Christians of all kinds and traditions talk about “grace.” But what is “grace”? And if it’s a message of God’s radical acceptance of human beings, why does it provoke feelings of guilt and condemnation for so many? Finally, how does the message of grace represent an existential threat to the very institutions that proclaim it? These are the issues Dan explores in this week’s episode.
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Hello and welcome to the series, It's in the Code, part of the podcast Straight White American Jesus.
My name is Dan Miller, professor of religion and social thought at Landmark College.
And as always, I am delighted and privileged to be here with you.
And as we always do, I want to begin by just thanking all of you who support us.
Those of you, kind words, encouragement, thoughts about series, those of you who finance us and support us financially.
Couldn't do it without you, and thank you so much.
As always, this is a series that builds off of the insights and questions and ideas that you give to me, and I can be reached at Daniel Miller Swag, DanielMillerSWAJ at gmail.com.
Still sort of digging out from the holidays, getting caught up on some of those emails, but please keep the ideas coming, and thank you so much for them.
I want to dive in today.
Today's topic is, I don't know, a little bit strange, and I hope we'll see how it works, right?
We'll see how it goes.
Because I want to talk about a theme that it's difficult to get at.
I've been thinking about this, and again, with other themes, sometimes they emerge over time.
Sometimes I hear from enough of you that the sort of, you know, patterns emerge, and topics that I wouldn't have talked about begin to take shape.
And this is one of them.
It's different than usual because what I want to talk about today is really sort of a central tenet within Christian thought.
It's a universal theological category within Christianity, which means that it's way bigger than we can get to in like, you know, 15 or 20 minutes.
It's something we could spend, people have spent entire careers developing.
But it's a theme and an experience of the kind of contradiction that I hear about from many of you.
I've heard about it in lots of emails.
I hear about it in conversations.
I hear about it with my coaching clients through the Center for Trauma Resolution and Recovery.
And I was having coffee with a friend recently and it sort of came into view as well.
And so I decided to go ahead and give it some thought.
And here it is, it's the theme of grace, okay?
Now, if you grew up in a Christian background, and I think especially a Protestant background, you heard a lot about grace, okay?
If you are not from a Christian background, it's kind of a weird idea, right?
It's a very churchy word.
It's a word that you're not going to hear that often outside of a specifically Christian context.
And I've had people who are not Christians, students and others, who are like, well, what exactly is grace?
I hear Christians talk about grace.
Maybe there are Bible passages and they say something about grace.
What is grace?
Well, basically, the best way to describe grace might be as unmerited favor, right?
It's the idea within Christianity, and this is true, broadly speaking, within sort of all stripes and varieties of Christianity.
Again, it's a central Christian category.
The basic idea is that human beings, left to our own devices, are sinful and we don't meet up to God's expectations and standards.
But, Christianity goes on to teach, despite this, Right?
God makes it possible for human beings to receive salvation, and this is understood as coming through the person of Jesus of Nazareth, right?
That's probably pretty basic.
People who don't know anything about Christianity probably know that.
Christians are into Jesus.
Jesus somehow brings salvation.
What grace is is just the notion that humans don't deserve that.
There's nothing they could do to earn that.
God wasn't obligated to do that.
That God saves human beings despite the fact that we don't deserve it.
Okay, that's the basic idea.
So within Christian thought, it is God's gracious, right, graceful acts that make it so that we can be pleasing to God, we can be acceptable to God, and that's what quote-unquote salvation is.
There's nothing we can do, again, in the vast majority of Christian traditions, there's nothing we can do to merit or earn God's favor, okay?
And the dominant theme within Christianity, certainly Western Christianity would be a whole separate topic, but it's a little more complicated within Eastern Orthodox theology, But it's the idea that ultimately, then, there's nothing we can do to please God or earn God's favor.
God accepts us only because God accepts us.
It's like a tautology, you know?
Why does God accept us?
Because God accepts us.
Because we don't deserve it.
We didn't do anything to earn it.
And the idea is then that everything that we do within the Christian life should be a response to God's saving activity, not a means of bringing it about or obligating God to save us or whatever else.
Okay?
That's the basic idea of grace.
And I think, right, this is not a theology podcast.
I'm not trying to delve into deep theology.
People want to email me and tell me all the places I'm wrong.
That's fine.
But I think that that's a fair description that almost all Christians could accept.
They'd want to modify it and adapt it and go into greater detail.
Great.
Cool.
But I think that that's a fair description.
Okay?
So there's a lot of permutations on those themes.
And as I say, this is an idea that goes all the way to the heart of Christianity.
Christianity is, you know, give or take a couple thousand years old.
And as long as Christians have existed, arguments and debates and discussions about this notion of grace have existed.
This is not the place we're going to, you know, outline all of that.
Again, it's not a theology podcast.
So why am I talking about it?
The reason I'm talking about it.
Is that in the experience of many Christians, I think that there's a gap that opens up between the message of Christian grace and the actual practice of it.
