COUNSELING SERVICES

JOURNEY INTO GRACE

People often joke about qualities that they have desired, especially patience, saying that when they pray for this quality they receive in their lives people and/or situations that require them to grow in the desired quality. In another context, author George MacDonald said to us through one of his Scottish characters that there are certain concepts that we don't really learn or understand until we live them. This has been the reality that I have experienced concerning the quality of grace. It is a character quality in which we grow.

The quality of grace

What is grace and how can it become a personal quality? The primary definition of grace describes the gift of life offered to each human being without merit by God through Jesus' death, burial, and resurrection. We have only to accept and believe that Jesus is God's only begotten son and that he took on our sins in order to pay our penalty, thus making a way for God to forgive our every sin. When we accept this unmerited forgiveness, we then enter a state of grace with God, crossing from judgment into life. In our new life, we then begin the transformation of our minds and hearts taking on more of the likeness of Christ as we progress through years of learning, experience, and growth. It is this likeness of Christ and presence of him in us that enables us to extend grace to other people. It is this extension of God's grace and love to people that shows others more of the nature of God. So this virtue coming from God is both a gift and a growing process.

I have learned that there are a few components of grace that give us different opportunities for growing. They are:

1. To show grace to another, we separate the sin from the sinner;
2. God's grace in us involves having compassion for people we are observing in their sins, because what they need is more of God and his love in their lives; and
3. Grace involves the constant awareness that every person is capable of every sin given the particular circumstances. Therefore, God's grace is the ultimate leveller. Every sin weighs the same as far as forgiveness is concerned, and no person has anything to boast about except the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

The challenge of compassion

I first began seriously thinking about the concept of grace about 25 years ago while meditating about Jesus on the cross. Here he was slowly suffocating to death and his prayer was to ask his Father God to forgive those involved in his crucifixion because they did not know what they were doing. This compassion was far beyond my human ability to comprehend. Knowing that Jesus is our primary model, I began to ponder how it is possible to have this depth of compassion. It became my prayer that God would bless me with the the ability to see people who were doing terrible things and to feel sorry for them because what they needed most was to know God's love and grace for them.

A fellow human being who became another model for me of compassion so real and so deep that it hardly seems possible was Corrie ten Boom's sister Betsy. Betsy is described in Corrie tenBoom's biographical book, The Hiding Place. Physically, Corrie was much the stronger of the two, but in the ability to love and forgive Betsy had a rare capacity. The two of them were sent to a work camp after their family was found to be helping Jewish people escape from the Nazis at the beginning of WWII. The women at this work camp were cruelly treated by the guards – raped, often beaten, jeered at when standing naked before their disinfectant showers, and forced to do long hours of hard labor. Repeatedly, Betsy commented that she felt so sorry for these men because they did not understand God's grace and love for them. Her amazing love in the face of cruel treatment and eventual death seemed to me to be only second to that of Christ on the Cross as he was dying.

I wanted to understand this kind of compassion and I wanted to be able to have this kind of compassion for others. For many years I have often prayed that God would develop this grace in me. Slowly, gradually I am gaining some comprehension of this amazing grace. With my prayers for understanding there began a succession of people and situations that stretched my capacity to be gracious.

Learning from experience

During my early twenties there was a person in my life who's personality was especially difficult for me. I was concerned about my lack of grace for this person and prayed for more. The person did not change then and still has changed little, but I have done some growing and learning during the years since my early twenties. During the years that I was in closer community with the person that I found difficult, I prayed often for the ability to have compassion and grace in this relationship. There is still so much more to learn. I still find myself getting annoyed by people with certain kinds of personalities. It is God who is gracious and enables us to function graciously even though we have limited understanding and capability.

An experience in my life that shook me to my core began when I received the call that my brother was dying of pneumonia. As soon as I got the phone call that he was in the hospital and would not likely survive his illness, I knew that his imminent death was due to the AIDS virus and that it was his homosexual lifestyle that had exposed him to this deadly disease. My emotions were many. There was a great deal of anger toward the homosexual community. There was great sadness that my brother was dying at the age of 34. There was helplessness, pain, love, and concern about his relationship with God. We did have some discussion about the fact that there is nothing anyone can do that will cause God to quit loving them. There also is nothing that he could do that would cause me to quit loving him. I believe these communications ministered God's grace to him.

The experience of watching my brother dying in the hospital, while dealing with huge pain and anger, was a stark example of separating the sin from the sinner. In his case it was easy to do this because while I loved my brother; I hated the sins in his life that were killing him. Expressing God's love and grace toward him came naturally for me.

Another step in the process came when I was in a counseling internship in which I observed therapy to sexual offenders and domestic violence offenders. Before doing this observation, my impression of people who would do these things was that they must be inherently evil and that they would look evil. However, when I sat in many many group therapy sessions, I was struck with the fact that the people receiving this therapy were similar to everyone else. They were human beings who had a deep need, probably deep wounds, and a huge need to know God's love and grace. Only two of the many that I observed could be described as sociopaths who had no conscience concerning the way that they had hurt people. I began to have more understanding of the truth that everyone is capable of every sin. These guys could be anyone's brother, father, son, uncle, or neighbor. There was nothing about their faces that would separate them in a crowd.

