grace and bedcovers

It is four something in the morning. I am up. This was precipitated by a direct sequence of events that lead to my being up too early. Here's the run down: I opened my eyes. The moon was so bright that it cast a small bluish square of light onto my bedroom floor. I thought about how bright the moon was. I realized that I didn't have any blankets because my wife had taken them all. I thought about the wrestling match between "grace" and "rights." I was up. 

So, lets be honest, I was up a little before I thought about the difference between "grace" and "rights." Actually, I was up as soon as I thought about how bright the moon was. As soon as I actually think, make my brain work, I am a gonner. The two reasons I am writing this morning are that the moon was so beautiful and it was casting these networks of shadows on the snow... and because I had some clear, the kind of clear that thoughts can take on as soon as you wake up, thoughts about grace, and how difficult it can be. When I say "grace" I am really saying God's grace. Yes, I am talking about God, and it is four in the morning. 

You can blame this bit of writing on Jenny, who stole all of the covers. We don't heat the upstairs in our house. We can do this because we had a good friend, who is an incredible insulator, insulate the upstairs of our house, and because we have very warm blankets. It is never cold upstairs, but it can get pretty cool and I love the combination of cool and warm blankets. At any rate, the warm blankets weren't helping this morning because Jenny took them all, and I was cold...cool... whatever. I thought about just grabbing them back, and I thought that would be kind of useless because I am already up in my mind and I knew I wouldn't be going back to sleep anyway. And then I thought that I had a right to those blankets because I had bought them. Rights: what we somehow deserve because of obligation or ownership. I think that "rights" are really comforting. I knew that I could take back those blankets because I had a right to, even if it did risk the wrath of waking Jenny. 

I go to a church that is big on God's grace. Honestly, I am thankful for that. I believe that God is good, and is love, and loves freely and well. This is a great thing, I think, but in this idea of massive benevolence, grace can be a bit hard to swallow. If all of the big things, forgiveness, salvation, kindness, if all of these things are given to me through grace, than I have no real right to them. I have been in churches that have "built in" methods of having a right to them, through sacraments like "Confirmation" and through more subtle, but just as, and even more, powerful rights of passage like public confession of faith and even justified ways of living every-day life. Some churches that I have belonged to hang an incredible amount of weight on the actions of their parishioners. These actions are the justification for the rights that we have to God's grace. And although those parishioners might deny that fact, just break a few key ones and you will quickly see that the doors to that church will be shut, or in more acurate terms, the means of finding the same idea that they have of "grace" will be quickly taken away. There is an underlying, and I believe man-made, system that we have built to recieving and "deserving" God's grace, and it is huge and it is strong. I think it might just be the cornerstones of the modern Evangelical Protestant church, and it is there because having no rights to the most important aspect of faith: justification and grace, is really difficult. 

Without a right, without laying a claim to those things, I can only rely on the constant kindness of the one who is giving them, and that can get old. It clashes with our system in America. We earn, through hard work and contracts, the things that make us secure. Taking these things without earning them violates several major social norms in modern American culture. I have a house because I went to college and earned the degrees which enabled me to get a job that I work at in order to earn enough money to float a mortgage and buy food, and buy oil for heat. All of the niceties in my house, the couch that I am sitting on, this computer, internet access, all of these are earned either regularly, or sporadically by my working. If I am able, I am to work for these. What if they were all just given to me? What if they were given to everyone? It would completely upset the balance of our society. Those with the biggest houses in town would not have the, what amounts to somewhat abstract claim, justifying their ownership of them. The rich would not be rich because of either luck, or work, or family inheritance.

 If God's grace is more meaningful than all of those things, and I think it is, than it is difficult to even think about it just being given to everyone. Everyone. Every Buddhist, Christian, Hobo, Gay, Straight, Royal Family member, Middle Eastern, American, Food stamp receiver, Heroin addict, Self-centered overly-rich Celebrity, Reckless teenager, Terrorist, Defiant curmudgeon, Wealthy socialite, Middle School Teacher. Everyone. "Deserving" cannot be written on that list. It is a foreign word to "grace," and if we can't earn it, how do we know we can have it? Like the my bed covers. I could have taken them back. They were mine, well, half-mine at least. I bought them. Without ownership, without rights, all we have to rely on is the hope that the one giving it to us won't stop, which is essentially, in God's case, a deep down, vital belief that God is good, caring, and will never stop being so, to everyone, not based on how deserving they are, but based entirely on how good He is. Not being able to earn the most essential aspects of our faith is humbling. I must align myself with every other non-deserving person that approaches this God. I have nothing to base my worth on... accept that this God, who loves everyone, loves me. No hierarchy here. No wages. No system. Just foodstamps, handed out to everyone, so we can live humbly and learn to value everyone around us on a different, all encompassing system of worth, not based on ourselves, but on the love that God has shown all of us. 

db