Grace and All That

Wowza has it been a long time since I posted. I knew I was neglecting my blog, but I didn't realize that it was quite this bad! I'd like to promise to do better, and I think that promise would be as much for myself as any readers, but I don't make promises I'm not sure I can keep. So I'll try, but that's the best I can do.

So anyway, my thoughts this morning are on grace. I recently had a conversation with some folks about grace, and salvation, and hell, and faith. It was exhausting, as much of that part of my theology is still developing, but it was also exhilarating. I believe it's necessary to wrestle with these kinds of things. We didn't come to too many conclusions, but the wrestling has stuck with me over the last couple weeks. Just how big is God's grace? It's not earned, but aren't there some requirements? If there is no hell, then what is the point of salvation? What DOES Jesus mean when he says, "I am the Way, the Truth, and the Light, and no one gets to the Father except through me?" If non-Christians receive God's grace too, then why did God send Jesus? Can you be a Christian if you don't believe Jesus was divine? If so, is there still a trinity?

Seriously, they are questions that can keep someone like me awake at night. And as I told those folks, my life would be infinitely easier if I were a black-and-white kind of person, if I could just accept pat answers, memorize them, and spit them back out as truth. Salvation from sin comes through atonement and the cross alone, and it means salvation from Hell. Good people who believe Jesus Christ is their Lord and Savior do not go to Hell. Being "good" means following what is written in the Bible, and what is found there is infallible.

However, I'm not that kind of person. I am much more aware of nuance and different perspectives. I struggle to figure out what place the really crappy stories and and instructions in the Bible have in our faith lives today.  I shudder to think that the beautiful, loving non-Christian people I know will go to Hell while vile, hate-spewing oppressor Christians get the Eternal Good Life. It's not all clear. The Bible contradicts itself. It was written by fallible humans, and as someone who frequently attempts to write and speak with the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, I know first hand that sometimes we get in the way or screw it up or spin the message to our liking.

Here's my mini-morsel of insight that has occurred to me on this hazy, hot and humid summer morning in Massachusetts: if God's grace looks like our human ideas of justice and fairness, we're probably not getting it right. I don't know exactly what God's justice looks like. I do know that I don't believe in an eternal separation from God in a fiery underworld. That being said, I think we must be accountable for our actions--or inaction--in this life. How that plays out, I just don't know. My human sense of justice is that of course Mother Theresa and Jerry Sandusky (making an assumption of guilt here, although of course he's still in court receiving his fair trial) would end up in different places. That's only fair. A life lived ministering to the poor vs. a life lived inflicting horrific abuse on children? Duh. 


And yet. I have no doubt that anyone who is a perpetrator of abuse--and particularly abuse against children-- will have to answer to her/his Creator. I have no doubt that God has little tolerance for such evil. And yet, something in my gut twists a little to create such an absolute, such a limit to God's grace. Where is the line? Is it rape, murder, abuse? What about stealing? What about not caring for "the least of these?" In Jesus' famous speech about feeding the hungry and clothing the naked and visiting the prisoners and in doing such, doing so for him and being blessed, we tend to stop reading before we get to the second part about the people who DON'T do those things facing damnation. Or there's that line in Mark about most sin being forgivable except blaspheming against the Holy Spirit, which is eternally unforgivable. 


I think God's grace is big. Bigger than we could ever imagine. And while we certainly must strive to live in obedience to God and God's commandments, I think we'd do well not to say for certain, "This thing is beyond God's grace." Somehow, I just picture God's response to such a limit to be something along the lines of, "Oh yeah? Watch me."

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And this is why I feel the need to be "evangelical"

The UCC website reported recently on a study released by The Barna Group about young people's attitudes on Christianity (http://www.ucc.org/news/study-young-people-see.html). It's not pretty, but it's not surprising. One of the reasons I feel called to ministry is to share my relationship with a God who loves all of us, and to share what may seem to many as a radical Christian faith.

For a long time, I was one of those young people who didn't want to call myself Christian. The majority of Christians that are in the media, that get seen by the general audience, don't represent my beliefs. It is no wonder the young people in our country see Christians as anti-gay and narrow-minded--those are the only voices we hear. We hear about male Christian pastors caught in relationships with other men who after a few weeks of therapy are "cured" of their homosexuality (nevermind the fact that adultery was committed). We hear about bishops of a major mainline Protestant denomination deciding to "exercise restraint" and not consecrate partnered gay bishops, as well as promising not to authorize "any public rites of blessing of same-sex unions." We often hear of prominent Evangelical pastors preaching on the "immorality" of hosts of things from Harry Potter to education about contraceptives.

And this is why I feel the call to ministry, and this is why I call myself Christian, and this is why I call myself evangelical (notice the lowercase "e"). Evangelical means telling the Good News. A group of Christians have co-opted this title to basically mean bringing the Good News of Jesus Christ as Savior--or else. Well, I'm taking it back--the name Christian, the title evangelical. I want to share the Good News of Jesus who shared meals with outcasts and "sinners." I want to share the Good News of the realm of God in which there is food for the hungry, freedom of the captives, and justice for the oppressed. I want to share a love of God which is so powerful, so encompassing that we can ever do anything so bad that it would make God stop loving us (this is not to say God does not get angry or pass judgment, however--but that's another topic for another time). I want to share a faith that welcomes the imperfect, the doubting, the questioning, the hesitant.

And most of all, I want to let people--and especially young people-- know that not all forms of Christianity are anti-gay, judgmental, and hypocritical. Yes, all organized religion has its problems and shortcomings, and we are no different. But there are Christians out there, like me and like many of the people I know, worship with, and go to school with, who embrace a much more welcoming message.

And we need to speak up.

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