Grace
"This is the only thing I've ever had any faith in" ~ Florence and the Machine, "Grace"
Today I watched a TEDx talk that made me think a lot about one of the most important words in Christianity: grace. The talk was by Christian Picciolini, titled "My Descent into America's neo-Nazi Movement and how I got out." If you have not seen it yet, I recommend that you watch it. This was a man who, after a difficult adolescence and feeling isolated, found belonging in a skinhead group. He admitted to making music that was responsible for inspiring the Charleston church shooting by Dylann Roof.
I found myself having conflicting emotions watching this man speak. On the one hand, my heart was warmed by how he learned to love by marrying a girl "without a racist bone in her body" and how he reconnected with his lost innocence when his child was born. But on the other hand, I wanted to see him do something to make reparations for the hate he had spewed into the world. Picciolini was finally able to confront the African-American security guard at his high school that had gotten him expelled after a fist fight, and he apologized to him. The security guard forgave him and told him to tell his story as often as he could.
Picciolini told the story of a man he'd met who hated Muslims. He managed to get this man to meet an imam at a local mosque and just have them talk to each other. I wondered how the imam felt; how much courage it must have taken him to confront someone who could potentially react to him with violence simply over who he was. The conversation drove away the hate in the man's heart. With empathy and connecting to other human beings who are different, even ones that you think don't deserve empathy, Picciolini says that this is how hate is destroyed.
I realized, as I watched this talk, that this illustrates grace better than just about anything I have ever seen. Grace is, according to the Catechism in the Book of Common Prayer, "God's favor towards us, unearned and undeserved" (858). The security guard and the imam in Picciolini's story were examples of incredible grace. They broke the cycle of hatred by offering love and empathy to men who didn't deserve it.
I recently completed a book called "The Science of Evil" by Simon Baron-Cohen. I was drawn to the author's concept, that what we rather vaguely define as "evil" can be better defined as "lack of empathy". When the men who were filled with hate in this TEDx talk were opened up to empathy, the hatred in their hearts dissolved. They lacked empathy before they knew those "others". It's easy to be afraid of, and to hate, what you don't understand. And when you look at those who do evil things, very often they are people who have not been shown empathy themselves, or have not opened themselves up to it.
As I mentioned in my last post, I've been working on a senior thesis about Origen. He's often depicted as the opposite of St Augustine in the "free will vs grace" debate, as in "Do we have any role in our salvation or is it completely a gift of God?" I tend to be on the Origen side of the debate: I see humanity as essentially good, and that we have free will to choose to love God and act in loving ways. St Augustine, conversely, saw humanity as utterly fallen and tainted by original sin, and in our complete depravity the only way we could be saved was through the free gift of grace offered by God. But today for the first time, I began to wonder if my theology is based somewhat on my privilege.
I have had a relatively privileged life. My family has always struggled financially, but I am also white, an American citizen, an English-speaker, educated, with a supportive family. I have not had life experiences that would lead me to see humankind as fallen, but I can imagine that people who have not had the privileges I've had might. I only began to think about these things from exposure to people who taught me about intersectionality. Right now I'm in a class at Ursuline called "Identity, Diversity, and Community" which teaches us to look at the various ways that power structures shape our view of the world. If I weren't in this class, I wouldn't have come across the video I watched today.
Maybe it would be harder for me to see humanity as essentially good if I were more oppressed and marginalized. Or, if I had been unlucky enough to be abused or neglected, I might have been involved with drugs or some other destructive behavior. I may have descended into a state like Picciolini did, where the only way I was able to get out of it was simply to admit my brokenness and say "I'm sorry".
One of my favorite Christian writers is Nadia Bolz-Weber. As a Lutheran pastor, she has a lot to say about grace. She's also a recovering alcoholic and addict who has experienced the power of grace in her life first hand. This is one of the best quotes I've found from her on grace:
“God's grace is not defined as God being forgiving to us even though we sin. Grace is when God is a source of wholeness, which makes up for my failings. My failings hurt me and others and even the planet, and God's grace to me is that my brokenness is not the final word ... it's that God makes beautiful things out of even my own shit. Grace isn't about God creating humans and flawed beings and then acting all hurt when we inevitably fail and then stepping in like the hero to grant us grace - like saying, "Oh, it's OK, I'll be the good guy and forgive you." It's God saying, "I love the world too much to let your sin define you and be the final word. I am a God who makes all things new.” ― Nadia Bolz-Weber, Pastrix: The Cranky, Beautiful Faith of a Sinner & Saint
Which, inevitably, leads me to be reminded of a quote from Presiding Bishop Michael Curry:
"Death does not have the last word.
Hatred does not have the last word.
Violence does not have the last word.
Sin, evil do not have the last word.
The last word is God, and God is Love."
So no matter what we've done, how much we think we've screwed up, God is bigger than that, and God has the last word. God's love was bigger than the hate that threatened to destroy the white supremacist men in the TEDx talk I watched today. God's love reached to them through the people that they persecuted. This story gave me a lot of hope. My prayer is that all who hold hatred in their hearts will be confronted with God's grace and love, that they may find themselves transformed.
