A Time to Laugh

The Reformation was a time when men went blind, staggering drunk because they had discovered, in the dusty basement of late medievalism a whole cellarful of fifteen-hundred-year-old, 200-proof grace — of bottle after bottle of pure distillate of Scripture, one sip of which would convince anyone that God saves us single-handedly.

The word of the Gospel — after all those centuries of trying to lift yourself into heaven by worrying about the perfection of your bootstraps — suddenly turned out to be a flat announcement that the saved were home before they started. . . . Grace has to be drunk straight: no water, no ice, and certainly no ginger ale; neither goodness, nor badness, nor the flowers that bloom in the spring of super spirituality could be allowed to enter into the case.

– Robert Capon

Since leaving fundamentalism, I feel like those Reformers. I feel like we’ve found a barrel full of Grace — something that was only a rumor in my previous life — and I’ve been just sipping it since, with lots of ice, from a small glass, and with buckets of fruit juice. I’ll get braver as my taste buds are cultivated to know Grace like I now know Rules.

I found this song this week from the Red Mountain Church. It’s a revision of “I Have Decided to Follow Jesus.” Listen to it. Really. I’ll wait ’til you’re done.

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The first time I heard that I was taken back by the changed lyrics. I thought, “Oh. I get it. That’s cute.” The third or fourth time, I thought, “Wait a second.  What was I singing before? With the old version?”

You sang it too, didn’t you?

I have decided to follow Jesus.

I have decided to follow Jesus.

I have decided to follow Jesus.

No turning back. No turning back.

What a weird song when you think about it! I hate to be too English-majory about it, but gee-whiz — I am the actor/agent/subject of every sentence! Jesus is merely the object of the action. I chose Jesus. I invited him in. I choose to slurp his tasteless smoothie. I sit in the formal dining room with Him. I eat God’s healthy food. I keep a neat house/soul. I, I, I. What an arrogant jerk I am when I sing this song!

It misses the biggest sin of all. My own temptation to make rules and make everyone else abide by them. The seduction of seeing everyone else as wrong and me and mine as right. The lure of self-righteousness. The hedge-building. The moralism. The rotten, stinking sin of perfection. After all, I have decided, so I‘m good. What’s wrong with you?

Of course I never wanted to give up my own self-righteousness and follow Jesus. But He rescued me. That’s it. That’s the whole message outside fundamentalism: He rescued me. From myself.

By not recognizing the wretched moralistic sin of self-righteousness as sin, you get Keswick theology. Or just bad theology. Or just anthropology, I guess. Or egocentrism. Or just not-God.

I sometimes fear that many of us (and I include myself) find our definition by our obedience, in our ability to persuade others to be like us, and in our ability to win the battles. There is a lot of ego involved in being good, in being right, and as part of the battle, having others know that we are good and right.

– Steve Brown

In these last two weeks of remembering how God grabbed us by the collar and dragged us out of fundamentalism two years ago today, I brooded about past conversations, wistfully remembered dear (and too often former) friends, and cried over God’s goodness and my own Pharisaical actions.

There was one conversation from November 2007 I couldn’t get out of my mind. We were told that we shouldn’t say this or that because it was sin and Christ’s work couldn’t be done if we sin. We couldn’t be blessed. We were “sitting in the seat of the scorner.” We were bitter. We need to be silent in order to prove that we weren’t bitter. So that God could use us.

Same song, thirty-second verse: “SHUT UP!” Grant actually got a similar email saying the same thing this week.

The thrust of that 2007 conversation, however, was this challenge from our old friend: “There is not one example in Scripture of what you’re doing on your blogs. All confrontation is done privately in Scripture. It is never public. I challenge you to find one example of what you’re doing in Scripture.”

I remember sitting there with this genuinely confused look on my face. I remember saying something about how there are sages (those who speak within a culture) and there are prophets (those who speak from outside a culture), and the Bible has examples of both (obviously!). He insisted that only the sage’s posture is biblical. I got an even more confused look because I know a little bit about this kind of stuff. I said, “It seems to me that everything God has taught me in my education and my experience has brought me to the point of uniquely being able to speak on this issue. Why would I be silent?” He again insisted, “I challenge you to find one example in Scripture.” The presumption being, of course, that such example didn’t exist. And when a religious professional tells you that it’s not in the Bible, you’re supposed to just believe him.

But deep down, like at the end of a tunnel, stuffed with pillows, behind a wall of cement blocks, I heard a tiny Voice screaming, “NO! He’s wrong! HE’S WRONG!! Don’t believe him!!”

