This post marks the kickoff to a three-part blog series on the power of grace. But I intend on blogging about grace for a long time to come, so don’t think that I’m going to stay at three parts forever. I hope the series would rock your world and free your soul.
To start, I would like to share with you a struggle of mine that, because of God’s relentless grace, I’ve experienced significant victory in. And I share it in hopes that you might know Him more deeply and walk in unprecedented freedom.
I would like you to raise your hand at your computer if you relate to my problem:
When I find myself in spiritually influential situations (say, sharing or demonstrating my faith to another person), I tend to feel great pressure to speak and act perfectly, and then take great responsibility afterward for things that I perceive as having gone poorly.
This soul-destroying phenomenon has gotten to the point where I’d consistently shrink back from taking bold steps of faith for fear that I might defame Jesus or cause someone to hate God forever. I’d take careful measures to hide my shortcomings; then, faced with an opportunity to speak truth, choose my words so carefully that I’d end up not saying much of anything for fear that the truth of God will make him out to be ridiculous and unbelievable. Because when someone calls me a hypocrite or tells me that the God of the Bible sounds like a big jerk because of how I live or what I’ve communicated, I assume that I’ve ruined God’s plan for that person’s life, and vow never to do anything risky in my witness ever again.
And it happens when I’m with other Christians too. I’ve had difficult conversations with close brothers and sisters where, in love, I ask a question or make an observation regarding a pattern in their life that concerns me. I’ve been met with accusation, yelling, fuming silence and crying, sometimes even resulting in running away and the slamming of doors. Once again, I begin to wonder if this scene is what God had in mind when he adopted me to be his chosen representative to the world. I figure I’m better off just keeping my mouth shut.
For those of you who like bullet points, I’ll carefully walk you through a faithless kind of grieving process I go through when my bold steps of faith seem to blow up in my face:
1) Rationalize away the other person’s reaction as absurd, citing many of this person’s personal issues that would cause them not to recognize my profound insight communicated with the utmost gentleness and care. (Dismiss)
2) When that doesn’t make me feel better, look to friends or other outside sources to justify my actions as perfectly righteous and loving. (Defend)
3) When that also fails to soothe my soul, take full responsibility for this catastrophic event, analyzing every single thing that went “poorly” and try to figure out how to do it instead in such a way that would make everyone perfectly happy…but never find the solution. (Despair)
4) Vow never to say anything difficult to anyone ever again, because I clearly suck at it.
In this process, whether it’s a conversation over a sin issue with a brother or sister, or a conversation about Christianity with someone outside the faith, I become absolutely obsessed with the “catastrophe”: why it went wrong, how I could have changed it, how messed up the other person is, how messed up I am, how broken the whole world is, etc. In these moments, I feel a desperate need to understand the answers to all of these questions; some airtight explanation or solution that lets me flee the confusing gravity of sitting inside the realities of our fallen world and escape to the friendly confines of simple platitudes and a clear course for improvement.
And, of course, confession, repentance and grace are nowhere to be found in my escapism. At no point would I admit my powerlessness and lack of understanding, ask God to restore me, conform me to his image, conform my friends to his image, and call them into intimate relationship with him. I’d rather have a formula.
What’s really sad is that even our nation’s broken, flawed justice system understands more about the necessity of grace in this scenario than I do. We have an entire body of legislation known as Good Samaritan laws that release me from any legal condemnation for making my best effort to assist an injured, sick or dying person.
Even if I end up killing them.
One day some psychologist or lawmaker realized that when you penalize people for trying to help someone but messing it up, they stop wanting to help hurting people. I think that’s because we all realize we are prone to ignorance and mistakes, and the fear of penalty is just stronger than our flesh’s compulsion to good. In fact, I think just the sheer guilt and shame of being told by the legal system that a helpless person’s fate was your fault for being too incompetent to actually help in any way would be enough to keep people from helping someone in need; fines and jail terms completely aside. But regardless of the exact reasons why potential legal penalty would keep someone from helping a person in dire need, the truth remains that it does. At some point, our nation’s legislative bodies concluded the following:
The only way to make people feel free to do good to their needy neighbor was to offer a release from all the potential consequences of their imperfection.
In other words, the only thing strong enough to ever compel me to love my neighbor as myself is to know that even if I don’t love my neighbor right, I myself am still free from guilt and condemnation. This is the revolutionary power of grace. I think it’s what Paul was getting at when he wrote Romans 8:1-4. And I think it’s why the Gospel of Jesus Christ is the only thing powerful enough to save the world.
The bolded statement above makes me wonder if this legislator/psychologist’s realization of the human condition resulted in their falling on their face in repentance, pleading for God to have grace on them, a sinner, knowing it’s the only hope they have to love others well. Probably not, but just think what would happen if all the people who support this kind of law would follow its basic insight to its natural conclusion for their own spiritual condition…
Regardless, it’s sad that our legal system grants me “Good Samaritan laws” to free me from this kind of fear for physical acts of good, but I’ve struggled immensely to believe that God does the same for me spiritually. In part 2, I’m going to let you in on something that really helps me believe that God is extending me far more grace than our legal system…
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Mikey,
This is a great post! I have been in this situation before and, like you said, my ineptitude to convert my friend frightened me enough that I have strayed away from trying to tell others of the Good News. If man can forgive our attempts at doing good deeds, then certainly God, in his infinite mercy, can forgive us in our failings. It is awesome that grace is there to make up for our shortcomings, so that we can try again, fortified by the last attempt, to help actualize God’s kingdom on Earth.
This reminds me of a section from one of Dan Allender’s books; it contains a similar insight that was really freeing for me:
“To understand the depth and extent of sin is to comprehend that our motives, and as fallen but regenerate beings, are stained by sin even as we attempt to honorably love God and others. The glory of the Cross is that in spite of every act, thought, or feeling being stained by the Fall, our regenerate deeds are cleansed under the righteousness of [Jesus'] sacrifice” (61-62).
So we have the freedom to love imperfectly. Thank goodness for grace.