Today I watched a TEDx talk that made me think a lot about one of the most important words in Christianity: grace. The talk was by Christian Picciolini, titled "My Descent into America's neo-Nazi Movement and how I got out." If you have not seen it yet, I recommend that you watch it. This was a man who, after a difficult adolescence and feeling isolated, found belonging in a skinhead group. He admitted to making music that was responsible for inspiring the Charleston church shooting by Dylann Roof.
I found myself having conflicting emotions watching this man speak. On the one hand, my heart was warmed by how he learned to love by marrying a girl "without a racist bone in her body" and how he reconnected with his lost innocence when his child was born. But on the other hand, I wanted to see him do something to make reparations for the hate he had spewed into the world. Picciolini was finally able to confront the African-American security guard at his high school that had gotten him expelled after a fist fight, and he apologized to him. The security guard forgave him and told him to tell his story as often as he could.
Picciolini told the story of a man he'd met who hated Muslims. He managed to get this man to meet an imam at a local mosque and just have them talk to each other. I wondered how the imam felt; how much courage it must have taken him to confront someone who could potentially react to him with violence simply over who he was. The conversation drove away the hate in the man's heart. With empathy and connecting to other human beings who are different, even ones that you think don't deserve empathy, Picciolini says that this is how hate is destroyed.
I realized, as I watched this talk, that this illustrates grace better than just about anything I have ever seen. Grace is, according to the Catechism in the Book of Common Prayer, "God's favor towards us, unearned and undeserved" (858). The security guard and the imam in Picciolini's story were examples of incredible grace. They broke the cycle of hatred by offering love and empathy to men who didn't deserve it.
I recently completed a book called "The Science of Evil" by Simon Baron-Cohen. I was drawn to the author's concept, that what we rather vaguely define as "evil" can be better defined as "lack of empathy". When the men who were filled with hate in this TEDx talk were opened up to empathy, the hatred in their hearts dissolved. They lacked empathy before they knew those "others". It's easy to be afraid of, and to hate, what you don't understand. And when you look at those who do evil things, very often they are people who have not been shown empathy themselves, or have not opened themselves up to it.
As I mentioned in my last post, I've been working on a senior thesis about Origen. He's often depicted as the opposite of St Augustine in the "free will vs grace" debate, as in "Do we have any role in our salvation or is it completely a gift of God?" I tend to be on the Origen side of the debate: I see humanity as essentially good, and that we have free will to choose to love God and act in loving ways. St Augustine, conversely, saw humanity as utterly fallen and tainted by original sin, and in our complete depravity the only way we could be saved was through the free gift of grace offered by God. But today for the first time, I began to wonder if my theology is based somewhat on my privilege.
I have had a relatively privileged life. My family has always struggled financially, but I am also white, an American citizen, an English-speaker, educated, with a supportive family. I have not had life experiences that would lead me to see humankind as fallen, but I can imagine that people who have not had the privileges I've had might. I only began to think about these things from exposure to people who taught me about intersectionality. Right now I'm in a class at Ursuline called "Identity, Diversity, and Community" which teaches us to look at the various ways that power structures shape our view of the world. If I weren't in this class, I wouldn't have come across the video I watched today.
Maybe it would be harder for me to see humanity as essentially good if I were more oppressed and marginalized. Or, if I had been unlucky enough to be abused or neglected, I might have been involved with drugs or some other destructive behavior. I may have descended into a state like Picciolini did, where the only way I was able to get out of it was simply to admit my brokenness and say "I'm sorry".
One of my favorite Christian writers is Nadia Bolz-Weber. As a Lutheran pastor, she has a lot to say about grace. She's also a recovering alcoholic and addict who has experienced the power of grace in her life first hand. This is one of the best quotes I've found from her on grace:
“God's grace is not defined as God being forgiving to us even though we sin. Grace is when God is a source of wholeness, which makes up for my failings. My failings hurt me and others and even the planet, and God's grace to me is that my brokenness is not the final word ... it's that God makes beautiful things out of even my own shit. Grace isn't about God creating humans and flawed beings and then acting all hurt when we inevitably fail and then stepping in like the hero to grant us grace - like saying, "Oh, it's OK, I'll be the good guy and forgive you." It's God saying, "I love the world too much to let your sin define you and be the final word. I am a God who makes all things new.” ― Nadia Bolz-Weber, Pastrix: The Cranky, Beautiful Faith of a Sinner & Saint
Which, inevitably, leads me to be reminded of a quote from Presiding Bishop Michael Curry:
"Death does not have the last word.
Hatred does not have the last word.
Violence does not have the last word.
Sin, evil do not have the last word.
The last word is God, and God is Love."
So no matter what we've done, how much we think we've screwed up, God is bigger than that, and God has the last word. God's love was bigger than the hate that threatened to destroy the white supremacist men in the TEDx talk I watched today. God's love reached to them through the people that they persecuted. This story gave me a lot of hope. My prayer is that all who hold hatred in their hearts will be confronted with God's grace and love, that they may find themselves transformed.
Comments
Post a Comment