I didn’t know what that Voice was yelling about until this week. And it’s not just an example from the Bible. It’s the Example Himself:

Jesus went straight to the Temple and threw out everyone who had set up shop, buying and selling. He kicked over the tables of loan sharks and the stalls of dove merchants. He quoted this text:

My house was designated a house of prayer;
You have made it a hangout for thieves.

Now there was room for the blind and crippled to get in. They came to Jesus and he healed them.

Jesus’ cleansing of the Temple was bold, loud, and raucous. It seemed obnoxious and ill-tempered to the religious elite. It was certainly unconventional and far from being “tempered with gentility.” But it was, of course, good and just and full-of-grace.

The sick and the lame couldn’t get to Him, so He destroyed the barriers. Jesus wasn’t trying to convince the religious elite of anything; He was loving, healing, breaking down doors so He could nurture people. It’s the most public and active example that we have of Christ’s actions to stop religious corruption. And it was beautiful to and necessary for everyone in need! What an amazing Example we have!

So now I just giggle at those who chide me for not being “tempered with gentility.” Of course not! Jesus wasn’t either!!!

And I never saw it until just now. Neither did my old friend. It’s hard to see Jesus in fundamentalism. He’s there, but He gets covered up. Or hedged in.

I s’pose I’ll keep hearing new things outside of fundamentalism. A couple friends have emailed me a few that they’ve noticed this week — the praying for the invisible Church, the communing with each other and with Christ over the elements as not a threat. The list will continue because . . . well, the 200-proof Grace takes forever to digest.

No, I really never, ever wanted to follow Jesus. I didn’t. But He grabbed me and showed me the Way. And there’s no turning back. I was home before I started!

It’s been eight years since we said goodbye to our Elise. I still get anxious as June comes to an end. I get urpy when the starry bunting goes up for sale. I still feel wistful when we watch the fireworks in uncomfortable lawn chairs. It still feels like someone’s missing.

I still try to make her extra short life meaningful and happy. I’ve smocked some dresses for other little girls who’ve gone to Heaven before their first breath. I try to do it every year, but once my little brood on Earth doubled, I had a hard time finishing. I started one dress three years ago (!) that I’m determined to finish this summer.

But my grief has changed. I’d like to think it’s “aged.” Like wine. Sweeter.

All because of these little people around me.

When they see a little girl in a picture book, Isaac explains to his brother, “Gavin, that’s Elise!”

When he asks about Heaven, he imagines that her house “smells like grapes.”

When they look at my baby charm bracelet, they ask about each charm — the ones for themselves and for their siblings in Heaven. I explain that they for sure had an older brother in Heaven.

“What’s his name?” Isaac wonders.

“Well, we didn’t name him, honey, because we didn’t get to know him enough. What do you think his name is?”

He thinks. For a long, long time. “Sonic. Yes, Sonic!”

Awhile back I told them that when they find a penny on the ground, that’s Elise saying “hello!” This helps them and me. They feel connected to their sister and it helps me remember. And it saves me from having to lean over to pick up any change we find.

On a recent and long car ride, Isaac pensively decided, “Mommy? I think that Papa and Sonic are sending me pennies from Heaven too.”

He is planning a party for Elise’s birthday. “She’s never seen a train movie. So I think it should be trains. . . . and red. She needs a red cake!”

Celebrating is so easy for him. So joyful. I think, thanks to these little ones, my grief is growing up to be more like theirs. It’s maturing to be more like a child’s.

A foretaste of Heaven, if you ask me.

Cross-posted on Mothering by Grace

So I do know this — that the grace that justifies is the same grace that sanctifies. I know that much in my head.

But understanding what that really means takes me a lot longer. I need to hear it over and over and over. In different ways. Lots of different ways.

And it still surprises me.

So that’s what our pastor brought to a fine point when he said:

We didn’t merit salvation at the beginning, so we can’t keep it through our merit either.

Oooooh! Yeah!! You’re right!!!! Then what’s with the guilt trip I’ve been on for a couple of decades?

What they say in fundamentalism is that if they don’t preach “standards” or “rules” or “responsibilities” or “duty,” there’ll be chaos. That we’re all bent toward lawlessness, right? It’s the natural course of events. So we must fight lawlessness! We need rules! We need authority!!

But in the spectrum between hypernomianism (legalism) and antinomianism (lawlessness), true Christianity lies closer to the antinomian side than its opposite (because we have a natural bent toward legalism too!!). We’re supposed to be more Anne Hutchinson than John Winthrop. More hippie than Hitler. More play-at-home-mommy than prison matron.

