HOW CAN I BE MORE GRACIOUS?
I
was disturbed by a recent discussion about grace. The assertion was made that when unbelievers hear the phrase “evangelical Christian” the word gracious does not come to mind. Hypocrite, racist, homophobic, and intolerant all come up well ahead of gracious. The thing that disturbed me then and still bothers me, is that it’s true. In some ways, I can understand why the world doesn’t connect grace with Christians. We try to stand for truth and do what is right in God’s eyes. We don’t accept any and all behaviour as the world does so we are seen to be intolerant. We don’t equate grace with tolerance. It is not the world’s way to practice grace or see it much so it is a foreign concept. And even though the world may
not know it, grace is extended by Christians every day in many ways around the world. It’s just not the nature of a true act of grace to draw attention to itself nor is it the kind of thing that makes for catchy news headlines. Having said that, is there anything we can do differently to be more gracious people? I believe one reason we fail to exercise grace in our relationships is because we don’t view people as they actually are. Instead, we look at them through the lens of how they hurt us, or our prejudices, or past experiences. Then we label them based on this one-dimensional perception of them. Labels distort, dehumanize, and block our ability to see people as they are. Hurts. In the case of those who have hurt us and whom we haven’t forgiven, we
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by steve johnson
