Perhaps the most popular word in all of Christian vocabulary is the word “grace.” A seminary professor of mine used to say, "The Lutheran Church is a movement in the Church Catholic to remind the Church about the centrality of grace." For Christians, the word “grace” refers to the unmerited love of God given to the world through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Arguably, the Lutheran national anthem which used to be A Mighty Fortress has now become Amazing Grace.
So, what’s wrong with the word “grace?” The problem is the word is too easily abused. The old song, Amazing Grace, asserts that God has come to “save a wretch like me.” A wretch is an unfortunate, disgraceful and unhappy person. But you and I are not wretches! We are human beings created in the image of God. We are not in a condition of sin. We have the capacity to act poorly and the capacity to act well. The notion that we are infected with sin, that no matter what we do, the act itself is tainted with sin is just not true. I know the anthropological and theological arguments but they do not agree with the facts on the ground. Human beings are not sinful by nature; they are ambiguous and inconsistent by nature. Let’s not make more or less of what people are capable of doing. They have the capacity for good, the capacity for evil and they do both.
In the Hebrew Bible, the word for grace is hesed. Hesed actually doesn’t mean grace in the Christian sense. The word hesed refers to the kindness or loyal love of God. Yes, grace can be about forgiveness but grace is not intended to make us all into wretches needing to be saved. The word “hesed” refers to a force at the heart of the universe that is working for us and not against us. How this energy or force interacts within our world is puzzling, mysterious, open to doubts and skepticism. But the word hesed or grace is about the disposition of this force, fighting at all times against chaos and madness produced by human and non-human nature. At least, that is our hope and trust.
And grace is not about diminishing our pursuit of what is right and just, so we can do whatever we want, knowing we will be forgiven. The kindness of God is about teaching us to be real human beings. Judaism and Christianity are religions teaching us what it means to live as actual human beings. For Christians, it is fair to say, through Jesus, God loves you the way we are but does not leave you the way we are. For Jews, through Torah, God is constantly teaching us to live lives of character and to pursue justice. And that is grace. That is hesed.
Finally, grace goes both ways. God loves us by hesed alone and we love God by hesed alone. God forgives us and we forgive God. In a world that can be a dangerous place, we humans do what we can each day to stay sane. And God does what God can do to help us stay sane. Don’t let the word grace become a word that degrades you rather than uplift you. Grace or hesed is the kindness we ought show to each other each day. It is the kindness of God in a universe that can be quite unkind.
With respect to being tainted by sin, I think we see different facts on the ground. As I read this, I ate a green pepper. There's nothing particularly wrong with eating peppers, but this pepper most likely was recently picked through workers who worked in unhealthy conditions and were inadequately paid.
ReplyDeleteTo get to work this morning, I drove a car, burning fossil fuel, and contributing to global warming that is drastically changing our environment.
In my community, police occasionally kill black people more or less accidentally, partly as a consequence of trying to give white people a sense of safety.
These situations do for the most part represent explicit evil intent. They are not for the most part closely tied to individual decisions, where we often try to confine the notion of sin. But they clearly represent a sinful condition, from which I benefit, and which I am very much unable to extricate myself by my own understanding or effort. Grace is clearly needed. And organizing.