Confusion, Despair, and God’s Common Grace
How can we reject the rain and be outraged by the drought?
The basis for Jesus’ command for us to love our enemies is the love God has for those who do not acknowledge or honor him. The sunshine and the rain are graces common to believers and unbelievers alike.
Jesus said,
You have heard that it was said, Love your neighbor and hate your enemy. 44 But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, 45 so that you may be children of your Father in heaven. For he causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. Matthew 5:43-45
God loves you. He loves me. And he loves every human being. We are stamped with the Imago Dei, the image of God, which distinguishes us from the rest of creation. God is worthy of all glory, but in his grace, God loves and respects every human being in incredibly practical ways.
The Grace of Creation
The order of nature is one of those ways. Jesus mentioned sunshine and rain, for example. Or even more personal, the way our bodies are formed. When a male sperm fertilizes a female egg, something complex and beautiful happens to form new life. That life is nourished by his or her mother for a nine-month gestation period, and then birthed through a relatively small corridor that expands at just the right time to allow the baby to enter civilization. All of the baby’s organs are prepared to function independently of the mother.
That’s amazing!
And God designed for all of this to happen in the context of a loving, mutually sacrificial marriage between a man and a woman that we know as the family.
That’s the common grace of God.
The Grace of Moral Agency
As image-bearers of God, we also possess moral agency. We have a mind that distinguishes between good and evil. Our sin nature has distorted this agency, but it remains, nonetheless.
My wife and I have watched the TV show, “American Idol” for 20 years. I cry during almost every episode. Seeing people overcome obstacles to chase their dreams moves me. There is goodness in that.
In the same way, seeing children murdered in a school awakens our consciences and grieves us beyond words in large part because in God’s grace to us we possess moral agency. We recognize both beauty and brutality, and we know the difference.
Until we don’t.
Rejecting God’s Grace
There are examples in human history that reveal a collective amnesia among humans to this common grace of God.
We know Moses narrowly escaped death upon his birth because the Egyptian pharaoh decreed every baby boy that was born should be exterminated.
In the time of the judges, it’s said,
In those days there was no king in Israel; everyone did whatever seemed right to him. Judges 21:25
The slave trade, chattel slavery in the United States, and Jim Crow laws in the South all point to a corruption of the human heart that blinded generations to the worth and dignity of every human being.
Nazi Germany committed genocide upon Jews while much of the world watched.
And more recently, we’ve seen the unborn, disabled, and elderly fall victim to the seared conscience of a people who devalue human life.
God’s Grace Still Abounds
But in every case, from ancient Egypt to modern-day America, the rain still falls on the just and the unjust. God has continued to show common grace that invites us to come closer and to know more of him, experience more of him, and find our ultimate satisfaction in him through the person and work of Jesus.
God bears with us.
And that provokes a few questions that we must consider. God’s grace invites our response. And all of us, believer and unbeliever alike, must decide how we then we will respond to the sunshine and rain.
So, let’s consider these questions:
How can we reject the rain and be outraged by the drought?
How can we hide from the sun and be surprised by the dark?
How can we distort sex and be shocked by the consequences of its abuse?
How can we redefine marriage and be alarmed by the epidemic of loneliness?
How can we lack clarity on gender and be astonished by the youth mental health crisis?
How can we promote a culture of death among the unborn and be stunned by a culture of death among the born?
It’s our nature to pursue virtue. We desire justice. We love the beauty of a sunset and despise the brutality of a mass shooting. But we cannot reject the one and be surprised by the other. We cannot reject the virtue of life on the one hand, and demand it on the other. Common grace is not long enjoyed al a cart.
We’ve Lost Our Minds, but All is Not Lost
The incongruity of a seared conscience will always produce discouragement and despair. We have lost our minds to our hardened hearts. But God, in his grace, can restore what has been lost.
Solomon, who was no stranger to personal confusion, wrote,
Without revelation people run wild, but one who follows divine instruction will be happy. Proverbs 29:18
Happiness, as we’ve discovered in this cultural moment, cannot be experienced through personal autonomy—by doing whatever we feel like doing, thinking whatever we want to think, or identifying in whatever way we want to identify.
Instead, our lives—the very graces of human existence and flourishing—are only enjoyed only as we reject our incongruity and realign our lives with the One who created us.
EXTRA ENCOURAGEMENT #1
If you’re a pastor or leader, and you don’t follow Pete Scazzero, I’d encourage you to begin. Here’s one his recent posts on Instagram. You can find him and links to his books, etc @petescazzero.
EXTRA ENCOURAGEMENT #2
My friend Dan Darling is releasing his latest book, Agents of Grace: How to Bridge Divides and Love as Jesus Loved on May 9. Pre-order it here. When it comes to Christian public engagement, few do it better than Dan.
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