But don’t take my word for it. Take Martyn Lloyd-Jones‘:

There is a sense in which the doctrine of justification by faith only is a very dangerous doctrine; dangerous, I mean, in the sense that it can be misunderstood. It exposes a man to this particular charge. People listening to it may say, “Ah, there is a man who does not encourage us to live a good life, he seems to say that there is no value in our works, he says that ‘all our righteousness are as filthy rags.’ Therefore what he is saying is that it does not matter what you do, sin as much as you like.” . . . There is thus clearly a sense in which the message of “justification by faith only” can be dangerous, and likewise with the message that salvation is entirely of grace. . . . I say therefore that if our preaching does not expose us to that charge and to that misunderstanding, it is because we are not really preaching the gospel.

Steve Brown teases us toward understanding the same sanctifying grace by giving away “3 free sins” and by talking about our scandalous freedom in Christ. He states it like this:

Now hear something very important: while the apostle Paul was not antinomian, he was very close to it. Just so, while the Reformation leaders were not antinomian, they were very close to it. Also, while the Christian faith is by no means antinomian, it is very close to it.

What’s the point? Paul would never have had to write a defense of his teaching on freedom if he had not been very close to heresy. Martin Luther would never have had to come back from Wartburg (where he was in hiding) to straighten out the libertarians in Wittenberg if his teaching had not at least implied something close to what they were doing. The Christian faith would not have had to deal with the heresy of antinomianism unless there was something in it which seemed to imply that particular heresy.

That brings me to a syllogism with two premises and a conclusion. Premise: The real Christian faith is close to antinomianism. Premise: A lot of modern day Christianity is not at all close to antinomianism. Conclusion: A lot of modern day Christianity is not real Christianity.

And I never heard that in fundamentalism. Not anywhere. Not ever.

From the moment we stepped into other-than-fundamental churches, we’ve heard about grace. Not just grace at justification that saves us from hell fire, but grace at sanctification that keeps us close to God and growing in Him. A grace that is not earned — like a boss who passes out merit badges for my meeting quotas — but is lavishly and consistently given. It’s part of the all-things-new atmosphere — life-sustaining, nurturing, and satisfying. It’s that God-as-Loving-Father metaphor that dominates a grace-focused soteriology. But I’ve talked about all that before.

So it was in that spirit that our pastor quoted Steve Brown:

The greatest cause for our not getting better is our obsession with not getting better. There is a better way of getting better than trying harder. Sanctification becomes a reality in those believers who don’t obsess over their own sanctification. Holiness hardly ever becomes a reality until we care more about Jesus than about holiness (53).

Brown channels Luther when he defines sanctification as “getting used to being forgiven” since “people who are forgiven, generally get better . . . but they never get better enough to earn God’s love and grace.”

There’s more, of course. Lots more. And it’s so different. Before I heard sermons on “How to Get God’s Grace:”

Stubborn people have no grace. . . . God says, “if you wanna go down My path, I will give you all the grace you need. But if you wanna go down your path, I’ll let you go down that path. I will take away all the desire to do My will. I will take away all the power to do my will. And furthermore, while you’re going down that path, I’m gonna shoot at you! I will give grace only to the humble.”

Which, I’m discovering, is a page taken right out of Bill Gothard’s playbook (i.e. “The Umbrella of Protection,” “Circle of Blessing.”). Almost word-for-word. And from other moralistic legalists throughout the centuries. It’s our natural bent to think we can do this on our own and that God’s evil and tyrannical and vicious and limited by some arbitrary “umbrella” or “circle.”

But God’s not shooting at us. He’s carrying us. He’s not a mob boss or a prison guard. He’s our Daddy.

Does that title startle you? It should.

“Getting Grace from God” by Jim Berg, BJU Dean of Students, was the formal title of the sermon that made the rounds on campus when the Spirit started poking me awake way back when.

Again — listen. Don’t take my word for it. Just look at these words carefully. And get out your Bible and read what it really says. It isn’t this.

There is even a more pointed definition [of grace] that we could, we could take, and that is from Philippians 2:13 even though this verse does not even mention grace. But Philippians 2:13 talks to us about the work of God in our lives–this divine help. And, and broadly speaking we could call grace divine help, divine enablement. But Philippians 2:13 kinda gives us a little better window into a working definition of what it is like when God is enabling us and working in us.

And Philippians 2:13 says, “for it is God that worketh in you both to will”–creating a willingness, a desire–and giving us the power, He says, “to do of His good pleasure.” So when God is working in us, He’s doing two things He says here: #1 — He’s giving us, He’s creating desire in us to do His will and He’s giving us power to do His will. And I think that’s about the best definition I’ve ever heard of grace. It is that God is working in us, creating in us a desire and a power to do His will. When God is working in us, giving us his grace, we have desire to do things we normally wouldn’t want to do. And we also have the ability to carry out those things that seem impossible to us.

