Grace as the Gift of Social Interaction

It sounds wordy, I know...but it has to be mused about. Does it seem apparent to anyone else that there is a rather hefty bias towards legal metaphors when talking about grace? In referring to grace in a legal manner, grace follows a wrong action. In a sense, one must reflect on their 'wrongness' in order to more fully appreciate their 'rightness' in the light of grace. If this mentality characterizes our spirituality then we are in for an emotionally bumpy ride. We must feel bad about our transgression in order to feel good about our reception of grace. Consequently, Christian life has often turned into a drama of discovering guilt, confessing guilt, receiving grace, and convincing oneself of innocence. In fact, it is this model that popular tracts handed out by some Christians follow. It is by following this process that one gets 'saved.'

While there is some merit (I presume--I haven't actually thought of any) to this understanding of grace, I would like to 'tip the scales' towards a different metaphor. I would like to explore, muse about, grace as the Gift of Social Interaction--given prior to any wrong doing. In fact, wrong doing is not a legal concept, but a relational concept. Laws are merely societal tools for collectively agreeing upon what is relationally right and wrong. They are not the origin of morals but are guideposts in the morality of social interaction. Bear with me. The whole point of the Torah, the 10 Commandments, the laws of Israel was not to establish moral absolutes, but to govern the necessity of social interaction with each other and with God.

We humans discover ourselves in the face of the other. We come to know that we are good artists, basketball players, computer designers through the affirmation of others. This is how we are also comfortable or uncomfortable with our appearance and stature. We also attempt to control this developing self-identity by making some relationships close in certain ways and distancing ourselves from others in certain ways. Consequently, we live life with a constant anxiety--which we usually try to ignore--that propels many of our decisions and relational habits. We worry about what we know, how we should act, and what we should be. It is a Grace of Social Interaction that puts these anxieties to rest so that we are free to love and free to live. After all, it is our instinctual efforts to protect ourselves from these anxieties that limits our abilities to truly and vulnerablely be content with ourselves so that we can be wholly other-minded.

God's grace is to provide mankind with a divine social interaction that provides security and safety in which humans can be free from these anxieties and freely interact with God and others. I regrettably do not have time to go into an extensive biblical exegesis, but I believe that this is the underlying story behind the Garden of Eden, the 10 Commandments, God's relationship with King David, the prophets, Jesus' message, the gospel, and Paul's letters. Despite our best efforts to turn away from God, whether because we are deceived into believing that we can be something that we are not or because our existential anxiety is greatest when looking into the divine face or because of some other reason, God is continuously at work to open up space for us to partake in a divine sharing of forgiveness in the face of God. It is the possibility of anxiety-free relationship, of a special kind of Social Interaction, that is the gift of God's grace from the very point of creation. Indeed, it is an eternal gift existing in the midst of the Trinitarian relationship.

What is at stake is not simply a legal debt; what is at stake is a relational opportunity. I think that it is too bad if our churches preach a list of do's and dont's rather than preach about relational possibilities. After all, in Christ there is no law. There is freedom to be one's self rather than to have to control our relationships in an effort to protect one's self from our feared anxieties. Jesus' first recorded message in three out of the four gospels is that the Kingdom of God is here, repent and believe the good news. This is not a legal message of repentance--it is a relational one. The establishment of a Divine Kingdom ensures for believers that this divine sharing of forgiveness in the face of God is secure for eternity. Because we believe that the Kingdom of God has been established and will continue to be established in the future, we are free to relate to one another and to God accordingly in the present. It is this grace, this Gift of Social Interaction, that the thief on the cross recognized when he said to Jesus, "remember me when you come into your kingdom."

I know that I have created many generalizations with this post and have given few details, but hopefully I have whetted appetites to explore other understandings of grace than the predominate metaphor's of legality. Maybe there will be more to come in the future along these lines. I would like to flush out these ideas with greater concreteness and clarity, but would also like to muse about the implications of these thoughts sometime in the future.