And again, this isn't just me playing theology, this is me responding to what I hear from people.
I hear people say all the time, I grew up in a church that talked about grace, grace, grace, grace, but... and it's the part that comes after that but that interests me, right?
This gap between that Christian message of grace And the practice, and we can illustrate this with a kind of a conversation.
Imagine this conversation, and this is a conversation I have had.
I have had this conversation in classes with students.
I have had this conversation with people who are not Christians.
I have had this conversation with some people who are, right?
And basically it goes something like this.
You outline, say, this basic account of grace that I've given, And let's imagine we're talking to somebody who's not a Christian and they say this, like, hold on, Dan, hold on, right?
Christianity says that, first of all, the only reason God accepts us is because God chooses to, right?
Nothing we can do to make God accept us and so forth.
We can't do that on our own means?
Yeah, that's right, that's what Christianity teaches.
Oh!
And Christianity also says that the means of our salvation, the mechanism of this grace, let's say, is somehow brought about through Jesus of Nazareth.
You'd say, yep, yep, that's how it works.
And they say, okay, wait, so that would mean though that the means of our salvation has been offered and brought about through Jesus of Nazareth, and if God's love and acceptance, his offer of grace is completely undeserved, That's what you're saying.
I say, yeah, wow, that's a fantastic message.
Like, that sounds phenomenal, right?
Human beings are broken and so forth.
I think a lot of us have a sense of that, that we're not the kind of species we could be.
But God accepts us anyway?
Like, that's huge.
And then they'll say, but wait a minute, I've known lots of Christians.
Maybe I've gone to church a few times.
I've had Christians show up on my doorstep or talk to me in public places trying to tell me that I should become a Christian, and what I see is a lot of moralism and judgment and super regimented controlled lives and guilt and manipulation all in an effort to, guess what, live up to a divine standard.
Or a fear that God won't accept us, but you're saying that this Christian message is that God has already accepted us?
He's already extended grace to us?
And you say, well, yeah, right?
That's the gap.
That's the contradiction that I hear.
And this is what I hear to bring it down into real life.
This is what I hear from folks all the time.
And folks, this is me.
I can tell this same story.
And I know a lot of you could as well.
I'll hear people say, my church talked all the time about God's free grace and unconditional love and acceptance, and I'll just steer you here if you're interested.
Go back, listen to some of the other shows that we've done in this series, right?
The ones about no matter where you are in your spiritual journey, God accepts you and so forth, right?
That language is there.
The language of grace is there.
The language of God's acceptance of us is there.
People say, I heard that all the time.
But what I felt?
was constant guilt.
And what I heard were constant messages of how we had to try to measure up to a kind of impossible divine standard.
And what I experienced was constant judgment about my shortcomings.
I know that what I see is a very telling subset of people.
I know that I can't speak and my experiences and encounters don't speak for all Christians everywhere.
But when I talk to people who are working through religious trauma, they do an intake, and one of the things that it asks, a common question is, you know, what emotions do you attach to religion?
When you imagine religion, remember religion, what emotions attach?
It's not acceptance.
It's judgment.
It's guilt.
It's fear.
And I know that for many people that I will never meet, millions and millions of people, this is what they think of when they think of religion and when they think of Christianity specifically.
And that's the gap that I'm talking about.
Because the uninitiated could say, wait a minute, like, how do those two things fit together?
If this concept of grace is so central to the Christian tradition, why does that gap open up?
Okay?
I think the gap opens up, and this is why we're talking about it on this series, right?
Is that I think it highlights a contradiction that is deep in the code of Christianity itself.
It is written into the code of Christianity as it has developed and been practiced virtually from the beginning.
And here it is.
Very simply stated, if grace and divine acceptance are as radical as advertised, Then the church becomes much less necessary.
Christianity doesn't exist in any identifiable historical form apart from the churches.
The fancy word would be the ecclesiastical communities and traditions in which it has taken shape.
But if divine grace works the way that even Christians themselves say it works, It's not really clear that we need the church for all the reasons that, historically, it has existed.
What do I mean by that?
What I mean is that if it's true that none of us can measure up to a divine standard, and if it's true that God accepts us anyway, Then a lot of what the church has always been and done becomes superfluous.
It becomes unnecessary.
And I think this is what creates that space, that space where that gap opens up between what is supposed to be a central core message of the church, a teaching of the church, and the actual practices and experiences of it.
Right?
For 2,000 years, the Church has made its living being, well, the Church.
What does that mean?
Well, it's made its living mediating between God and human beings, effectively positioning itself as the gateway to salvation.
And this is true of every Christian tradition.
And I know that the people who've studied, like, say, Western history or Christian history or something say, wait, wait, wait, what about the Protestant Reformation and the Protestants came along and this is why they critiqued the Catholic Church.
It's because the Catholic Church stood as an obstacle between humans and God, and they taught that we can have direct access to God and so forth.
Yes, that's what they said.
Excuse me.