Another counseling internship experience brought me a step further in grasping God's grace. I worked eight months at a drug and alcohol rehab facility. I was given charge of a group that fluctuated from six to twenty men. As I spent time teaching and leading these men, I came to love them as individuals. God gave me the acceptance of them as fellow human beings, and the compassionate love that wanted their healing. As the men in rehab began to have body systems clean of drugs, they began feeling good physically and hopeful about their lives. They began returning to the personalities that had changed during their drug use. Not all succeeded in their quest for freedom, as chemical addictions are extremely hard to escape. They had begun a battle that would last the rest of their lives. This fact demonstrated to me the enslaving nature of sins and the warfare of our soulish natures against our spiritual nature when it is given to God for renewing. The Scriptures in Romans 7 and 12: 1 & 2 were used many times in ministry and teaching of these men who were struggling toward freedom.

Models in fiction

It is my opinion that an important truth can be expressed far more clearly and powerfully through fiction than direct teaching when the fiction portrays this truth through the life of a character. An obvious example of this is the Chronicles of Narnia by C. S. Lewis. Through metaphor, Lewis portrays relationship with the Lord in the lives of the children having adventures in Narnia. As relationship is played out before us, so to speak, we can 'see' in the children's relationships with Aslan how we can have relationship with Jesus. Additionally, C. S. Lewis considered George MacDonald his mentor. In MacDonald's novels, fantasies and allegories we become acquainted with many characters who live out Christian principles in everyday living.

Frank Peretti is a more recent writer who gives a depiction of spiritual warfare in his books, This Present Darkness and Piercing the Darkness. These stories demonstrate the concept of separating the sin from the sinner graphically as he depicted the levels of reality present in real people's lives. They show the demons manipulating some characters as if they were marionettes, while the Christians in the fictional towns were cooperating with God and the angels to fight the demons through intercessory and warfare praying. The agendas the demons were pursuing were agendas their victims were not aware of, but in the spiritual dimension the angels were fighting against the demons and their agendas at the direction of the intercessory prayer of Christian people.

A contemporary of C.S.Lewis, Charles Williams, is another writer who shows levels of reality in his stories in a way that helps to clarify how those levels interact. My opinion is that some of his books accomplish this goal far better than others. His book, Descent into Hell has provided me with another role model. The protagonist in the story is a poet who has written a play which is being produced in his sleepy little English village. This poet has a depth of spiritual vision that enables him to be aware of spiritual implications of earthly actions better than most of the people around him. He had a friendship with a grandmother in this village who also had the same discernment and maturity. With this woman alone, he spoke openly about his thoughts and observations. He mentored her granddaughter as she began to take tiny steps in the direction of comprehending faith, trust, and grace. He also helped this young woman to face her fears as he interceeded for her in prayer.

In the production of his play, he did not feel the need that everyone understand his play nor that the portrayal of the drama would have a certain cadence, or costumes, or directions. He knew that some would understand the truths in the play and some would not. He let everyone be where they were in their spiritual discernment and maturity without effort to manipulate or teach, knowing that his responsibility was only to present the material and that each person was responsible for himself and herself to take in the truths with the help of the Holy Spirit.

This character demonstrates the gracious way that Christian people can walk in relationships with people at all levels of spiritual understanding, relationship with God, and absence of relationship with God. The ideal of grace in our lives, as I understand it in this model, is to walk among people loving them, offering them grace, offering them any words of encouragement or truth that we feel directed to offer by God, while not judging and not pressuring the people to fit any idea we may have of what we think their lives should be like. When directly asked for wisdom by the granddaughter or the other young people acting in the play, he taught and guided. When not asked, he was silent, knowing that God is fully capable of leading every person deeper into reality in his own timing and methods.

When a person was officiously insisting that the play 'should' have a certain kind of costumes, he allowed her to go forward with her ideas even though it was not the way he would have designed the costumes. He treated the officious neighbor with amused kindness and grace. In so doing, he demonstrated the relative unimportance of our accomplishments and creations when compared with the importance of showing loving kindness to every person. Being gracious and loving to this person was more important than the costumes for his play.

Stepping out in grace

This model represents to me possibility of further steps in my journey. The challenge is to be closely involved with people of all walks of life while being loving and nonjudgmental, observing where they are in their spiritual walk without taking on the responsibility of trying to get them where I think they should be. Walking in Jesus' footsteps we can look on humanity all around us with that compassion that wants for them to know and experience the love and grace of God. Jesus told us that in his ministry on earth he said only what he heard the Father saying and did only what he saw the Father doing. I believe this is also meant to be true for us. God has the master plan.

God is gracious and wishes to fully transform our minds and hearts to be Christlike.