The Good Thing About Grace Is . . .

How would you finish that phrase? Think about it now.

I have ideas circulating in my head for messages/sermons, and I have previously refrained from sharing some of those thoughts here, but tonight I can't.

Tonight at CAKE we talked about the story of Noah's and his big boat. My attention was piqued because just today I began reading a book about the Ark of the Covenant.

Towards the close of the evening, a video talking a bit about TOMS (the shoe company) was played and offered as an answer to some pictures of barbarism and suffering that had been shown earlier. The idea was to get an initial picture of the wickedness of our generation given the opening of Genesis 6 where God decides to wipe humanity from the face of the earth. But Noah is righteous, so he is saved. And then TOMS was used as a corollary to Noah's righteousness. Indeed outright stating that God must be pleased with that picture in comparison to the awful things our age of humanity has produced.

I'm a supporter of GodWhy, both in principle and in practice. I believe in reaching out to seeker's and the un-churched and the anti-churched. But I'm about as theologically conservative as they come, to the point of clashing with traditionalism in some cases. Now those two things don't have to disagree. One of the great discussions of Young Life is the means of culturally relevant presentation of an unchanging message. That Christians must be willing to do whatever it takes to get people to hear the Good New. But if that news is changed, the mission becomes worthless. What's the point if the message changes. And I'm pretty sure a line was crossed tonight.

As soon as the video played alarm bells went off. I was concerned that this was the selected video as a display of modern righteousness. But I waited to see if more came of it. And then as the post video discussion happened, that's exactly where it went. In the end it only barely felt like anything having to do with a church. It felt more like a community organizing workshop or something. Not everyone, but here people were, including leaders, lauding the greatness of the deeds, without regard for the person's relationship with Christ. And that bugs the heck out of me. And scares me.

Just as I was figuring out what I could possibly say, the girl in front of me quickly jumps in and says it all so much better than I ever could have. She points out that salvation is not secured by works, and that it is faith in Christ alone which reinstates us with God. It was succint, it was not academic, it was diplomatic. And the response was that it was totally understandable to have that view. We're not talking about views. We're not talking about opinions. This is as basic as theological facts get. We screwed up. We're destined to die, but God comes and paves the way and says, "Please, turn around. I love you. Just come back."

In 2005 a team of researchers from the University of North Carolina at Chapil Hill's National Study of Youth and Religion released their findings. The most important finding was that most teens, while self-identifying as Christians, were indeed not. Most teens actually ascribed to a new cultural religion called "Moralistic Therapeutic Deism." An excellent article describing this religion and the reactions to the study can be found here. Why is this relevant? Firstly because I was just discussing this very idea last night with Rachel and Nick and Katie. We got to talking about our parents religions beliefs and how much their own theological smorgasbording, when combined with relativism and universalism and social justice theory, gave rise to this new religion. While not practitioners themselves, our parents birthed this beast. Jerks.

MTD is identified by five main points, two of which are significant to our discussion. Number 3 is that "the central goal of life is to be happy and to feel good about oneself." and number 5 is that "good people go to heaven when they die."

The last of these is an odd amalgamation of universalism and works based salvation. "Yes there is a God, yes there is a heaven. And everyone is welcome. If you're good, you get in."

And here it comes. A big ole load of truth. MTD is full of crap. Universalism is impossible to Biblically support, and works based salvation is only slightly less so. Put them together (i.e. MTD) and you're just rolling around in a big load of . . . well . . . you know.

Tonight during Transformers, there was a part where Shia LeBeouf's character says that he knows something will work, and when questioned why he respons, "Because I believe it will." or something like so. Then the music swells and the scene changes is. And Hollywood establishes the shifting recreation of truth based on belief as truth.

And I'm here with happy news. Truth is not subjective. At best, truth with a little "t" can be perspective based, but even a relative difference in what two people consider as cold will not change whether or not the temperature is actually so. And the bigger the "T", the bigger the Truth, the less flexible it is. And no matter how much Christianity wants to appeal to outsiders, or even that Christians want to not deal with hard truths. They are what they are. Or I supposed we could believe that 2,000 years of tradition, based on thoughts and writings of Jesus' contemporary's and their intellectual descendents did not indeed produce truth. I'm sure Brian McLaren has finally really stumbled on the truth.

The worst part, the worst part about this, is that we're not even changing for the better. There's a part of me that understand's the alternative possibility of leavign out information that may put off certain people. I can understand and agree with not touching on certain subjects or ideas until someone already has a certain amount of faith. But the problem here is that covering up this truth, or even worse, changing it, does not improve anything. It destroys.

At the creation of the world, we, people, were so close with God we could walk with Him daily. Every single day we were in His physical presence, which is impressive considering all matter and time and space are dependent on Him, so His physical presence is really only an interpretable projection. Nevertheless, we were there. And then despite having no reason to doubt or disobey God, we break the one and only rule there is. And in doing so, place ourselves in a state of separation from God known as "Sin", with the accompanying symptoms of "sin".

And a works based salvation, universalist or not, paints a picture of a God saying, "well . . . there you are. You're welcome back . . . if you can make it." We think we are doing Christianity or humanity a service by casting the light as,"dont' worry what you believe, just be good."

But the truth is so much more beautiful.

The good thing about grace. The beautiful thing about grace, is that we chose to seperate ourselves from God. We wronged Him. And instead of leaving us there, or telling us to make our way back. He comes running and screaming. He comes scrambling out of heaven to fix our mistakes.

The beautiful thing about grace is that God says, "I love you so much that I refuse to leave you where you are. I'll do all the work. Just accept me."

The beautiful thing about grace is that it means God came down out of heaven, to climb into the mud and experience every terrible thing man could create. To bear its weight. Because He loved you so much He couldn't stand to be away from you.

And every time that hammer fell upon those nails, it was your face that He saw. Whispering, "this is for you my beloved."

You cannot earn a love this grand.

The beautfy of God's gift of grace, is that because we can't earn it, we don't have to.

He takes care of everything, even though its our fault. And all we have to do, is stretch our arms out, and accept it.

And how much better, how much more beautiful, how much more loving, is that, than the idea of "being good."

We can't do such a thing. But that's okay. We don't have to.

Our debt has been paid.

And you can't earn a love that grand.