Grace Feels Like a Cop-Out

You know how people talk about how easy it was to be a child? Free food, free clothes, free shelter, free love, etc. "I wish I could be a kid again." We only ever say things like this once we grow up and realize that nothing -NOTHING- is free or easy. It has been ingrained in my mind that nothing is free. Nothing. In shopping, sales require you to buy one to "get one free". Free (legal) downloads on the internet? I have to submit my email and receive spam for the next five years. Even when someone does you a favor, there's an incalculable obligation and all of a sudden you're in their debt for a simple, friendly favor.

Was reading a book the other night that was talking about "God finding us" after we wander. The author made it sound so easy. "Just come home and let Me hold you, protect you, cleanse you from the world that ravages your very soul". Just come home and let someone else do all the work. Let someone else take over. Give up control and receive an amazing gift.

I can't help it. I just don't understand grace. Really. I get something for free? Something I don't deserve? Can never deserve? And you'll fix everything? Grace doesn't make sense. I realize that what I outlined there is a very simplistic view of Grace and missing probably quite a few bullet points, but that's the vague gist I get. Not only do I not understand it, but even in those few moments where I think I might know, I can't ever give up the control.

My life hasn't been incredibly difficult, but neither has it been a walk down Easy Street. Maybe this is just another place where the supposedly-American 'can-do' attitude and that cursed 'American Dream' is really going to do me no good at all. I have worked hard for things I now feel that I have earned or that I deserve. I have struggled to get my life under control, my control and to suddenly give up the reins and accept a free gift while I'm at it feels like a cop-out. Grace feels like a cop-out.

"I cannot escape the exceeding wonder that not only does God look upon a guilty person in the court room and exercise clemency and forgive him and say, 'You're guilty, I forgive you, go and sin no more', but he also, beyond all imagination, looks upon this guilty sinner and does not just say 'You're guilty, I forgive you' he says 'You're not guilty.' I mean forgiveness is understandable --just a little bit understandable. We kind of had some way to get our hands around forgiveness: you let it go; you don't hold it against them. But this looks me right in the face, right in the face, sinner that I am, and says 'Righteous'." -John Piper

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Buchanan, Anne and Tammy Maltby. 2008. "Confessions of a Good Christian Girl". Thomas Nelson: Nashville.