Grace for Kony?
Each and every one of us are responsible for our actions. For in the end, it is the only thing we can control. There is a place for forgiveness but there are also consequences for those actions that cannot be overlooked.
Grace is some thing radically different in these situations.
Grace is the absolutely free expression of love, hope, and peace towards another person - acknowledging that they too, like us, are human. They live, they breathe, they make mistakes. But that the story does not stop there, that there is a second chance.
Grace challenges us to see the humanity in all of us - that in them, we see ourselves. To extend it, to those who have hurt us, to those who have wronged us, to those who have done the unthinkable is a risk.
‘I’d like to ask you to entertain a possibility: Maybe it’s not that people are evil. Maybe it’s that they are weak. Most people don’t wake up thinking...my goal is to inflict unhappiness on as many people as possible. Most combative adults didn’t spend their childhoods dreaming they’d one day become unfeeling social monsters.
Rather, people choose meanness out of impaired vision and skewed understanding. Or as writer and philosopher Mary Wollstonecraft puts it, “No man chooses evil because it is evil; he only mistakes it for happiness.” _Mike Foster, Gracenomics
Adopting this posture is difficult – it challenges us to rest in the fact that our instant judgments do not get the last word. Exposing in ourselves that:
'that this... is really about that' _Rob Bell
When we fail to extend grace, we are in essence saying – ‘God, I’ve got this one. I know what’s right. I get the last word. That I fail to see the beauty in what You have created. That God only offers us ‘X’ amount of chances.
We make grace about us.
And it is.
But it’s also about you… and them… and even Joseph Kony.
Then Peter came to Jesus and asked, “Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother or sister who sins against me? Up to seven times?” Jesus answered, “I tell you, not seven times, but seventy-seven times. _ Matthew 18
Even at the point of death, Christ lavishly extends us unwarranted, unearned, radical grace.
I know my story and I need grace. And I’m willing to bet you do to.
So as to the extent we extend this grace unto others, may we receive it for ourselves.
Grace and Peace to you.
My roommate reminded me of this Sufjan song that I had forgotten... may it continue to illuminate our need for radical grace in our lives and world.
And in my best behavior
I am really just like him
Look beneath the floor boards
For the secrets I have hid_ Sufjan Stevens, 'John Wayne Gacy, Jr.'