my life

I realize I’ve lived my life wholeheartedly seeking my own way. Sometimes I wish I could be Buddha, floating out there in asceticism and paving my own new superhighway to nirvana, just because I know that it would simply as easy as following an Eightfold Path. I think about all these things, wondering how easy it would be if I weren’t born into a Christian environment, how naturally I would pursue after this my entire life and see no problem.

As I grew up, I absorbed church culture and saw that the things that were commended were consistent attendance and outward participation. Nothing more. No one can tell what’s within a person’s heart; no one can judge a person’s true motives. So I felt safe, acting in a stained-glass masquerade.

That’s how I defined myself. Giving Biblical advice, being legalistic, telling myself that if I did as I was told and I fasted and prayed, then eternal life would naturally be earned. There were no troubles or problems because I knew what was right and what God wanted of me, and as long as I did it, then I would be secure in heaven.

This was all well and good, at least until for some unknown reason I felt completely faithless and distraught one night. In the words of Philip Yancey, I “would fear that God might stop loving [me] when he discovers the real truth about [me].” I knew that what I was doing was all to build up my own security, by being valued by other people, and being valued by this superficial Santa-like god who would send me blessings once every-so-often to reward me for being a good boy. That wasn’t the real GOD though.

While reading Yancey’s book “What’s So Amazing About Grace” (thanks Sam), I’ve been better able to understand what IT’s all about. By IT, I mean IT, as in everything we think about, everything we dream about, everything we ask for.

Essentially, IT is the fact that I want every gift possible. I want to excel, to be honored by people, to be honored by God, to live forever in heaven because I’m so good and righteous. I have a strong sense of justice – that people be given what they deserve, what they are due. That’s what I thought Christianity was all about – just a more rigorous, extended moral code that includes love on top of the 5000 other rules that we know are morally correct.

But love wasn’t intended as another rule. Jesus may have said “Love one another,” and we may interpret that as a command, but that wasn’t as much a command as a statement of fact. When He came, He gave up everything to become man, to suffer, to be a King serving His own servants. This is completely unfair – but it still fulfills God’s justice because Jesus as a sacrifice, through grace, was able to replace the punishment that we were to receive for our wrongdoings. God may be just, but that characteristic is undermined by His love and grace – which is worth a million times more than justice.

IT isn’t what I thought it was. IT is GRACE. Part of this grace is the fact that “nothing we can do can make God love us more… nothing we can do can make God love us less.” IT is the greatest forgiveness that we can ever fathom – the greatest debt of all was repaid.

So when I see myself sitting with brothers or sisters in Christ and thinking to myself how much more faithful I am for being at church more often or being more active, I can slap myself. No, I can kick, punch, stab, and shoot myself for being stupid. It’s not about what I do; it’s not about what I believe. Whether I believe it or not, the truth is that grace will always be there.

The only problem is, my arrogance and I are too haughty to apologize sincerely for our sins, even for the dumbest reasons. Exhibit 1:

Chris forgot to do his homework due the next day, so he borrows his friend John’s homework, copies it word-for-word, and turns it in. A week later, he’s sitting in class with John when John’s homework is returned without any of the usual red marks on it. The professor looks at John and tells him to see him after class. Chris looks at John then looks away, knowing what’s about to happen.

After class, Chris waits for John, and hears the professor giving John a loud and humiliating lecture. John comes out of the classroom, a big fat zero on his sheet of homework. Chris looks at him and says, “I’m sorry.” John walks off without a word.

Chris gets angry because John wouldn’t accept the apology. He thinks to himself, “I did my part, I apologized. Wow, what an idiot, I would have forgiven him if it had happened to me.”

Things like this have happened – and when I apologized to my parents, they would always ask me, “What are you sorry about?” I used to hate that, but now I realize that 99% of the time I went to apologize I didn’t do it because I was sorry, but because I hated the tension within the household.

So when I thought I accepted grace, I instead just wanted to come to check off the sinner’s prayer from my list of things to do. To truly accept grace looks something more like… Exhibit 2:

Chris and John were really good friends throughout 5^th grade. But inside Chris’ mind, he always hung out with John only so that he could look better, so that he could shine because he was better than John at most things, as John was handicapped. So when, at the end of the year, John and Chris got into a small argument about who was better at basketball, and in front a group of their peers, Chris looked at John and said, “You know, I can’t believe you think you’re better. If you honestly looked at yourself, you would know that you were worth nothing. If you still want me as your friend, because as you well know, I’m your only friend, then just admit the truth.” John was humiliated.

After that argument, Chris moved away. At his new school, Chris had no friends – he was too shy to make friends, and he knew that in a year he would have to go back to his old school anyway, so whatever people he met, he would probably never see again. So he spent a year in loneliness, and as Chris returned to his old school, he wondered how badly he had hurt John with what he had said – because truly, Chris was the only friend John had, and now Chris felt what it was like to be lonely and without a true friend.

He came back to his old school to see John in a corner of a classroom, sitting in his wheelchair, tinkering with a pencil. Chris cautiously approached John, then couldn’t stop himself – he started to blurt out everything he had ever regretted, what he was sorry for – how he had loved to be superior, how much he had used John instead of treating him as a real friend. John simply looked up, smiled at him, reached into his oversized backpack underneath, and pulled out a huge stack of letters and gave them to Chris.

Chris sat down and began reading these letters – there was one for every day that Chris had been gone. Each one said something along the lines of: “Thanks for being the greatest friend ever. I forgive you for whatever you said to me, because I know you really didn’t mean it. I don’t know what to say except that miss you a lot, just hope you can come back sooner so we can have better times!”

What it means to accept grace is not only to receive forgiveness, but to come with the heart that you know that without it, you were helpless, that without God’s love you were empty. The Chris in this story was able to admit that he was utterly lost when he served himself and his own glory – without friends, and without his best friend. This is the real Chris, the Chris that has seen grace, and can do nothing but accept it. Grace is a gift that we are undeserving of – and Jesus humiliated himself to offer it to us. No amount of apologies could make up for it – which makes it so hard to accept, but at the same time, so great of a gift.

P.S. Why does it seem like every team playing in March Madness has blue as one of their school colors? Of the 8 teams playing tonight, 6 have blue: UConn, Xavier, Pitt, Memphis, Villanova, Duke. Weird.