Why God’s Grace is More Amazing than Yours

You may have seen the story circulated on social media. An elderly woman accidentally breaks some dishes in a store. Embarrassed and ashamed, she begins gathering the broken pieces. While other customers observe, she frets over how she’ll pay for the merchandise. The store manager comes along and tells her not to worry. Insurance will cover the loss. He orders his staff to clean the mess. The woman goes free, filled with gratitude.

The story is intended to give us a picture of God’s grace toward us when we blow it. It warms our hearts, but as an illustration of grace, something is lacking.

John 8 tells about the woman famously caught in adultery. Religious leaders catch her in the act (although her partner in crime somehow escapes their grasp). They throw her at Jesus’s feet, reminding him the law stated such a woman should be stoned to death. Jesus shows her mercy, advising the accuser without fault to throw the first stone. You’re probably familiar with the passage. I heard a sermon on this where the speaker invented a backstory for this woman in which she was sexually abused as a child. This may have been accurate; we can’t possibly know.

This version immediately incites our compassion for her. It places us on the woman’s side, but as an illustration of grace, something is lacking.

In the Old Testament, God instructs the prophet Hosea to marry a prostitute and to cherish and pursue her no matter how often she returns to her former ways. God intended Hosea’s marriage as an illustration of his love for his people, Israel, despite their unfaithfulness to Him. In a popular Christian novel based on Hosea (also recently released as a movie), the prostitute is a sex-trafficking victim since childhood. This premise makes her a sympathetic character, a smart move for an author to make—any author who understands human nature and how a good story works. (It also doesn’t hurt that she made the character beautiful.)

This assertion causes us to root for the character and cheer when she finally submits to love, but as an illustration of grace, something is lacking.

What if the old woman in the store was a rebellious teen who deliberately broke the dishes and defiantly spat in the manager’s face, but he still let her off the hook? We wouldn’t love the story nearly so much, but it would be a more accurate illustration of God’s grace.

What if the woman caught in adultery had been a man who chose an affair out of boredom—but Jesus still let him off the hook? We probably wouldn’t tell the story much, but it would be a more accurate illustration of God’s grace.

What if Hosea’s wife came from a place of privilege? What if her character in the novel was a pimp instead? We’d hate that story, but it would be a more accurate illustration of God’s grace.

Before we mortals can root for those who receive mercy, we want to understand why they did what they did. It was an accident. They were victims. They were trying to fill the empty hole in their heart. Those scenarios make God’s grace so much more palatable to us. Our sense of justice is too strong to cheer for a defiant scoundrel.

Until, of course, that defiant scoundrel is us.

That sense of justice we all share exists because we were made in the image of God. He is a God of justice. He demanded it.

And then he provided it. That’s what Good Friday is all about: Jesus, taking the blow for the thief, for the adulterer, for the pimp, for you, for me. Though each of us is free to reject it, God’s grace came first. In case you’ve forgotten what we’re celebrating this weekend.

Happy Easter.

 

What's the Word?

It occurred to me recently that I can say I’m married to a disabled immigrant and that we are both residential school survivors. It would all be true.

But it would all be so wrong. Is it any wonder the media can spin stories in any direction they wish?

Words are funny things. Take the word “virtual.” I used to think it meant “actual” or “literal” because that’s how I heard it used. So when a radio announcer recently invited people to a celebration event and added, “Virtual only, please don’t come here,” I thought the word had taken a complete reversal in definition. During this pandemic, we’ve attended far more virtual meetings than in-person ones. I now know that “virtual” means “almost” or “nearly.” But now my online thesaurus says its primary meaning is “computer-generated” even though the word was around long before computers.

It’s the same reason we still “dial” a phone number even though phones haven’t come with dials for decades.

How do you feel about the word “commit?” It can mean so many things. To promise, devote, give, perform. It’s a good word and being committed to something is usually seen as a positive trait. So I was surprised recently to learn that it’s no longer acceptable to say someone committed suicide. The S-word is not the problem. It’s the C-word. Apparently, “commit” implies a crime and therefore stigmatizes suicide. I’m still trying to wrap my head around that one.

