rainy summer days without having to show up at a part-time job beget reflection. reading books written by folks seasoned in the way of words reminds me more and more how fundamentally we have misunderstood Your grace. in a culture saturated with “Christian” ideals, “Christian” principals, and “Christian” people, the harvest often appears bleak. vulnerability and acceptance of our own inadequacies has somehow been separated from identifying ourselves as followers of Christ. we seek to justify, rationalize, and explain away our failures rather than depositing them at the foot of the cross to which we claim to pledge allegiance.
as one of the most competitive people on the face of this earth, i am forced to come to terms with an acknowledgement that achievement and winning aren’t always the end products. with time for reflection, i watch this play itself out time after time, from racquetball games with friends to achievement as a teacher. time and time again i feel slighted when i don’t receive the recognition i feel due. i await congratulations after playing a good game. i seek an appropriate number of “likes” on a quality post. i look at numbers like 95% or increased proficiency ratings and anticipate opening my gmail inbox, facebook homepage, and front door to a line of people proclaiming the good news that my efforts have won the day, that victory has come through me. the congratulations i am given feels inadequate because of the preposterous way i have elevated my own accomplishments as opposed to laying them down in acknowledgment that nothing i have done has been on my own accord. this is but one example of the ways in which i myself and we as a culture have seemed to miss it. we attend church services and hear the message of grace as if it is an overfamiliar story that we grasped awhile ago and are now in need of something fresh. we don’t seem to have ever “gotten it” in the first place.
as classes are set to begin in a couple of weeks at the “Chandler Bing School of Jesus,” as it was dubbed by couple of my friends this past year, i can see the temptation on the horizon. we can find a way to turn anything, even the study of God, into something that is all about us. will the theology i develop be academically sound? will it be biblically sound? will i quote the correct authors? will i be able to interpret the scriptures and then articulate that interpretation in a way that is both true to the context of the time it was written and relevant to our culture today? despite the substantial importance of these questions, they are not an end in and of themselves. once they become such, we've missed the point. already in my experience at candler i’ve seen good people who are honestly and humbly seeking to understand the depth of the mystery and furious love of God. i’ve also seen people take this search and turn it into a scholarly assurance of theological correctness that rebukes all who stand in the way of an unadulterated, pure understanding of God. oh, how we miss the point.
the past two posts i have written have been centered around my notion of how we, as followers of Christ, have seemingly warped and misunderstood the gospel of grace. anyone taking time to read could see these as desolate posts aimed at throwing stones at those who don’t appear to have my own proper understanding of grace. perhaps my writing centered around “misunderstanding” has arisen from an ability to reflect on the ways in which i have “missed it” throughout my life. perhaps it has played itself out in this manner because its easier to attack that which you feel is incorrect than to fully articulate your own version of truth. either way, to dispel the gloom, i’ll end with an attempt to illuminate the woe of our inadequacies that turns into celebration....
if we who proclaim Christ truly believe this gospel of grace, we have no choice but to celebrate. the truth of the gospel declares that it is not our own goodness that has redeemed us, but the goodness of our Creator. we do not exist in a quid pro quo relationship that is based on our own ability to achieve academically, physically, financially, emotionally, spiritually, morally, or in any other capacity. we are set free from a need to achieve and propelled into the loving arms of grace. “it is for freedom that Christ has set us free.” let us let go of the need to feel appreciated, needed, wanted, praised, loved, accomplished, and correct and realize that in grace, Christ has already made us all of those things, and so much more. with vulnerability let us accept our own failures and missteps in a constant realization that we will continue to fall and fail over and over, but in our brokenness He will pick us up. let us release our need to pretend we’ve accomplished on our own and accept that “blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven.” amen.
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