Embracing God's Grace for All

I once heard Mike Yaconelli, co-founder of Youth Specialties, say, "Never compare yourself with what you don't know about other people." He may have been quoting someone else when he said this, but I wouldn't know who that might be. I remember that it stuck in my mind. It has certainly come to mind recently as I have heard people talk about Biblical characters like Moses, David, Solomon, Paul, even Jesus. I have often wondered why we make assumptions about Biblical characters' lives and decisions as if their whole life was determined by one or a few good choices we read about them making.

In Solomon's case, it is like we trap him into that one thing he did in asking God for wisdom when he could have asked for anything else. Then, immediately following the granting of this wisdom, he comes face to face with a decision regarding two prostitutes fighting over a baby. In the story, found in I Kings 3: 5-28, two prostitutes each have their own baby very close to the same time. One rolls over onto her baby and kills the child, then steals the other woman's baby for herself and putting her dead baby by the other woman. The other mother recognizes that the baby she finds in her bed is dead but also realizes that the dead baby is not hers. They go before Solomon to decide which one is the real mother. Solomon decides to split the baby in half so each could have half, but the real mother protested and told Solomon to let the other woman keep the child. Solomon decided that the real mother, the one who saved the child's life, was the biological mother and she should, after all, have the child back. This is a wonderful story, but Solomon was fortunate too in that he assumed the real mother would speak up to save the child's life as opposed to the selfish notions the other prostitute displayed (which was that if she could not have the live baby, no one would).


I've thought about what we don't really know about Bible characters or people we might look up to or even pass judgement on today. There's just so much we don't know about Jesus' childhood. And there's so much we don't know about his adulthood and ministry and teaching. The Gospel writers wrote what they felt needed to be said in order for others to understand who Jesus was, his purpose in being here, and his relationships with people and with God. But, in terms of a lifetime of decisions and actions, what's printed is pretty minimal. In many ways, reading the Gospels is like watching a sports highlight film. The story of their efforts are told in brief moments in time that really do not speak about the whole.


Often we recognize highlight films for what they are. However, many times, when it comes to people of the Bible we have a very strong tendency to trap those people in the moments of either their courageous and faithful decisions or in their tragic or unfortunate lives. I believe much of this is because, like I said, in many cases, we do not see the entirety of these people's lives before us on the page. We hold many biblical characters as heroes of the faith, and I believe they were, but we often overlook the realities of their lives. The moments of questioning, the moments of doubt, the moments of uncertainty and failure that make these people just ordinary humans struggling to live in relationship to their God. When we do recognize their humanity, we seem to give these characters portrayed in the Biblical text a lot of room to be human, to fail and be redeemed, to fall and be forgiven. However, it saddens me that so often in the church, we do not presently give one another that kind of room to be human. It's as though after the New Testament canon was voted upon and established, there was no more room for God's grace toward us anymore unless we believed certain beliefs, lived a certain life, said a certain kind of prayer, or joined a particular kind of church.

I long for the church to embrace God's grace for all people in all circumstances. I'm not qualified to mete out God's grace only to those I deem worthy because I'm no more worthy than anyone else to receive God's grace. May we in the church spend more time loving and serving people rather than judging and dividing people. I always find it troublesome when ministers, evangelists, politicians, celebrities, authors, activists and others are held up as "perfect" role models because of what we see presented to us through the television media or their written works. So many people compare their lives to those folks and often find their lives lacking for what they are being told they have to live up to. But the reality is, we must be careful as Mike Yaconelli said, in "comparing ourselves to what we don't know about other people." We all need God's grace and we all need to show God's grace to all people. Let's give room to one another on the journey so we can grow, learn, fail, be reconciled, be forgiven, love, and show God's grace without conditions.