What's So Amazing About Grace?

July 7, 2010

During a British conference on comparative religions, experts from around the world debated what, if any, belief was unique to the Christian faith. They began eliminating possibilities. Incarnation? Other religions had different versions of gods appearing in human form. Resurrection? Again, other religions had accounts of return from death. The debate went on for some time until C.S. Lewis wandered into the room. "What's the rumpus about?" he asked, and heard in reply that his colleagues were discussing Christianity's unique contribution among world religions. Lewis responded,"Oh, that's easy. It's grace."

After some discussion, the conferees had to agree. The notion of God's love coming to us free of charge, no strings attached, seems to go against every instinct of humanity. The Buddhist eight-fold path, the Hindu doctrine of karma, the Jewish covenant, and Muslim code of law-each of these offers a way to earn approval. Only Christianity dares to make God's love unconditional.

I've been reading Philip Yancey's What's So Amazing About Grace? I'm only halfway done, but gooooood book; highlyy recommended! Yancey doesn't try to dissect the notion of grace; instead, he relies more on stories to demonstrate what grace is. Grace, as mentioned above, is a crucial concept to Christianity. Without it, well, the Gospel would be quite different. It wouldn't be 'good news' anymore I suppose. But thank goodness, grace exists and abounds from God, and reading Yancey's book has helped me to just begin to understand how truly precious 'grace' is. A few things I've realized about grace from this book:

1.unforgiveness/un-grace is a ruthless and bitter cycle that leads to revenge upon revenge, hurt upon hurt, a cycle that can only be ended if one party chooses to show grace and forgiveness, no matter how undeserving or unworthy the other party is. The unforgiveness and un-grace gets passed along from one generation to the next, and I am beginning to see how terrifying yet sad the cycle is, and how so often times our society & world gets caught up in that vicious cycle. Yancey tells of a family who suffers from un-grace. How the father's terrible actions led to a daughter's refusal to forgive and show grace, how that daughter's bitterness carried out into her bitterness with her own children, and how that bitterness led to her own daughter being bitter and unforgiving towards her son. leading to a cold, angry, and bitter relationship between the mother and son. Saddest of all, the family is a family of devout, God-loving Christians.

It is a very realistic and hard reminder that so often times, we as Christians who have been shown so much grace and love by God, have the hardest time showing grace and love to others. I know I have lots to learn about showing others grace still, and God is definitely still stretching me in that area. Thank goodness God still shows me grace when I fail. Anyway, this story of un-grace particularly stood out to me:

I have a friend whose marriage has gone through tumultuous times. One night George passed a breaking point. He pounded the table and the floor. "I hate you!" he screamed at his wife. "I won't take it anymore! I've had enough! I won't go on! I won't let it happen! No! No! No!"

Several months later my friend woke up in the middle of the night and heard strange sounds coming from the room where his two-year-old son slept. He padded down the hall, stood for a moment outside his son's door, and shivers ran through his flesh. He could not draw a breath. In a soft voice, the two-year-old was repeating word for word with precise inflection the argument between his mother and father. "I hate you....I won't take it anymore.... No! No! No!"

George realized that in some awful way he had just bequeathed his pain and anger and unforgiveness to the next generation. Is not that what is happening all over [the world] right now?

It's pretty scary how ungrace and unforgiveness can be passed on from generation to generation, and how the effects can be felt long after the initial situations have passed. And on that note...

2. grace in general is ridiculously amazing. Grace is so very counter-cultural. In a society where forgiveness and grace can come off as unfair, the fact that some people can show grace, and grace in the midst of some horrifying situations, is quite shocking and amazing. There was a story in the book about a Nazi soldier, who on his death bed asked the nurse to bring in a Jewish prisoner. This was before the war was over. With the Jewish prisoner in the room, the soldier recounted all the terrible things he did, including how once he &some other SS rounded up about 300 Jews, locked them into a 3-story house, doused it with gasoline, and fired grenades at it. Anyone who tried to escape became target practice for the soldiers. The Nazi soldier then asked the Jewish prisoner for forgiveness, so that he could have peace before he died. The Jewish prisoner couldn't do it, and left the room without a word. After the war, the Jewish prisoner wrote the book The Sunflower, and over the years, he asked people what he should have done. Many of the responses he got from people said that he did what he could, and that he wasn't wrong. Because why should someone commit all those terrible deeds, and on his death bed, receive the peace of being forgiven? Is that not unfair? Are there not some deeds that are too horrible to be forgiven?

As the philosopher Herbert Marcuse put it,"One cannot, and should not go around happily killing and torturing and then, when the moment has come, simply ask, and receive, forgiveness."

This is the very mentality of our society today. That forgiveness and grace should be earned. That some actions are too evil and monstrous in nature to be forgiven and just simply let go. But that's why the Christian concept of grace, God's grace, is so awesomely amazing. We hear of all these horrifying deeds, one race trying to exterminate another, one nation fighting against another, even a country fighting against itself, and we stand in terror at how cruel and inhumane we humans can be, and we have a difficult time forgiving and extending grace to one another. But God sees us exactly for the cruel, wretched creatures that we are, and extends his grace to us while we were still yet sinners. And that is amazing. That He would extend his grace to us who daily crucify Christ with our own self-wills, desires, and sins, who without a second thought would mistreat our neighbors, and who would spurn at the idea of giving our whole lives to God.

I'm just beginning to grasp how amazing God's grace is. It's so much easier to comprehend grace as extended from one person to the next, because the situations are so real and easily seen, such as a Jewish prisoner forgiving his captor, a father forgiving the murderer and rapist of his daughter, etc. But to really begin to understand and grasp how amazing God's grace is, I believe, we must first begin to see how terrible our sins are against God. That our sins that we so easily push away and wave off, are as terrible as the deeds committed against the Jews during the Holocaust. That our sins are the very sins that nailed Christ onto the cross; that the justification of those sins required the slow and painful death of Christ on the cross. Only then, do we even begin to understand how amazing God's grace is to us.

"To love a person," said Dostoevsky, "means to see him as God intended him to be."...

We may be abominations, but we are still God's pride and joy.

God loves us, and extends grace to us. I am just beginning to grasp the amazing concept of grace, and I pray that while I may not yet, if ever, fully understand just how amazing grace is, I may learn to show it to others. That as I realize more and more how much grace has been extended to me from God, and even others, I will learn to correctly and lovingly extend that same grace to others around me, and love them and truly see them as God intended them to be.

If grace is an ocean, we're all sinking.