing.

Yet it's a fearful thing. It requires complete trust--the kind of trust that is the only way-maker for the true lordship of Christ in a believer's life.

But how do we switch from the way we've been taught to live, and embrace God's grace? That is the question Eugene addresses in the subsequent post called, Freedom in Practice. If grace is Christ's example, how do we follow it in "real life," especially when most everyone who's maintaining the spiritual status quo will probably separate themselves from us?

You see, when you grow in grace, it makes me uncomfortable, because you are alive and you are growing. I am made aware of my lack of growth, and I will respond one of two ways: either I will embrace your growth, become your cheerleader and will begin a revival in my own soul. Or, I will despise your growth because I am embarrassed of my own shortcoming, I will seek for a way to slow or stop your growth; and when that fails, I will alienate you.

But grace is the "gift of God." It's the way of salvation ("by grace you are saved through faith"). Grace is "while we were still sinners, Christ died for us".

Sometimes we forget. But grace is the gift. We either embrace it or we can reject it. We either embrace His love and offer it to others, or we withhold it from them because we cannot receive it ourselves.