Then again, I’m still wondering when “impact” became something you do and not just something you make. It’s called verbing nouns.

With all the challenges of our language, how do you know what to believe? The conflicting information floating around about Covid-19 and face masks alone is enough to make your head spin, even without the claims and accusations in political boxing rings. Someone recently posted a meme that said, “If lying really did set one’s pants on fire, the nightly news would sure be a lot more entertaining.”

Some say there’s no such thing as absolute truth. But is that absolutely true?

As far as I know, Jesus Christ is the only person in history audacious enough to call himself THE TRUTH. Talk about a bold statement. Either it’s true, in which case he’s worth not only paying attention to but devoting your life to. Or it’s false, in which case he was either a lunatic or a liar. I see no middle ground. Do you?

One of the things I try to remember when I don’t know how to pray about a situation is simply to ask God to help everyone involved hear and speak only truth and to silence all lies. You can’t go wrong with that prayer, and the only one who can grant the request is the one who called himself Truth. The Word. (See John 14:6 and John 1:1)

As for my opening claim? It’s true my husband immigrated to Canada from the United States—no language or cultural learning curves to conquer. It’s true he lives without his right arm. But I can’t think of anything he can’t do if he puts his mind to it, other than the assumptions others impose upon him. As for the residential school? We attended a Christian boarding school of our own free will and with our parents’ blessing. A more suitable word than “survivors” would be “thrivers.”

If only it were a word.

 

The Ultimate Superhero

Ever wish you could be the caped hero who swoops in and fixes all the ills of the world? Who magically zaps people and heals their diseases, repairs their hang-ups, makes them good? Who wipes out evil and famine and war? Or who, at the very least, helps one hurting person climb out of their self-imposed sinkhole and stand on their own feet?

If you have, you might make a great counselor.

If you have ever sought and received professional counsel for your life and relationships, you know the process can be both encouraging and difficult, but worth it. Taking time to root around beneath the surface exposes emotional rubble we don’t always want to look at. And we all have our rubble.

Whenever I look at mine, one of the most overwhelming and recurring impressions I’ve received has been the staggering size of God’s heart. My hurts and disappointments may be minuscule compared to what others have suffered, but when you multiply those hurts by the billions, for every person who ever breathed, all with our pain and scars, one question surfaces. If God truly sees it all, how can he bear it?

We hear on TV about abused or malnourished children and we want to change the channel because our hearts cannot handle it. The atrocities of war fill volumes. Hunger and disease run rampant. The age-old question about why God allows all the misery crops up easily. It leads many to conclude he may be loving, or he may be all-powerful, but he certainly cannot be both.

And then our protest is silenced by the shadow of a cross.

If the Bible is true, not only does God see it all, but he loves each hurting individual with a love we can only imagine. How can his heart stand it? His capacity for pain must be at least as great as his capacity for love. God’s heart breaks for the abuser as much as the abused, the perpetrator as well as the victim. And on some level, we are all both.

Jesus died on the cross not only for the sins you’ve committed but also for the sins done against you. Not just for forgiveness, but for healing. I don’t claim to understand this, but Isaiah foretold it: “He was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was upon him, and by his wounds we are healed.”

It’s been said that if you can comprehend God, your god is too small. As you celebrate Easter weekend, may God grant you a fresh picture of his heart. We simply cannot put him in a box, understand, or explain him with our little human hearts and brains. We cannot fully appreciate the battle at Calvary, when all the forces of darkness rallied everything and hurled it all at my hero as he hung there. Every vulgar thought, every loathsome deed, every emotional or physical wound ever inflicted. All of it, flung at him as though he committed it all himself.

The suffering will one day come to an end. We have the ultimate Hero. He took it all. He paid the price. It is finished. We win!

Happy Easter.