I have been listening to a book by Cathleen Falsani titled Sin Boldly, A Field Guide to Grace. This self-proclaimed liberal Christian, and graduate of Wheaton College, has a wonderful vocabulary and enticing story-telling approach to understanding the experience (as opposed to the theological construct) of grace. It is very similar to Donald Miller's style (think Blue Like Jazz) and to Brennan Manning's The Ragamuffin Gospel in content. I must say that I find this book, and its "liberal" perspective somewhat attractive. Now listen carefully. I said somewhat. The part that is attractive to me is the way in which spirituality seems to be a broader concept than what I am prone to embrace. God is bigger than my manageable mental construct of formal theology.
This pursuit of finding God in "every bush" and seeing His grace in every smile is something that I think is worthy. It is a reminder to me that every person, every experience, every day is a gift of God and a chance to see Him and know Him better. This can all produce worship if I am receptive.
But here's the rub for me. As much as I appreciate the reminder that God IS in every detail of my life, to hear the stories and the insights that each teaches, like a hundred morals to a hundred stories, almost unnoticeably forgets the one prerequisite to grace, or truth, or righteousness: Christ. It's as if the "given" is SO given that it is actually left unsaid, and even unnecessary. It seems that the kindness of a stranger that demonstrates grace, or the ray of light that breaks through the storm clouds on my drive home after a rough day, implying the smile of God and reassurance that it will all be OK, somehow sees God so much in everything that it almost forgets the God it supposedly sees.
What I mean is, all of these wonderful glimpses of God in my daily life cannot possibly teach me about God or introduce me to him in new ways if it is not intricately linked to some matter of fact about God's character or nugget of truth that is confirmable by His Word. Where the "liberal" may be satisfied to have felt the breath of God on his cheek in a gentle breeze, I cannot leave it there. As much as I appreciate a gentle breeze, and am thankful to God who controls the wind and the waves, I need more than just a sense that the God of Nature has touched me gently.
For me, grace is exactly how Falsani defines it: getting what I don't deserve (as opposed to Mercy, which is not getting what I do deserve). But how she sees it, or has come to describe it, does what I mentioned above, presents a God that is so pervasive in all of life that He becomes almost unnecessary. And that is the part I can't swallow.
In my own human experience, I am all too prone to forget God. I can do it on my own. I can figure this out. I can be the change I want to see in the world, to borrow a political slogan. What I need when I am engaged to consider theological truths, is the blunt force trauma of reminding myself that God is bigger than I want to see him, because most days in my selfishness I don't want to see Him at all (or I try my darnedest to ignore Him). But He is NOT a given.
It seems to me that what brings people to this place is more the liberation that comes from the realization that life, and God, and faith is not what you understood it to always have been, set in concrete as a child with all its false impressions. I had a gay friend once tell me that coming out of the closet was the same emotional experience for him as getting saved. That will set you back to consider for a bit. I also had another friend once explain that plunging into a lifestyle of sin was the most liberated and "real" he has ever felt (contrasting the restraint he felt serving the Lord). Both of these experiences I don't doubt, and wouldn't challenge. There is something liberating about seeing the world differently than how it has always been, whether rightly or wrongly so.
It's like the first time you realize that your family is actually different than other families. Do you remember that thought? Before you ever think it, there is the assumption that we have as children that all families eat dinner like this and have the same bed-time rituals like that, etc. We know no other way. But when we have that first hint that this is not so, it is as if some form of scales fall off our eyes and we see a larger world than we ever imagined. There is a liberation in this experience - the possibilities of what is actually "out there" suddenly expand.
I have had this experience, as well as similar spiritual experiences. I don't know what a snake feels like when he molts, but I have had a few experiences in life where I felt like I had shed my skin and walked away with a radically altered perspective. I too, remember wrestling through convictions I had as a youth about drinking, seeing rated-R movies, or even loosing my salvation. As God brought me to maturity in these matters, it has been truly transformational. This is true even as I came to understand God's grace, the very subject of Falsani's book.
The false impressions (and even the safe ones) that we have about God as children need to be replaced (or maybe just clarified) with truth. But somehow it seems to me that a liberal just rejects certainties because she once was certain as a child and certainties have proven false. So a quest for something bigger, something that is not exclusive but broad enough to incorporate all the possibilities that might not be seen yet, is substituted for clearer (as opposed to fuzzy), more mature (as opposed to childish) certainties.
Well, I appreciate the thoughts about grace and the reminder to see God in "every bush". After all, God is bigger than I can imagine, and than I am most often eager to see. But in even these reminders, I will remind myself that God is known by truth first, then experience. But even our experiences must be evaluated, and integrated, by truth (which are certainties).