What For?
I didn’t used to get out much. For twenty years I learned grace in a pretty sheltered environment. Now, go figure, I go out and speak about it. I have run into a huge tent of people from all strains of this faith in Jesus, deeply wanting to believe this life in grace. Beautiful people. Some of them are becoming our lifelong friends. They are learning to grow real and authentic, learning to trust a daily life lived in grace, believing who they really are in Christ. And gradually they are finding each other. I really believe nothing quite like this phenomenon is happening at this time in history. It was largely unheard of twenty years ago. From all ages, all socio-economic demographics, all educational levels, they are finding each other, much like the characters in the movie “Close Encounters of the Third Kind.” It is sacred and wonderful to watch it and actually be part of it.
Many of this family are angry. They feel betrayed and lied to by the institutional church, by their parents, by their pastors, by authors, by themselves. They’re angry it took them this long to discover what they should have grown up on. Many of them have given up on anything that looks like a local church; mistrusting that it would ever be possible for authentic grace to exist in one.
They should be angry. They should be mistrusting. But there is a trouble with mistrust. It can globalize. You learn to not trust as a way of life. You can gain knowledge without trust, but you can’t become wise, or discerning or insightful, without trust. For truth comes through the heart. And the heart must allow truth or it is not received. This goes a long way in explaining why so many are deeply intelligent and knowledgeable in the Scriptures but not wise and discerning in the things of God.
A lifestyle of mistrust also costs the next person who comes into your life…and all those who are already there. They never get the real, best you.
And anger ultimately never wins anything. It just eventually makes you too much like those whose dead theology you’ve run from. Grace gradually makes me alive, playful, true, authentic, safe, available, sacrificial, honest-but mostly free-for the sake of loving others.
I get weary of those who are just against what they don’t like in Christianity. I sometimes leave them wondering what they’re for. Sometimes it all just feels smug and judging and superior and hip and too cool. That is not grace-it’s probably more just immaturity. It’s much less important for me to know what convictions you are against than what you are for.
There is a subtle trap we who hold these truths so dearly can fall into. We can turn grace into a theological concept to be “right” about, rather than a living, breathing way of life I get to live with others. We can talk about grace correctly; privately building a compelling system and still not get to enjoy living in grace. If we’re simply switching one theology of the head for another, we miss that grace’s ladder is up an entirely different wall. Grace is a call to a way of life with others that frees love-even to the unlovely.
Finally, I cringe at the language which says, “She gets it,” or “he doesn’t get it.” We can turn this beautiful grace into another system of law, complete with a prescribed set of “grace rules” and buzz words you must embrace to be initiated. We here at Truefaced have coined more terms than a mint, but we have no corner on anything, let alone grace. It will look different in every culture. Everyone matures at their own rate, prescribed by the God of grace.
This is a beautiful time in our history where the prisoners are tired and they can’t take it anymore. They are asking questions. Those who grew up in moralism, legalism and performance-driven worlds are attempting to re-read the Scriptures through a lens of grace. We, full of failure, immaturity and clumsiness have a precious opportunity to take them by the hand into freedom. We want to make sure what they find is more real than what they left.
John for Bill, Bruce and all the gang at Truefaced.
Great stuff! I was just talking with some friends about this, or something similar to it. Many of us, when we’ve come of legalism and/or out of the IC, have been legitimately sad or angry or bitter or frustrated, etc, or a combination of any of those things, and I think it takes a while to process everything. The process often includes includes sharing the bitter and angry and frustrated feelings, and being “against” the systems that used to hold us down.
But there definitely has to come a time when it’s not so much about what we’re against, but rather what we’re for. Jesus said He came that we might have abundant life, not life in which we remain bitter and angry. Grace will not keep us in a state of perpetual grumbling and complaining, but will awaken us to the true love, peace, joy, etc that we have in abundance in the Lord Jesus Christ!
