Besides Larry?
“Cheap grace is the grace we bestow on ourselves. Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, Communion without confession...Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate.” ― Dietrich Bonhoeffer
I knew I was cheap.
That entire quote supposes the author knows a single thing about another human being. He doens't. Nor do you. Or I.
ReplyDeleteJust let it all go...it's the only way. This is all stupid people stuff. It has NOTHING to do with God, with the nature of God.
There is so much more to God and to this world and to other people than all this ridiculous Catholic Olympics stuff. So bloody much more, but I guess it's easier to create all this religious busy-work in order to feel...something. Now that really is cheap grace.
Just get out there and live your life -- look people in the eye, listen to their stories. That is life. That's where you'll find God. That's all that matters in the end, not toting up how many times you went to confession or recieved communion or how many rules you got right or wrong or whatever.
What's the point of looking people in the eye and listening to their stories if you can't know a single thing about them?
DeleteWhile it's true we do find God in others, the idea that we can only know God obliquely (which seems to be a supposition of yours) to be really discouraging. I think this is why Christianity made sense to me: if God created us and loves us, He would of course interact with us directly and personally. Of course, no one in this life can know God in a full, absolute way, but that doesn't mean all religious efforts are illusory or so incomplete as to be worthless.
Have hope, ~N!
We used to refer to this in my Evangelical days as "greasy grace."
ReplyDeleteHard to argue with that diagnosis. I initially used the term when I wrote my conversion story to describe why I left the faith as a teenager (I didn't see any "there" there, no costly discipleship, just a self-content anthropocentric faith and worship), but then dropped it since it sounds very harsh (which is why the commentator above, ~N, chafes at it). I'm glad I left it out. It's a hard truth that many can't accept.
ReplyDeleteI knew I was cheap.
ReplyDeleteI'm cheap and easy.
What?