Grace Saturated Community 2

"No one who has read church history can conclude the truth of Christian belief from the moral superiority of Christian practice."
This quote is from an essay entitled "Attending the Gaps Between Beliefs and Practices", by Amy Plantinga Pauw. Whether the reference point is 2000 years of church history or the empirical evidence of our own personal lives each of us, in our more honest moments, knows about this gap. The question is: how do we react to the gaps? Do we acknowledge the gaps humbly and seek to live moment by moment in the knowledge that we are at our human best when we are admitting our brokenness, beseeching God to act in us and through us, and repenting of our sins? Or, do we engage in the charade of pretending we are better than we are, expending a great deal of energy in a massive cover-up of our weaknesses, doubts, failures and sins? When we resemble the latter approach, we point away from the gospel and to ourselves, away from God's rich grace and tireless love, and towards human arrogance.

The point of Pauw's essay is to encourage Christians to "relax their hearts" and be honest about these gaps that each of us have between beliefs and practices because God likes to work with the materials of our honesty and vulnerabilities; they are the putty in his hands with which he shapes us into the image of Christ. Pauw reminds us that many times the most holy thing we can do is to pray the classic prayer of the Christian mystic: O my God I do not love thee. O my God I do not want to love thee. But Oh my God I do want to want to love thee. Better to pray that prayer than to pretend we are better than we are. And this brings us to our text from 1 Peter again. Each of us are to live as good stewards of the manifold grace of God that has been given to us. Among other things this passage points us towards just the sort of community of relaxed hearts that Pauw has in mind. We are stewards only of what God is doing in each of us, for, as Saint Paul puts it elsewhere: what do you have that you did not receive? So, each of us is to do our part to shape our community into a place where people feel that they can be safe while they attend to the gaps. As Pauw puts it: "when belief shapes practice in an excellent way, we celebrate God's grace not human effort. For us as people of faith who want to want to love God, the communal settings of proclamation, sacraments and confession frame our hopes for closing the gap between beliefs and practices. In those settings we can reaffirm the truth of our dependence on the riches of God's grace.... freed by God's assurance of forgiveness we can dare to probe the corruptions in our beliefs and practices (Pauw)."

Questions for discussion:

1. Reverend Craig Barnes has said, “the way of the Cross never takes us away from the limitations and hunger that are characteristic of all humanity. It simply leads us back to the world with the strange message that our limited humanity is the mark of our need for God. It is enough. It is a great reason for hope.” What setting or conditions make it more likely for you to acknowledge your limits so that you can communicate hope to those close to you? What setting or conditions make it less likely that you will operate in this humble manner?

2. One of the points of Pauw's essay is that beliefs and practices must be joined by the affections of our heart in order for the gap to be closed and for us to move in the right direction. One can't make oneself love rightly though, right? So, what is our responsibility in tending to the affections of our hearts?

3. Do you feel or sense God's pleasure when you confess your sins to him? If not, what might you do about that?