It's not what they did.
Right?
The Christian Church, in every permutation, has always existed with the gatekeepers of knowledge about God.
It has been the tradition that tells us how we have to live to meet up to divine standards.
It has been the tradition that interprets God to us.
It has mediated God to us.
That's what the church has done.
And this is still true today.
This is not a historical artifact or something that you just study in a classroom.
It's true today.
Right?
So, ironically, a message of radical grace is an existential threat to the institutional church.
It is a threat to the very tradition that sort of is the guardian of it, that moderates it.
If we take the message of grace seriously, then a good deal of what churches actually do, a good deal of what preachers actually preach, the way that Christians actually practice is unnecessary.
It's even counterproductive.
It undermines the idea of grace itself.
If you run around saying and preaching, God loves you and accepts you whoever you are.
But hey, queer people, you need to change what you are.
Hey, black people, you need to quit demanding so many so many rights.
Hey, poor people, you need to quit demanding that the government help alleviate your suffering.
Right?
Those things don't fit together.
If you say God loves you and accepts you who you are, but hey, teen who has sex, you're impure and dirty and not living up to a divine standard, that's a contradiction.
It undermines the idea of grace itself.
And this is what causes the pain individuals feel in that gap, right?
When they hear God loves you and accepts you, but what they experience is guilt and judgment and condemnation.
They feel the Disconnect between that and what I'm saying is that the reason that gap opens is because of this contradiction really at the heart of Christianity itself.
And this is part of why this series is called It's In The Code, right?
Is because it's in the code.
This is a deep one.
This is one that when I talk to people and say, well, you're critical of Christianity all the time.
It's not really Christianity.
What you're critiquing isn't really Christianity.
I'll be like, really?
Because show me where it's not.
It's not incidental.
It's the heart of the Christian tradition.
From the beginning, and this is also part of the Christian tradition, right?
Again, I want to emphasize this contradiction.
These are both there.
From the beginning, there have been messages of radical grace.
And just as long as there have been those messages, from the beginning, there have been efforts to counter, to blunt the teaching of radical grace by Christians themselves.
It's a tension you can find in the Bible if you want to go dig around in the New Testament and you want to read people like Paul who talk about grace but also seem to emphasize so much you have to live a right way.
Why would they argue that?
Because there were other Christians already emphasizing radical grace.
It's a tension that's there from the origins of the tradition.
It has been present within the church practices and theology ever since and it is a tension that people live and experience now.
And that tension is why Christian messages of grace are often not the message of radical acceptance and inclusion that they sound like.
Again, just listen to the people who aren't Christian to hear that, right?
It's why, again, the clients I work with, when they hear words like grace, it's a trigger for them because of the guilt and the anger that they feel with that.
Instead, the message of grace becomes a wedge that's actually used to manipulate and control others.
The message of grace is transformed into a message of guilt and condemnation over what we made God do, emphasizing the impossible death that we now have.
And what's the point?
The point is, and this is a theme we talk about a lot, the theme is control.
The theme is, if we want to be really blunt about it, the church creating a need for itself.
Because if God accepts you as you are, Then God doesn't need me to tell you how you have to be.
Now, does that mean there can't be any role for Christian communities?
No, it doesn't.
And we're running out of time.
We'll get to all of the caveats here, right?
Which is, do all Christians experience guilt and manipulation in their experiences of grace?
Nope.
I get it.
They don't all.
And I'll get the few emails from folks who listen to me and want to tell me all about how, you know, grace is good and I've got it all wrong.
Cool.
Keep those emails coming.
I want to hear them, right?
There are churches that preach and practice radical acceptance.
There are.
I know of some.
And I appreciate those traditions.
And obviously then, my reflections on grace are not the reflections of many, many Christian traditions.
And for every person who experiences pain and guilt and manipulation, there'll be somebody who doesn't.
I get all of that.
Okay?
But having said all of that, it remains a fact that that message of grace Of God's radical acceptance is expressed to many as a message of impossible human obligation and is experienced as radical crippling guilt.
And that for me is a disappointment.
It's an irony.
It's a contradiction that cuts to the heart of the Christian tradition itself.
Because again, radical grace, a message that originates within Christianity.
Threatens to undermine the institutions that have accrued to Christianity.
And so it is blunted by that very same tradition.
And that is a tension, as I say, that is in the code.
It is at the heart of the Christian tradition itself.
We're running out of time.
I need to thank everybody again for listening.
Again, keep the ideas coming.
Daniel Miller Swag.
DanielMillerSWAJ at gmail.com.
Can't do this series without you.
Please.
I want to keep hearing from you.
I want to keep hearing what those ideas are.
Things that are on your mind.
Material things like the pictures of church signs that folks send me or the pictures of billboards.
I value all of it.
Please keep them coming.
Again, thank you all so much for the encouragement and the time.
Every minute you spend listening to us is a minute you could spend doing something else, and we thank you for it.
And as always, be well until we meet again in this virtual format.
