The permanent efficacy of Grace

We do not fail because we are selfish. We fail because we are not selfish enough. We hear that only by following God will we find our heart's desire, will we become whole and be able to love and heal and live. But following God is hard, and we are stupid and lazy and inclined to follow our own will. We would rather have a self justified, broken life, full of small pleasures and half loves, because it is easy to do- easy to keep believing our small beliefs and walking in our own ways. If we really cared about ourselves, really cared about others, in fact really truly had even a speck of real love for anything at all, we would turn, and be healed.

In the summer of 2011 I fell in love with a beautiful, broken woman. Her beauty entranced me, but her brokeness was too much for me to bear. Every time I looked at her, I saw both qualities, woven into a whole, and I could not bear to see something so good, so marred. I felt one piece of what God feels for us. And I tried to solve the problem by requiring sacrifices: every time I feel hurt by her brokeness, I require some sort of recompense, some sort of deposit from her that will show me that she cares. But the problem doesn't go away, because her debt to me can never be repayed by her sacrifices, no matter how often or how large her gift. I do not know how the problem can be solved, because I cannot grasp the mystery of Christ's sacrifice in my own intellect. But I do know that it can be solved only through Christ, and only through his work in my life. The problem is this: I cannot love her. The solution, looks, simply, like this: I become able to love her.

If I fail at this, I will find out the first of life's great truths, which can be read and grasped with the mind, but can only be learned through God's refinement, through living life. The truth is this: we are more broken and wicked and foolish and lazy than we ever dared to believe, and left to our own devices, we will surely fail at our every ambition, and ruin our own lives, the earth, and the life of everything else we touch.

If, on the other hand, I succeed at this, it will be for one reason only: that I have learned the second of life's great truths, one which can also be read and intellectually grasped, but can only be learned and lived out through God's refinement. That truth is this: that every good thing we are, every success we have, every bit of love we extend towards others, is only by his saving grace. Without the action of God in our lives, and us accepting his leading and correction, we will fail, but with him in our lives, if we decide to submit to him, we will surely succeed in getting everything our heart desires.

I desire to change, but I cannot change by my own strength. Even the desire to change is from you, and even that I fight, a part of me still desiring to continue living in my petty brokeness. Break me open Lord. Change my heart. Teach me, through your life in me, to love this broken person, who is at the same moment, my enemy, and my friend. Destroy the pernicious weed that is my sinful self. Root it out and burn it up; if anything at all is left, even if it is as small as a mustard seed, I want it to be of you.

Why doesn't God have a blog?

If Jesus was the son of God, why didn't he write the New Testament himself? For some reason, the proposition that a God who wanted people to follow him should have set his messenger down in a remote backwater village and instead of providing a clearly stated guide to what people needed to do should have left only a handful of paradoxes, anecdotes, and questions, to be spread by word of mouth and written down by others does not strike people of faith as unlikely, even though today we would consider such action to be proof, not of divinity, but of insanity.

The reduction of God to a being who acted in such a way might have seemed reasonable to the naive, superstitious and largely illiterate people of those times, but today, when every event can be communicated around the world almost instantly, surely regarding God as less powerful in his communication skills than the local newspaper (let alone the medium we are presently using which will make this message available globally the instant I hit 'Publish review') makes no sense whatever.

If Jesus was God, and the all powerful God who created the universe chose to come to us in the unpretentious form of a poor Galilean man who spoke in parables, what does it say about God? It's almost like God was saying "the point of life isn't to follow clearly delineated rules, it's to follow me," or "I'm a God who cares more about the weak and powerless in my life than making a name for myself," or "knowing that all power in heaven and earth has been given to me, I'm going to respond by washing your feet." What an unlikely, insane, anti-consumerist, anti-imperialist God indeed. Why would we ever want to believe in such a scandalously humble God?

Colossians 3:17-1

Let's stop lying to each other.

We threw away our old selves, who believed and embodied the wicked promises of the world: promises of freedom, health, security, and a hopeful future in the name of the false gods of national pride, self-gratification, economic preeminence, personal or political sovereignty, and military might. Instead, we are embracing our new selves, who are being cultivated out of the dead stumps of our old selves; selves who have not only a correct knowledge about our creator, but who also have an unmistakable family resemblance to him. We have his eyes; the way we perceive and engage the world is becoming deeply and entirely marked by compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience. As our new selves mature, we are going blind to hierarchical distinctions between different social and economic classes, races, and expressions of faith; now we can see that Christ is all, and in all. So we are constantly, habitually thankful for everything! The revolutionary love of God is inspiring us to love each other through all of our ticks and pet peeves, and even freeing us to forgive anyone who has attacked or threatened us in any way. In everything we do, we are striving to love God and each other; this is the command that supersedes all others, that unites the disparate members of our community into one body. We are unilaterally inviting the peace of Christ into our lives: peace that is a result of his self-sacrificial love; peace in which conflict is unimaginable because the entire creation is too busy resting and rejoicing in the palpable presence of justice. We are also inviting the living Christ to invade our being like a particularly smokey Cabernet and a mouthful of walnut bread assaults our senses. His advent is overwhelming every public, private, conscious and subconscious space in our waking and sleeping lives, transforming our every action into an act of worship to him, whether it is teaching someone a story, confronting injustice in each other and ourselves, or simply singing songs together. We literally do everything in the name of Jesus; if we can't do it, thankfully and gracefully in the name of Jesus, we don't do it at all. We cannot stand to speak in ways that are violent, arrogant, or seeking glory for ourselves. We cannot bear to act in ways that seek instant gratification with no personal consequences. Why do we live like this? Because we know something that many people don't want to know: Every single day we each buy things, eat things, wear things, pay taxes, and do other intentional and unintentional actions that support slave labor, the rape of the environment, state sanctioned murder, greedy, consumerist sexuality, or greedy, consumerist justice. We make life more difficult for widows, orphans, immigrants and the poor. We misuse and corrupt things that have been given to us for our pleasure, blame others for the results, and take the vengeance of God into our own hands. We worship the false gods of our culture, country, and self. The Living God detests these things, and will pour out his wrath on them because they are evil, and he is holy and just and intolerant of injustice. He has forever banished them from his presence: he, the only source and sustainer of life. We each deserve eternal separation from him, because we are all complicit in the wickedness that is trying to destroy his beloved creation. If we don't think we are, we are arrogant fools, ignoring the congenital disease that is eating us alive because we don't want to face the implications of the fact that we didn't inherit it. But our father isn't ignoring it. Jesus, through whom and for whom the universe, with all of it's living and non living matter, was created, became human, suffered the sin of the world in a state sanctioned execution, and exhausted the wrath of God by enduring severance from him in death. Then, he rose from the dead, revealing himself to be the very author of life: God himself, come to save us by bearing in himself the terrible consequences of our idolatry. Through Jesus' sacrifice, he can see us as blameless, and invite us into a deeper communion with him than a man and wife have with each other. Through Jesus' sacrifice, he roots out and utterly destroys injustice and at the same time fully embraces us. The sinful part of ourself, the old self, is dying with Christ, and the new self is being raised with him. We are privileged to abandon ourselves to him: the sovereign Servant-King of all that exists. For the time being, these new selves are disguised, along with Christ himself, who leads us as a covert, rebel leader. When Christ is fully revealed, he will complete the final, radical transformation of us into the image of him we were created to be, and along with us, he will redeem the entire creation.