Scandalous

Grace.

Scandalous grace.

I want to just say this word over and over.

gracegracegracegracegracegrace........

In that last 24 hours I have cried with my daughter who is working in NYC this summer fighting sex trafficking, I have heard about a friend of ours, a pediatrician, who attended a three year old rape victim in the middle of the night last night (yes, I said three year old rape victim), I have read several blog posts regarding the raiding of brothels in Southeast Asia where children as young as eleven were being used night after night for sex, I have read a blog post where the author had recently ministered to a woman whose best friend and best friend's two week old were shot in cold blood by the father of the baby in front of their four year old child.  I have cried with a friend whose family is being torn apart due to the practice of witchcraft and sorcery.  I have cried with another friend whose dreams are being shattered by the sinful lifestyle of someone very close to her.  

Friends, the world is not getting any better.  I think most everyone has come to this conclusion.  What I think many people are not willing to admit is that our problem is an issue of the heart - and here is the scandal.  We are all wicked.  Every one of us.  Wicked to the very core.  There is but one answer to the problem of our pain- and therein lies the rub.  

Scandalous grace.

You see, deep within the heart of the man who shot his two week old baby in cold blood is a kind of pain that is unfathomable to me.  Deep in the heart of a man who rapes a three year old is a sickness that probes depths that I can not begin to wrap my mind around.  A soul sickness.  We can call them evil monsters - and they are.  They are driven by the father of all evil - and he is certainly a monster.  There is no justification for this type of behavior and I am not offering any.  God clearly has infinitely more mercy to offer than I do in these types of scenarios.

However, in addition to the things I mentioned above - today I have also cried with a dear friend whose teenage daughter is being bullied, shamed, and plotted against for no reason -- by an adult woman who goes by the name "christian."  A woman who is leader in their local christian community - a woman who is bent on turning others against a young girl because she doesn't approve of certain choices the family makes concerning clothing style, travel opportunities, and the amount of make up they allow their daughter to wear or not wear.  As much as I am horrified and devastated by the physical pain inflicted on innocent children by the perpetrators that I mentioned above, I am equally sickened by the way people who claim to follow Christ treat their brothers and sisters in the Lord.  We are shooting our own wounded - with startling regularity.  

In her book Give Them Grace by Elyse Fitzpatrick she says this, "Jesus or no Jesus, we want our children to obey, be polite, not curse or look at pornography, get good jobs, marry a nice person, and not get caught up in the really bad stuff.  It may come as a surprise to you, but God wants much more for your children and so should you.  God wants them to get the gospel.  And this means that parents are responsible to teach their children about the drastic, uncontrollable nature of amazing grace.  The biggest lie about grace that satan wants Christian parents to buy is the idea that grace is dangerous and therefore needs to be "kept in check."  By believing this we not only prove that we don't understand grace, but we violate gospel advancement in the lives of our children."  

gracegracegracegracegrace......

I love the concept of grace.  In fact, if we are followers of Christ, we better all love it because without it we would be doomed.  In the face of absolute purity, my sins are as black as the most horrific of crimes, like the ones I mentioned above.  I think that we have no real concept of the holiness of God because if we did we would stop pointing the finger at everyone else's sin (or in some cases simply other's preferences that differ from ours) and start looking into our own. If we would stare our own sin in the eyes and then look past it to the giver of Life - we would have no more room in our hearts to condemn others.  We are all condemned - every last one of us.  And we deserve it.  

So, do I "get" this statement from Elyse Fitzpatrick's book?  Is this how I live my life?  Philip Yancey in his book What's So Amazing About Grace says that it is his belief that the reason Jesus preferred the company of sinners instead of saints is because in contrast to the saints who put on airs and constantly tried to catch Him in a moral trap, the sinners were honest about themselves and had no pretense.  Here is my personal experience - I think that there is still some "Pharisee" left in all of us, even when we try to fight it, even when we hate it with everything in us.  So, no, I don't fully "get" it, and as much as I wish I could, I can't fully live it.  But, maybe that is the best place to be.  I have no illusions that I am good.  I am well aware that every "good" thing I try to do is filthy.  It is tainted to the very core by the disgusting stench of who I am.  You know what, though - at the heart of that realization is one overarching theme.......

gracegracegracegracegracegrace.......  Scandalous.

Grace should never be "kept in check" - not in your life or the lives of your children.  You were made to live FREE.  We all were.  If we could wrap our minds around even a fraction of what freedom truly is, then we would see the captives released.  Someone once said "The ones who are crazy enough to believe they can change the world are the ones who do."  As long as I am alive, I will shout it from the rooftops - Jesus loves me, this I know.  He came that we might have abundant LIFE!  Take it - He is holding it out to you.  Peace that passes all understanding is ours.  

And that, my friends, is scandalous.