The Engines of the Universe

Grace: (n) : The free and unmerited favor of God

Can we talk about grace for a second? I feel like this has been the year that this concept has been thrown wide open for me, and it’s absolutely blowing me away.

Grace isn’t conditional. That might seem obvious, because it’s in the very definition of the term, but somehow it’s sneaked into our doctrinal understandings that we somehow have to earn it. As if there was something we could do to make ourselves worthy of God’s goodness and love and compassion (and even more insidiously, as if we were UNworthy of it in the first place).

(Yes, sin exists. Yes, we are capable of great evil. I’m not denying that. Anyone who looks at humans can tell that we are clearly broken in the ways we perpetuate pain and chaos in the world. But the story of creation doesn’t begin in chapter 3 of Genesis; it begins in chapters 1 and 2, where God creates women and men in His own image and calls them good. No matter how much mud and filth we roll around in, there is still the spark of something divine in us, and that’s what God sees when He looks at us. Sidenote within a sidenote: it’s amazing how much sense the Bible makes when you don’t start with the assumption that God is angry and hates everyone.)

And I get it. This understanding of grace fits in naturally with the way we understand religion: as a transaction, as something we do to get something good in return (namely: not going to Hell when we die. Or, if you’re the prosperity type: unlimited health and wealth in this life.) But that’s not what Jesus taught.

We are already loved. That's grace. We already belong. That's grace. No matter what we have or haven't done; not based on our merit or worth; not as a matter of what we've earned, we already have a seat at the table. That's grace. Not because we think the right things or believe the right set of convictions or act the right way; we are already His the whole time. That's grace.

And it's scandalous to our religious sensibilities (but that's exactly why the religious people wanted to kill Jesus in the first place). His infinite grace erases our boundaries, our power systems, our greed and lust and pride. We can't boast, we can't create an In-group, we can't exclude and tear down others.

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I understand that if everyone is covered by grace, then it might seem like there's no point in following Jesus.

But to me, that kind of sounds like the classic capitalist response to any form of socialism: "If everyone gets the same amount of money, then why should I bother to work?"

You work because it's good for the world. You innovate because it's good for the world. You create and serve and exhaust yourself because the work itself is a good thing. This form of economy is rooted in love and joy and community, rather than merely the pursuit of money and self-interest.

If money is your only focus and motivation, of course you'll be selfish and lazy. Of course you'll subject yourself to work that isn't beneficial. You won't be able to see the purpose of love or joy or how they relate to the concept of work. So of course an alternative economy isn’t going to make any sense to you; it doesn’t make sense because you’re starting with the wrong assumptions about how reality works, about what the driving force of life is.

And in the same way, if you only do the religion thing in order to receive grace, like some kind of transaction, like payment for your work...then you're entirely missing out. You're still playing the world's game, and even though you might be super religious, you're just as "secular" as the ones you love to disown. You’re still following the same path that they are.

But God doesn’t play that game. Real Christ-likeness abandons all human logic. It doesn’t run on the forces of this world. It follows an upside-down and backwards way of life. It adheres to a different economy, a different law, a different path.

Love and joy and community. Those are the engines of the universe.

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Now let’s talk about money for a second.

There's a story I'm sure I've shared on a blog somewhere before. It's an image from a sermon I've never forgotten (although I'm pretty sure the pastor borrowed it from one of those old Indecent Proposal movies or something). There's a handsome young millionaire who knocks on a married woman's door one afternoon. He offers her $10 million to spend an evening in his hotel room. She's conflicted, naturally, but eventually she decides that she could do so much to help her husband and children with that kind of money, so she agrees. Later that evening, when she has shown up to his hotel room, the gentleman opens his wallet and takes out a dollar bill. Outraged, she asks him just what kind of woman he thinks she is. "I think we've already established that, Mrs. Jackson. What we haven't settled upon is the price."

Here's another parable, this time less a moral quandary than a gross prospect. Imagine a friend asks you to drink a bottle full of their own spit and saliva. You'd say no without hesitation! But imagine someone comes along and says they'll give you a million bucks if you do it. Now what do you do?