And there are a lot of times in my life when I’ve looked at what I have to do, and I had no desire to do it. I’ve looked at it all and said, “I just want to close the door and leave the office and not come back for a week.” And you’ve had situations like that. There just is no desire. I just don’t want to do this right now. and I have no power to carry it out.

Well, that’s because I’m lacking God’s grace at that time. And we’ll talk in a minute about how to get it (2:38+).

And you know, your life and my life ought to have the stamp of the Supernatural on it. That somebody looks at that and says, “How on earth does all that get done?” And we ought to stand back with them and say, “I don’t know either. Except for one thing, God is doing something amazing here. It’s supernatural desire and power to do His will” (5:50+)

There is Grace for everything. And God says I will give you the divine help to do whatever you have in front of you. . . . if you’ll turn on the faucet. And we’ll talk about that (12:46+).

We have to do right and be sweet about it anyway, and we can with the Grace of God!

The reason you’re so bitter is because you don’t have Grace.

It’s not a problem with the rules, it’s the problem that we don’t have grace. It’s not a problem that WorkBrain has changed our life. [laughter] It really isn’t, folks. Nah, I mean there’s some bugs that have to worked out occasionally in any kind of new thing. But anybody who’s sitting around griping about that, whether it’s in a faculty lounge or in a room, and complaining doesn’t have the grace of God! I mean, again we may as well wear a t-shirt that says “I don’t have the grace of God right now” because that’s exactly what we’re saying to everyone that’s watching. “I’m in a hard situation that I don’t like and I don’t have the grace of God and I’m upset.” I tell you what, if our Lord was on this earth and had to use Workbrain, He wouldn’t be fussing at it like some of us have. He wouldn’t do that . . . because He has the grace of God (18:46+).

The fact that we’re so frustrated and so upset shows that we don’t have the Grace of God because He’s promised that He will make all grace abound toward us (19:43).

If you’re losing the moral battle, folks, you have no Grace from God (21:39+).

Stubborn people have no grace. The faucet does not come on. That’s why all kinds of little things and big things irritate the fire out of them. There is no grace. . . . God says, “if you wanna go down My path, I will give you all the grace you need. But if you wanna go down your path, I’ll let you go down that path. I will take away all the desire to do My will. I will take away all the power to do my will. And furthermore, while you’re going down that path, I’m gonna shoot at you! I will give grace only to the humble. The one who says ‘God can be God in my life!’” (28:19+)

The gospel of justifying faith means that while Christians are, in themselves still sinful and sinning, yet in Christ, in God’s sight, they are accepted and righteous. So we can say that we are more wicked than we ever dared believe, but more loved and accepted in Christ than we ever dared hope — at the very same time. This creates a radical new dynamic for personal growth. It means that the more you see your own flaws and sins, the more precious, electrifying, and amazing God’s grace appears to you. But on the other hand, the more aware you are of God’s grace and acceptance in Christ, the more able you are to drop your denials and self-defenses and admit the true dimensions and character of your sin.

Timothy Keller, Paul’s Letter to the Galatians: Living in Line with the Truth of the Gospel

It’s weird to go back and see what God was doing in our lives a year ago. To see the questions I was wrestling with. Go back and look. Look how many of those things He’s ironed out.

It’s been a good year since the ultimatum exactly a year ago today. A very, very good year.

Maybe it’s because it’s all in the same month, but I can’t help but compare the grief and mourning over losing Elise to this latest, now-one-year-old loss. The comparison is revealing, and it helps me understand and express what needles me about the way conservative Evangelicals at large talk about ourselves, our trials, our humanity, and our God.

“They” say that losing a child is so hard because our culture lacks the words to express the grief. When you lose a parent, you’re an orphan. When you lose a spouse, you’re a widow(er). But there is no word to describe you when you lose a child. The tragedy is that unthinkable.

I’ll say it again — we as (former) fundamentalists don’t have a way to talk about leaving. We’re told to simply shut up. “Get over it. There’s nothing you can do about it anyway! You’re gonna get bitter if you keep talking about it.” It’s another kind of denial of the problem. And if you deny the problem–the sadness, the loss–exists, it simply stalls your healing.

I firmly believe that the Spirit is working here in Greenville. I can feel it. I told a friend awhile back that it feels like pre-term labor around here. That the contractions get closer and closer and closer, but . . . they . . . stop. Practice labor. Getting the Body ready for something, but we just don’t know what yet.

But it’s coming.