Lately, I've been wrestling with ideas of worship and grace and how I seem to lack skills in both departments. I think it all comes down to what Donald Miller calls the cycle of self-addiction. As I truly examine my faith, it is shocking to realize that 90% of it is all about me and what I want or what I feel.
I was talking to a friend of mine the other night and was telling her that I miss having small college-aged gatherings. I miss the feeling of a group of my peers coming together to worship. But it's not really the worship I miss at all. I miss the warm and fuzzy feeling that a time like that can bring. I remember youth camps and retreats and the intense times of worship that were had. But so many of those were not truly worship for me, but emotional highs created by an environment set up to do just that. So even in "worship," I am simply thinking of myself and what I want. I wanted to sing songs that I liked and be around people I liked and react to the music however I liked. But it was all about me in the end.
When I think of worship, the first thing that comes to mind is singing songs. But that is just one incredibly tiny aspect of what worship is supposed to be as a whole. I think it's incredibly difficult to worship through music, actually, at least for me. Instead of putting myself aside and being filled with awe of Christ, I think about the song I'm singing and how I don't like it. Or I think about another song I wish I was singing instead. Or when I like a certain song, I am more "tuned-in," so to speak. It all comes back to what I do and do not like.
As I was thinking about worship and how I fail miserably in regard to it, I started thinking about other things that qualify as worship, so much more so than singing a song halfheartedly. Isn't loving someone who is so much less than lovely worship? Isn't forgiving someone who has not asked for it worship? Isn't putting yourself aside and taking care of someone else's needs first worship? Worship means to stand in awe and reverence of God, and what says reverence to God more than trying to be like Him?
These thoughts all brought me to grace, a topic which I cannot seem to get enough of, probably because I understand so little of it. What I know of grace is fantastic, what I have felt of grace is undescribable, and what I have left to learn of grace is eternal. I live in a world where a person must earn what they receive. I work to earn a paycheck. I work to earn decent grades. I work to earn people's approval. I work to make myself better. The world demands that we must offer something in order to be approved, in order to be named. The church demands that we must be good before we can be accepted. But grace demands nothing. It asks nothing. It takes nothing. And it is something the world is hungry for.
I just started reading Phillip Yancey's classic
What's So Amazing About Grace? While I have only finished the fourth chapter, I am already overwhelmed with how incredible a thought like grace is. When I doubt God most, I often turn to thoughts of grace. When the concept of God seems trivial and silly, like something man made up to aid in his quest for fulfillment, I am reminded that man could never have thought up an idea like grace. It doesn't make sense to human beings. It never will. I don't think anyone can truly fathom what grace is and also what it is not.
I think grace is the entire heart of Christianity. It is something, too, that is so often overlooked in the faith. All Christians acknowledge grace, but so very few actually lived a grace-filled lifestyle. Living a life full of grace is not just loving others who are not worth it or forgiving people who have not sought it; another important aspect of living a grace-filled life is being able to forgive yourself and being able to let go of your own monsters. I think one of Satan's greatest tools is to convince a follower of Christ that he or she is too dirty to be forgiven, too filthy to be used. He reminds us of our past as a way of saying that we are not good enough to be called by God, that we are not strong enough to resist failure, and that we are not created in God's image but instead in the image of sin.
Whenever I read about Christianity in a secular publication, I never hear anything good about it. Most people mock Christianity. Most people have strong feelings about Christians, usually not good feelings. And somehow, I feel that we (at least I) have earned this. We have taken Christianity and made it into a list of laws, a series of traditions, and taken grace and put a price tag on it.
During spring quarter earlier this year, I was talking with someone in my lit class. We were working on a group project together and we got to school extra early one morning to go over some things. She told me that she had attended a Christian college for a short time, even though she was Buddhist. When her classmates found out about her faith, they asked her why she was there at all, why she bothered coming to their school. What this told her about Christians is that they are harsh, judgmental, and only accept people like them. I still think about her story so often.
The Jesus that I see in Scripture was not reflected in the classroom of that university. The Jesus that I believe existed is so often absent from attitudes. The Jesus that revolutionized the world is so often portrayed as someone He was not, as someone He came to rid the world of in the first place.
I have been realizing more and more lately that all the traditions and laws of the Christian faith must take second place to what it really is all about. The only thing that should matter is Jesus and being more like Him. If every Christian truly knew Jesus and adamantly desired to be in His likeness, I truly believe that the world would be a different place. Many people already have their minds made up about Jesus because of foolish Christians who have neglected grace. I don't want to be someone that scars a non-believer and tells him or her that they cannot approach God until they are clean. The person I would like to be is the type of person who is simply a reflection of the Christ that walked on our roads and slept in our beds and drank of our water. What screams of grace more than Jesus stepping foot onto a world that has betrayed Him, simply in order to win that world back?
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