Grace: The lazy man's approach to life.

I'm always doing something, thinking up schemes, remembering to do something while I'm in the middle of watching TV.  That gives some people the impression that I am a very hard worker.  But I'm really not.  I'm fairly lazy.  Most of the work I do is all about finding easier ways of doing something.

That's why I like grace over law.  Grace is easy and simple.  Law is exhausting.

Now some might like to say that forgiving and accepting others is incredibly hard compared with living life according to a certain structure.  Others might say grace is fine, but "you can compromise your beliefs or life just falls apart."  I disagree on both counts.  Grace is easy... it's just not comfortable when your foundational ethic is on law.

Here's what I mean:

A life with a foundation of law means you have to vet everyone and everything that comes into your life (vet means "make a careful and critical examination") to make sure that you stay on the straight and narrow, and that everyone else believes you do to.  That takes an incredible amount of effort.  If you make a mistake in the vetting process you run the risk of "appearing" sinful, so you have to make sure (and you actually never will be).  That requires you to hold everyone and everything at arm's length for a very long time.  Friendships never solidify, knowledge is stilted and walls begin to form around the society that happens to pass muster.

On the other end of the scale is a life based on grace.  You can accept everyone rather than except everyone.  New experiences can be judged for their value, not because they "might" be acceptable.  You lack walls that keep you from reaching out, or for others to reach in.  The only rules that apply are those you set for yourself.  You are answerable only to you, God and people God sends to you for accountability (and you'll be able to recognize them because you don't have to run them through the law filter.)

I'll give you an example.  Years ago, shortly before my conversion, I got into the marijuana clique.  I started consuming marijuana in various forms, but mostly in social settings.  But I didn't participate because I was coerced into it.  I wasn't trying to fit in nor was I trying to be a rebel.  I was curious.  I enjoyed the society of my friends and we did silly things under the influence.  One day, though, I went out to the beach, alone, just to think and lit up.  The same thing happened that always happened:  I started dry coughing and feeling light headed.  About 2 minutes in I started to think, "This is really stupid.  Why am I doing this?"

The next day I was with a very good friend that I respected and that knew I used the drug and I recounted my experience on the beach.  She breathed a sigh of relief and said "I've really wanted you to quit for some time."

She never told me that before.  Never said a word.  She was walking on a foundation of grace with me.  I thought about my beach experience and what my good friend had just said to me.  I decided at that moment that the drug was just not what best for me.  And I got rid of my stash.

Think about what exists today in the illicit drug society.  We have laws up the wazoo.  We have a legal multibillion dollar industry that works to get people off drugs, an illegal multibillion dollar industry to get people hooked on them; a multibillion dollar entertainment industry that both glorifies and demonizes the practice and a multibillion dollar government infrastructure to deal with it all.  Our society polarized on either side of the issue.  Drug users don't feel welcome in polite society, much less the church, and polite society wants the users put away in prisons and medical facilities so we don't have to look at them.

It's all so complicated and takes so much effort.

But I had a friend that decided to deal with me in grace and transparency.  She didn't shut me out of her life because of my practices.  She didn't look at me as a sinner.  She just looked at me as a friend.  And that influence was enough to nudge me away from a potentially darker lifestyle.

It was so simple.  Imagine how uncomfortable it was for my friend to not complicate the process for both of us.  But it wasn't hard.  It was simple.
Now I'm sure I'm going to get a lot of comments from this about my stand on drugs so let's make this very clear.  I'm not talking about drugs, dammit.  I'm talking about living in grace and how it simplifies your life and the lives of others.  The grace lifestyle transcends topics.

I have people whose opinions I value that are diametrically opposed to my political, moral, economic, sexual environmental, religious, literary, musical and artistic positions.  That we disagree is not a reason to avoid relationship.  It is the reason to pursue it.

The Bible puts it in many different ways.  "Iron sharpens iron," is the most common.  Finding people with hard positions that oppose our own is the best way of finding if our positions are correct.  Grace allows me to hear what other say and consider it.  Some believe, however, that opening yourself up to those contrary positions can cause you to stumble.

But the Bible also records the promise from God, over and over, that He will write His laws and words in our hearts... not the other way around... and his laws are always based on grace, not judgement or separation.  I have found that to be the reality in my life, which is good because I'm so very lazy.