Healing Grace for Hurting People

For most of us, grace under pressure is a pleasant idea—a nice theory. In practice, we have more experience with crumbling, collapsing, caving and anything but grace under pressure. The person who is at her best when things are at their worst is a rare breed. When people are hurting, the potential for acting out that pain on others is very high. Call it an ego-defense mechanism, an instinct for self-preservation, or plain old selfishness and sin. Hurt people will often lash out and hurt those around them. It’s a morbid twist on the notion that misery loves company: Hurt people, hurt people.

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This is but one reason that the gospel of Jesus Christ stands out as a light in the darkness. The gospel is all about grace. Those who live by the gospel, live by God’s grace. Through these sinners saved by grace others experience grace, even those who would otherwise be called enemies.

Dr. Tim Keller admits that religious people, even those who claim to follow Jesus, are part of the problem. He says:

There are two ways to think about self-image. There is the performance narrative
that says, “I am a good person, I’m a significant person because I’ve achieved this, I’ve done that, I’ve performed.” Basically, there are a hundred million forms of this: “I’m a pretty good person because I’m a liberal activist,” for example. And if that’s the basis of our self-image, it’s hard not to look down our nose at bigots and feel superior to them.

If, on the other hand, we are a traditional religious person—“I read the Bible and pray, and I’m trying to follow Jesus”—and that’s why we feel good about ourselves, it’s almost impossible not to look down our nose and feel superior to people that don’t have the right doctrine and aren’t living the right way. In fact, even if we’re not
religious, even if we just have a lot of pride in the fact that we’re decent hard-working chaps, and that’s the basis for our self-image, it’s hard not to feel superior to the people we think of as slackers.

But there is another way to build up identity. It’s not the performance narrative but the grace narrative. The grace narrative is this: Jesus Christ came to earth to accomplish our salvation, but he didn’t do it through strength. He didn’t get on a horse, brandish a sword and shout, “Charge!” He went to the cross and died. He became a servant. He became weak and paid for our sins on the cross. This means salvation that is accomplished in weakness can only be received in weakness. We only get Christ’s salvation and mercy when we admit our failure. Because we can never even live up to our own standards, the only possible way to know God is to say, “I’m a failure, and I need mercy and grace.” Then, in him, we’re loved—not because of our performance, but because of His.

This means we can’t despise anybody. If we really understand the grace narrative, we can’t. If we feel superior to anyone, it shows we’ve slipped back into the moral
performance narrative. … Christians have to realize we’ve been a big part of
the problem. We’re part of the divisiveness, because religion sets up a slippery
slope in our hearts where we begin to feel superior to people. Then we
caricature them in our heart, and eventually we start to oppress them.*

Keller’s insights are right on target. Hurt people do hurt people. We do slide down the slippery-slope of religion that leads to a false and often ugly sense of superiority. As Keller says, once we feel superior we start to separate from others deemed unclean and impure. Then, we begin to caricature them in our hearts (since we no longer have a relationship with them). I’ve heard this from so many religious people who believe their church is the one-true-church. They say things like, “People aren’t interested in the truth, they just want an emotional experience.” Really? How do you know that? Haven’t you just caricatured a group of people you know nothing about? Of course, once people are no longer real, but caricatures, it is easy to judge and dismiss the value of those people.

It doesn’t have to be this way! And, who do we think we’re fooling anyway? The gospel is not about who we are, or what you or I do. It’s about what Jesus did and who we are in Him.
While it is rare, I have witnessed people act with grace under pressure. And, I must say, it is no surprise that they are people who have had to humble themselves before the Lord, accept they're failures and weaknesses and receive God’s grace. It only makes sense. You can’t give what you don’t have.
*Keller, Tim. "Reason for God," in Willard, Dallas (Ed.), A Place for Truth: Highlights from the Veritas Forum. Downers Grove, IL: IVP Press, 2010, pp. 68-70.