grey

I have issues with grey.  First, how is it spelled, grey or gray?  I don’t know.  I tend to go with gray and it was hard to title this post “grey” because that is not how I write it.  In fact, grey with an “e” reminds me of like, ummm, earl-grey tea or something like that.  Gray to me is the color name, but after all that, this is not what this post is about.  What this is about is a gray area.  I have issues with gray area.  I like everything to be very black and white, right or wrong, in or out, up or down, etc. etc. etc.  Life is not that way it seems and the gray areas are problematic as you try to navigate life, make decisions, choices etc.  My all this or all that approach doesn’t really work.  At least not in the area of grace.  If you are bad, you get punished, if you are good you get rewarded.  That is logical and makes sense to me, but that is not how life works when it comes down to it.  Often we see that those that are bad get rewarded and those that are good get punished, or so on this world it sometimes seems and it makes us cry out that this is wrong.

We see an example of this in Psalm 73.  Asaph explains how he felt as he watched the wicked getting ahead, living large, rolling wide.  He was tempted to believe it was better to follow them than to deal with the things he had been putting up with as a righteous man.  But he sought to understand this and went to the sanctuary of God and discerned their real end and his real gain(v16-17) Go read Psalm 73 and check it out.  I think we often deal with that temptation, to just let go and follow because it looks like the payoff is better, but our hope is in eternity and those that are satisfied here will have gotten their reward and they will give an account for their hope.

I put that out there because 1John has been difficult for me to read because it says that if you are this way then you can’t be that way.  and so if you take a verse here and a verse there you can either arm yourself against others you know to be sinning, or you can find yourself despairing because you yourself are a sinner.  Again, I point out that you cannot overlook our dependence upon God, upon Christ, to act as our intercessor, to be our mediator to whom we confess our sins and beg forgiveness, which He gives freely.   He gives it freely.

Driving into work this morning, I was listening to my ESV MP3 bible with Max Mclean (sp?).  I have been listening to Luke and now naturally have entered into the book of John.  This morning was somewhere around chapter 7 or so because it is a35 minute ride in and I got into chapter 8.  You know chapter 8, the one where Jesus forgives a woman caught in adultery.  It is an intense scene.  It is shown in Passion of the Christ.  I love this scene, it is moving and it is telling of our condition and it is telling of our feelings about grace.  For those of us bent on the binary system of black white, 0-1, right-wrong, it just messes with your mind.

The people, or rather, the scribes and pharisees bring a woman caught in adultery (obviously a wrong act and a sin) and they place her before Jesus and basically say “we got you now, Moses said to stone such a woman, what say you?”  They were not only looking to stone her, but to stone him too.  I love how Jesus returns to writing in the sand.  Oh to see what it was.  Then his response… “Let him who is without sin among you be the first to throw a stone at her.”  Now their response… silence… then stones hitting the ground… stones meant for her (or him) dropped first by the older… then by the younger… and as they dropped them, confronted with their own sin (remember guilty of one sin, guilty of them all and condemned) they walked away til no one was left.  Then Jesus asked her, “has no one condemned you?”  “no one” she replies.  He responds… “Neither do I condemn you; go, and from now on sin no more.”

I’m undone.  I have no category for this.  I know me and my nature of “this or this” and “since this, then this”.  I’m blown up.  I have to consider the forgiveness that I have been given, the forgiveness that I should give, the grace that I should show.  I have 3 children.  They drive me crazy, they need discipline AND they need grace.  If I work in my flesh and my logic, then I will not show them grace.  So I have to relearn.  I have to figure out how to incorporate the love and forgiveness of God into discipline and consequences.  I have to model forgiveness that they might learn to forgive.  I have to model grace in order that they might learn grace.  There is a harshness of God and there is a forgiveness of God that I cannot overlook and without my children seeing that grace, they might lose hope.

Back to grey, or gray, or rather gray area.  Grace to me is a gray area sometimes because in the tom logic, when you sin, you should be punished.  When you are given grace, it is sort of left undone.  Of course, I appreciate grace that is shown to me.  But when I am thinking about others, I’m not always so grace filled and the grace that I should show others is often to me considered a gray area, where something is not really done.  Or is it?  I, today, think that it does get something done.  It shows for one that revenge is not yours.  It shows that it is not about you and yours.  It shows that you can extend grace like grace has been shown to you.  It models Godliness.   Now, we have to be careful, because people, like little children in my case, can presume upon Grace and start taking advantage of you.  You may give them grace in a way that doesn’t really help them see God at all, but shows them you are a milk-toast.  So you have to connect grace to God, to Jesus and to His work.  And you can show it through these stories that blow your mind up.  Sure the sin content is not necessarily G-rated, but you can leave out the details, because kids understand doing something wrong and they know what happens when they are caught, they catch on quick.

So there is a balance here that is needed in disciplining and giving grace.  And I have very few years to figure it out.

God, thank you for your continued grace upon me.  thank you for these pictures of you through your word that are often beyond comprehension, but get us to take another look at how we live day to day.  Show me how to love and discipline my children in a way that demonstrates all of your attributes, not just the ones that make sense to me.  I need to know you and my children need to know you.  May you bring us together to a greater knowledge and greater knowing of you and your awesomeness and your greatness and your grace.  In Jesus name, our savior and mediator who forgives, AMEN.