Christianity Today on grace

Thanks to another blog, I was linked to the following quote from an article in the online version of Christianity Today.

Those steeped in the grace of God know there is no difference between freedom and obedience, and that the spiritual life is all about being compelled. Jeremiah says he cannot hold in the message God has given him (Jer. 20:9). Paul feels obligated to preach to Gentiles (Rom. 1:14). Jesus describes salvation in a parable in which servants compel people to come to a banquet (Luke 14:23). What is the life of faith but one compelled by the love of God to love others? Grace is so extraordinary; it has been known to compel people to do extraordinary things, to do things that fill one with dread, to go to places one would rather not go . . .

We read verses such as that one which tells us that we are bought with a price and quickly misread it to our advantage, or actually to our disadvantage. Saint Paul warns us more than once that we have been bought with a price means that we are now owned by God. The term he uses for himself can be variously translated as either bond-servant or slave. At one point, he even says that woe is him if he does not preach. He says this despite the various shipwrecks, beatings, etc., that he has suffered. He is compelled both by the knowledge that he is now owned by God instead of by sin, and he is compelled by the direct experience of the Holy Spirit which is impelling him on.

The Prophet Jeremiah has the same experience of the calling of God upon his life. In fact, his experience of following God has moments so bitter that he ends up writing the Book of the Lamentations. Have you ever read it? Jeremiah had to preach God’s judgment, and it came. But here is a small part of what he says of his personal experience of preaching what God required him to preach:

He drew his bow and made me the target for his arrows. He pierced my heart with arrows from his quiver. I became the laughingstock of all my people; they mock me in song all day long. He has filled me with bitter herbs and sated me with gall.

And, yet, today one hears all too often of how God is a gentleman who will not force Himself upon you. But, the common experience of the patriarchs, prophets, and apostles was that God called them with a requirement that could not be resisted. It is no wonder that C.S. Lewis has Mr. Tumnus say in The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe that, “He is not a tame lion.” To which Lucy later says, “No . . . but he is good.” No, the line about God being a gentleman has more to do with our American craving for absolute personal freedom than it has to do with Biblical reality.

Christians in America during the 19th century still understood a God who expected to be King. Francis Thompson, who was born in the 1850’s, wrote a poem called The Hound of Heaven. In part, the poem says:

I fled Him down the nights and down the days.
I fled Him down the arches of the years.
I fled Him down the labyrinthine ways
Of my own mind, and in the midst of tears
I hid from him, and under running laughter.
. . .
Naked, I wait thy Love’s uplifted stroke.
My harness, piece by piece,
thou’st hewn from me
And smitten me to my knee,
I am defenceless, utterly.

The poem is actually very long. And, yet, in it one gets two senses. One is the inexorable pursuit of the Lord from which the person is desperately fleeing. And the other is the total Love which is pursuing the author of the poem. But, this love is not the weak sentimental love that we often portray from our pulpits. No, this is something much stronger, much more powerful, and, yes, much more fearful (in the old sense of fearful as in the old sense of awesome). This is a God who is King and who expects to be the head of his Kingdom. As generals have to send their soldiers into danger in order to win the war, so this King sends his servants into battle to fight the good fight. And this is a Love which mystics such as Santa Teresa de Avila and San Juan de Dios picture as being given to us as a pure, burning, and transforming energy of God that will burn out our dross from the inside out until we are truly changed.

We love to read the Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis. We love to read the Trilogy of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien. But, have you ever really looked closely at them? In the trilogy, Frodo realizes that he is the only one who can carry out the task. He is almost pushed into it. Sam, in faithfulness, follows his master into the most extreme danger. Pippin and Merry almost perish. Even those left behind in the Shire find no safety there, for the war tracks down the Shire and spills into it. Can you not see that he/she who follows God can either willingly or unwillingly be involved in the battle, but either way he/she will be involved? That is the God we serve and the Earth upon which we find ourselves. He is a King who sends his servants into battle. He is a Lover who changes us and will not let us stand unchanged and filthy.

And, so, this Great Lent I ask what picture of God you have in your mind and in your heart. Do you have an American God? Or do you have a King and a Lover?