One more, to drive the point home: You would never have the desire to lick a toilet bowl clean with your tongue. But imagine that someone says they'll pay you $200 every day that you drink toilet water. Would you continue swallowing sewage for the rest of your life?

In each of these stories and scenarios, our love of money is pitted against our sense of dignity and morality and normalcy. The assumption is that anything becomes OK with enough money attached, no matter how immoral or degrading or disgusting or abnormal. Something we wouldn't even normally consider doing suddenly becomes much more appealing and reasonable when any sum of money is attached.

Frankly, that rubs me the wrong way. I'm scared of the power money wields over us, the way we accept it as a basic necessity for life (second only to breathing). Air may be free, but food and water and shelter certainly are not.

And what makes the problem so much worse is that our sense of self-worth and identity is all too often tied up in the Thing that we do to earn money, instead of the Grace that is already available to us.

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There is a famous passage in Philippians 2 that I want to insert here for a moment:

“1 Therefore if you have any encouragement from being united with Christ, if any comfort from his love, if any common sharing in the Spirit, if any tenderness and compassion, 2 then make my joy complete by being like-minded, having the same love, being one in spirit and of one mind. 3 Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves, 4 not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of the others.”

It goes on, and you should read the rest of the chapter, too, because it’s beautiful. But I want to look at that phrase “selfish ambition”. In the original Greek, the word Paul uses is “mercenary”-- someone who does work merely for hire.

Therefore, he might be saying: do not do any work merely for hire, so you can get paid and support yourself and look out for your own interests, but do the thing that God has planted within you that brings life and goodness and wholeness to the community of people around you.

God is trying to work in us to fulfill His purpose. (And what is His purpose? Reconciliation of all things; shalom; Kingdom life.) Jesus lived as the paradigm man, showing us how to look after the interests of others by doing the work that God created us for and calls us to; not shirking it so he could live a comfortable life, but embracing it and pouring his life out as a servant to pave the way for new gardens and streets of gold. 

There is a divine spark in you. Don't squander it to earn a paycheck.

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So that’s where I’m at right now. If I take the Bible seriously, if I take Jesus seriously, if I take God seriously, and if I take Grace seriously, then I can’t keep doing the same shit I’ve been doing the last few years of my adult life. (Not that all of it has been bad, and most of it might even have been necessary.)

I’m not going to just take a job for money like a mercenary. I’m not going to forego my identity so I can make a living. I’m going to find the thing I was made for, and I’m going to give it everything I’ve got. And I’m not going to keep trying to earn God’s love and favor and grace by the things I do; I’m going to live in the freedom and rest that He brings already, and I’m going to allow that to transform the way I love others.

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Because that’s how grace works. It’s given freely, so we don’t earn it. Yes, we should give our whole lives to it--but not so that we can earn it or pay for it, but because we have been transformed by it.

This almost seems like merely semantics, because from the outside, a life lived transformed by grace and a life lived in pursuit of grace could look exactly alike. But they are fundamentally different, and the interior of each person proves that this is an important distinction that goes beyond semantics and exposes drastically opposing ways of living: the first lives with a strong sense of inner peace, knowing and accepting their place in the world, expressing love and joy as an outpouring of the grace and love they’ve been given and the acknowledgement of their identity; the second is always consumed by fear and worry and anxiety, never quite sure if they've done enough to earn divine favor and acceptance yet, always pushing themselves on to the next best way they can show love and good deeds to others, not as a way to actually serve those people or have real compassion for them, but because they know it's "the right thing to do" and a sure way to get themselves up to the next rung of the religious ladder to heavenly approval.

Do you see how this is different?! Do you see why understanding grace is so important?

You can't truly follow Jesus on his path until you recognize this fundamental truth about grace. Those people in the second way, the ones who are trying to earn it, the ones who still claim his name anyway? They actually have nothing to do with Jesus; their model is not his model; their road is not his path; their engine is not his engine. But the good news is that Jesus is right here, waiting, already wrapping them in his arms, whispering that they are already accepted, that they have already made it, that they already belong and are already loved.

If that's you, I hope this realization comes soon, so you can live the full, abundant, transformed life that grace provides. 

(The world needs you.)

Peace,

--JD