The Problem With Grace

"The Naked Pastor" posts this article about the inconvenient truth about grace.

The problem with grace is that you can’t control it. You can’t control the effects of it either. The results can be disastrous in a community context. In a milieu of grace where we can literally get away with murder, people get murdered. In a context of grace where we can safely admit our weaknesses and sins, weaknesses and sins abound. Because that’s the way we are bent. Which lead to the Roman heresy of concluding since grace abounds where sin abounds, grace must permit and even encourage sin and its expression so that grace can have greater expression. Unless people are jumping to this erroneous conclusion because of your teaching, then you are not teaching grace in its most true and radical form.

My God! My community is in such a mess! Sometimes I pine for the old days when a little bit of religious expectation could lay an attractive veneer over all our crap. But what we are seeing in our community is what’s really here. Why hide it? Why pretend it isn’t here? It IS here! Let’s face it. We all, ALL like sheep have gone astray and there isn’t one of us who is without sin. Not one! Here is bitterness, unbelief, depression, hatred, lust, adultery, promiscuity, separations and divorces, abuse, theft, laziness, lying, drugs and drunkenness, etc.. It’s all here! And it’s all there too, whether you admit it or not. All our feet are swift to shed blood. Not one foot is innocent. I’m always suspicious when people claim that revival has happened in a certain place and everything is just wonderful praise god. What has really happened is that sin has been driven deeper underground.

When I think about “church” this all makes me want to give up. But when I’m thinking right and am thinking about the people, the fellowship of my community, then I’m still in the game. No matter how chaotic it gets. Because this is how I’ve been treated. This is what grace does. Doesn’t it?