When my friend and I talk about God, I sometimes get annoyed because he'll spout off these words that mean nothing to me or mean something that he's not talking about. It took three weeks of listening to him ramble about "staying positive toward God" to realise he meant "making daily choices that please God" - not "having an optimistic attitude about Him."
A while ago, he taught me this one theological phrase that blew the top off my understanding of Scripture and realigned a lot of my attitudes.
"Grace orientation"
Imagine your thoughts and knowledge about God are like a flower. At the root of it all sit the Word of God, your own philosophy and logic. From these things, you draw the central conclusion that God is Love. Love, the stem of your imaginary flower, culminates in grace. Grace is that part of the flower I can't seem to find the name for. It's where the stem joins the flowering part of the plant - that spot where the awkwardly named reproductive bits begin. Shooting out from grace, like bee-attracting petals, are all your thoughts, ideas and understandings about God. This is the ideal of grace orientation, that every verse you read, every passage you argue about should move out from this central point.
To help the phrase make a bit more sense, all theology should be oriented around grace.
Let's start with an ugly truth. If I read my Bible correctly, not one of us dusty creatures deserves Heaven. Quite the opposite, actually. Because we've made such a mess of this world and ourselves, we have all earned a lasting separation from God.
Fortunately, that's not what God has in mind for us.
So, while everything about me points to a ride on the notorious "[Heck]evator", God's gone out of His way to keep me on this side of the flaming gates.
What does this mean for our relationship?
a) Everything above [Heck] is extra.
Let's say I back my car into my sister's car. I do about a thousand bucks of damage. Because she's "just that sort of person", she forgives the debt. In my account of Things-Isaac-Doesn't-Deserve (TIDD), there's an entry of $1000. The next day, having (through some force deeper and stronger than the universe itself) convinced her insurance company to cough up some dollars, my sister treats me to sushi. The TIDD account now reads ($1000+sushi). I run out of gas on the way to work that evening; so I drag my embarrassed butt to my sister's door and beg some gas money from her.
If my sister says, "No.", have I any room to argue, become angry or feel cheated?
Hardly.
If my sister had said, at the start, "I'll forgive this debt; but you need to take driving lessons, so you don't crash any more cars.", can I blame her or call her unreasonable?
Nope - especially not if I've made a habit of crashing into things.
What I deserve is to go gasless and sushiless into a debt hole of a cool grand. Anything above that is "extra" and reason to be grateful.
I deserve Hell. So, when I accepted my invitation to Heaven, I put myself in the red. When I received good friends, an awesome family and experiences other people dream of, I only deepened the shade of red. My good deeds are pennies against billions. So, when I ask for something and God (usually for my own good) declines, I have no room to begrudge Him that prerogative. When He requires of me more than I feel like giving, I am being little more than an ingrate. If He sees fit to let me die a horrid, stinking, violent, painful, slow death that somehow involves months spent eating naught but asparagus-onion-mushroom stew, I will still be in His debt and without room to hold a moment of it against Him. (When I get to Heaven, I doubt I'll be in much of a complaining mood anyway.)
My relationship with God is a bit like my relationship with the best man I know. Since he's always been more dollars-savvy than I, he's treated me to something like forty bajillion movies, beverages, hotel rooms (on various vacations), rides (gas isn't free), meals and who-knows-what-else. When it started, I kept swearing that, one day, I'd pay it all back to him. Eventually, it got to a point where I knew I'd never get there. We'd gone too long and he'd done too much to make repayment an option. Somehow, even these days, I have the gall to sometimes ask him for things. When he can, he acquiesces. When he declines, even I have the presence of both heart and mind to remain grateful toward him.
b) God is good, even when it looks bad.
A lot of people are uncomfortable with the way God handles judgement in the Old Testament and Revelation. The whole "smiting" thing sets them on edge. I mean, if a human kills a a few million people, it's unquestionable that he shouldn't be trusted around other humans and should thus be removed from this world as soon as can be arranged. Yet, when God commands genocide and destroys the planet, He is still Love, Himself?
Two premises helped me with this, though I'll admit it's still fuzzier an explanation than I like.
First, nothing is deserved. Everything is God and His grace. This means that everything above Hell is extra. (So far, we're just reiterating, right?)
A car? Extra.
A house? Extra.
Friends, family and awkward-but-amiable acquaintances? Extra.
Being alive?
Also extra.
Second, humans don't die. Being killed is a short horror that leads to either a wonder that makes the preceding moments a mere trifle of an uncomfortable moment or a deeper horror that makes the preceding pain seem like beds of rose petals by comparison. (Death, as I see it in Scripture, is less like going to sleep forever and more like being pulled off the playing field.)
I do not believe that every single one of the Amalekites Saul was ordered to kill was hell-bound by virtue of being an Amalekite.
Thus, I believe the little ones ("Age of accountability" and all that...) and those among the Amalekites who served God are in Heaven to this day, while those among them who were evil now suffer a fate that I myself deserve.
c) My worthiness no longer matters.
Though I don't deserve heaven or God's love or anything at all, I don't have to squirm around like a pus-filled worm, either. Some people feel the need to behave according to their "worthiness" instead of their position. The thing is, because this whole life's all undeserved, we can freely enjoy it without worrying about whether we've earned it or not.
We pus-filled worm-people are, according to Scripture, God's children, friends and crowned priests. We are these things not because we're cool enough, but because God's love for us is big enough. Our position with God far exceeds our worthiness. So, though I am a colossal charity case, I made it into the yearbook. Even though I'm adopted, I am in the King's will. I hold the position of one that the God of All Things felt the need to sacrifice Himself for.
2) Grace Orientation and the People Around Me.
I've mentioned in previous posts that I sometimes have a hard time with other Christians. Making what progress I have has been little more than an long-term exercise in getting over myself. One of the steps on that journey has involved learning that, because we are all equally undeserving, we are also equally unfit to complain about the company God keeps.
So, while I have a responsibility to Scriptural accountability, I have a greater responsibility show folks the kind of love and grace I've been shown.
Beyond that, if my worthiness is moot, there is not a person, a task or a thing in this world I am too cool for. If I'm not cool enough for Heaven; why would I be too cool to hang out with this or that uncool guy? Why would I be too cool to do this or that task? Why would I be too cool to talk about this or that flaw I have? (This lesson brought me to a place of candidness I couldn't enjoy before.) Why would I be too cool to help someone in this or that way?
If no one is worthy, no one is "better". (Me least of all!) No one is closer to the infinite love and goodness we'd have to possess to BE worthy. This truth leaves me no place for getting a big head nor any room to shun anyone God wants to show His love to.
I put it this way some time ago on Facebook:
"Grace is the messy thing that puts murderers on equal footing with priests - sex offenders with humanitarians. With grace, all things are found not in our merit, but God's. It's messy because our ideas on who 'deserves' forgiveness are suddenly false."
There's more to this - a lot more. If you want to see what I mean, study some of the Bible and spend the whole time remembering that it's all grace.
-isaac
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