Obscuring Grace
We’re all lucky, lucky people…
I sometimes think that the media have been listening to and reading about a different Christianity from the one Jesus preached. Maybe there has been another version of my faith (perhaps called ‘bananaism’ or something), that all journalists are taught when they get to reporting school. This strange faith seems to revolve around the fact that Christianity is all about whether homosexuality is okay, why women priests are good but not women bishops, immersion or infant baptism etc. Every time I read the paper and the article has the words “Church of England” or “Christians say that…” in the title, I immediately know it will be about one of these things, and will most probably have a negative conclusion about Christianity. To me, if I were an agnostic, I wouldn’t believe in Christ on the basis of journalistic comment. Christianity would seem small and petty; as Alpha would say, “Boring, Untrue and Irrelevant”. And the thing is, that’s exactly what it would be if it was in any way a question of morals and p hilosophy. People have always tried to pigeonhole Christianity with other philosophies, religions and moral laws, and then when we claim the bit about Jesus being “the Way, and the Truth, and the Life” they say, “how can you be so arrogant to suggest your way is the only way?”. The answer to that of course is to define the word way. If we mean “way” as the world means it, just based on our actions, then it is indeed very arrogant, and we should have nothing more to do with it. But if we mean “way” in the Christian sense, that is that instead of our lives being about Fred Jones, we make them about Jesus Christ, then Christianity is either very wrong or very right; there is no middle ground. By all this I mean that as a ‘religion’, Christianity is mutually exclusive; it claims Jesus was the Son of God, and all others say that this is wrong, therefore one must be right and the others wrong.
I think that Christianity is right, which forces me to accept that the other ways of thinking don’t add up. The arguments for the truth of Christianity are not my subject, but if we come from the viewpoint that they are true, then Christianity should cease to be for us about morals and rules. It should consist entirely of Grace. The reason for this is that the Bible tells us that theological belief is specifically not enough for salvation on its own. As James says, “You believe that God is one; you do well. Even the demons believe — and shudder!” (James 2:19). As someone said in my church recently, if you are questioning your worthiness in coming before God, do not question. The answer is quite plain: we are not worthy. Fortunately, God does not seem to consider worthiness as the deciding factor in salvation. That is Christ.
Therefore the most important thing in the life of a Christian is Grace, the Grace given by Christ on the cross. We are “a new creation in Christ” (2 Corinthians 5:17). This surely must be the focus of our lives, the daily basis of our existence, for without it, we are doomed in every way. So every conversation we have with a non-Christian about various rules or morals surely obscures the grace given to us by Christ. If we are fully sure of the magnitude of what Christ did for us on the cross, what excuse could we give for this fact not being on the tip of our tongue all day long? The media are doing their best to obscure this grace by going on about the issues our society presses upon them, usually by misunderstanding the message of Christ. Will we let them? At a student workers’ day I recently attended, the speaker told us that God needs Christians to infiltrate all areas of life; I think that nowhere are they needed more than in journalism. If we are going to be attacked for our beliefs, let us be attacked for what is the basis of our faith, the cross, and not any peripheral issues. So make Grace the subject of all conversations you have with non-Christians and Christians. We won’t be lost for words.
For by Grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God
(Ephesians 2:8).