May it be that the grace that we receive, through the love of Christ, be afforded to those who sell graceless religion.
Darkness cannot ever conquer darkness, but the light of ONE small candle can be seen across an entire stadium.
In the process, between finding out that we’ve missed a huge part of our birthright as sons and daughters of the Living God… just before we get angry, is the pain of realizing we’ve lived in a lie.
I pray that we live LONGER in the pain… because the stage of grief where we’re living in the pain is SO much more useful in redemption than the anger that follows. Not that anger isn’t justified, or right… but that redemption is better than vengeance, and better than righteous anger.
Hmmm, that makes me think. I use the
“gets it/doesn’t get it” language a lot. Hmmmm…
Great article which raises some important issues which definitely pertain to my own reactions and responses. I was angry for several years at the institutional church. I felt they had robbed me of life, grace, rest and liberty. I am still agitated when I visit and hear the preacher mix law and grace. However, the community of gracewalkers on for instance Fb has been an important source of encouragement and healing. We really need wisdom in our dealings with those who still preach a mixture of the two dispensations. When are we to leave them to the Holy Spirit’s conviction, and when are we oppose them in the Spirit of Paul when he for instance corrected and rebuked Peter?
Re: your comment–I get weary of those who are just against what they don’t like in Christianity. I sometimes leave them wondering what they’re for. Sometimes it all just feels smug and judging and superior and hip and too cool. That is not grace-it’s probably more just immaturity.
I recently resigned from a church where I was an associate pastor. I heard the very same sentiments MANY times. It was almost as if many of the staff wanted to see how non traditional they could get because they have been so hurt by the IC!
So now I wonder, where to go from here? I want so badly to be part of (and perhaps even lead?) a local congregation where at least some of the people are authentic and maskless. I resonate so much with the hunger of Truefaced. I have been deeply wounded, first by my earthly father and then by brothers and sisters–some innocently and some, perhaps, not so innocently. I’m afraid that I’ve played the wearing the mask game so long that I don’t know if I even know how to live without them.
But time is sneaking up. I’m 51 and I find myself asking “what congregation would want a 51 year old pastor who has a boatload of hangups?” Please pray for me.
Thanks
@Glenn – many, many people would like to be part of a congregation that has had a pastor with hangups! I am tired of the and the “perfection” that doesn’t exist. My pastor every Sunday has a sign up that says “no perfect people allowed”. This is when I truly realized grace and that is should not be so hard to be a Christian. God Bless you!
love your article John…..found a facebook group that pride themselves in ‘leaving the institution’…. they are angry, bitter and, huh ummmmmm…..’religious’!
Believe me, the anger is justifiable…..and I recognize it is a necessary part of the journey into Grace……But, my observation is that anything void of ‘Grace’ (the Person of Jesus Christ) is exactly what ‘religion’ is……afterall….isnt what we are angry about? a Graceless, ‘Christless’ church? Unforgiveness and bitterness appear to be the foundation for religion… They have simply become what the church was ‘from the outside’…
The answer is not in leaving……it is ‘finding’……Jesus. I left the church (as a pastors wife) and did not intend to ever look back……I went looking for Him…..but quickly realized that in order to be the ‘body of Christ’ and fulfill His desire for a bride, we need each other in community…..
@ Glenn…….do not give up……a pastor with hangups is a better bridge to Jesus than one with a mask of ’self’ righteousness ever could be…..we have re-entered ministry……one of radical grace…..
building a ‘church’ however has become secondary to getting the message out…………which is the order in which Jesus and His disciples did it….it is not ‘build it and they will come’…..it is tell them and they will gather……at TheWellatCL.com <3 to ALL of you!
Yes! Grace is so…. Amazing that we can’t fully define it, and when we try we limit it, and when it’s limited… grace begins to be…. “ungraced”.
Maybe we should focus on demonstrating grace rather than defining it?
Rob
PS John, Clay and I appreciated the time with you all last October.