Grace

"The American Church today accepts grace in theory but denies it in practice." — &Brennan Manning

"Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like me. I once was lost but now am found, was blind, but now I see." — John Newton

"For judgment I came into this world, that those who do not see may see, and those who see may become blind." — John 9:39 [ESV)

The month after I graduated from college I went with a church group to build a house in Tijuana, Mexico. After our work was completed, we spent a day at Disneyland before flying back home. During the trip I lost my contact lenses to the dusty, Mexican desert. I could not see a thing. I had my glasses with me but was too stubborn to admit that I actually needed them to navigate the Magic Kingdom.

Around lunchtime I thought I saw a fruit stand that flaunted the most gorgeous bananas I'd ever seen. They looked freshly plucked from the Garden of Eden. With enthusiasm I approached the young lady working the stand, "One banana, please!" "That will be four dollars," she replied. A little steep, I thought, but still a small price to pay for perfection.

I handed her my money and reached for a banana only to find that the banana would not cooperate. I wanted the banana, but it was as if the banana did not want me. I tugged and tugged but could not break a banana free from the bunch.

I then noticed the woman laughing at me. "Perhaps you'd like one of these," she giggled, as she pointed to a much more inferior batch of fruit. "I don't think so," I said. "Well, I don't think the bananas you're holding will taste very good," she replied. "And why is that?" I sneered back. "Because the bananas you're holding are fake."

I obviously felt embarrassed. So I covered my tracks by doing what I suspect any aspiring minister would do. I looked exactly eight inches to her left, opened my eyelids as wide as I could, and, before dramatically storming off in anger, responded by saying, "I am soooo sorry ma'am. I can't help it. I'm legally blind."

Born Blind

In a spiritual sense we are all born blind. Our default state is not to see God, ourselves, and other people accurately. We're programmed to stumble through life in darkness, and the pathos of our condition is that it is painful to constantly collide with one another.

The gospels portray Jesus as a man who loved healing people's blindness. The author of John's Gospel tells one such story about blind people. It centers on a man who has been without physical sight from the day of his birth (John 9:1–41). But the irony of the story is that no one with physical sight possesses the spiritual sight they need to see God, themselves, or other people accurately. The people in the story that can "see" are indeed blinder than the blind man himself. For instance, the disciples assume the man was born blind because his parents are sinners. They are blind to the goodness of God. Similarly, the man's parents care more for their reputation than their own son. They are blind to what's important in life. The Pharisees feel outraged because Jesus heals on the

Sabbath. The Pharisees care more about rules than restoration. They are blind to the Christ that stands before them. Meanwhile Jesus, who sees into the soul with crystal clarity, responds by stating His divine purpose: "For judgment I came into this world, that those who do not see may see, and those who see may become blind" (John 9:39, ESV).

Subverting Our Paradigm

I saw a bumper sticker recently that read: "Subvert the dominant paradigm." It made me realize why people responded to Jesus with so much hostility. It was because Jesus intentionally subverted their view of God and how the world should work. Jesus was a wrecking ball, and his first order of business was never to confirm his listener's view of the world, but rather to shatter it.

The word paradigm has Greek origins and refers to how we see, and therefore experience, the world. Our paradigms are our mental maps of the world. We don't experience the world directly, but we have mental maps we rely on to navigate the world. We don't just perceive, understand, and interpret life as it comes. Rather, we have a very particular frame of reference that we use to make meaning out of the people, circumstances, and events that we encounter. We all carry unconscious assumptions about God's character, how the world works, and what abundant life is all about.

What's challenging about the spiritual life is that we don't see our paradigms, at least not naturally. We inherit them. Life, religion, the government, our family, the culture, our church, the media, and our peers just dole them out. For example, I was raised in the western United States. My paradigm for living well is certainly more individualistic than had I been reared in a traditional Asian culture. I am also a Protestant. I carry ingrained views about what sort of behavior is acceptable that a person practicing Wicca, for example, might not have. But I am also a particular kind of Protestant. I grew up in a very traditional, liturgical church setting with pews, an organ, and prayer books. I see God differently than someone that grew up in a contemporary, Pentecostal setting.

We all have a unique mental map, and this map is never the same as the real world. A mental map is what we use to navigate the real world. It is the lens through which we view God, ourselves, and other people. In the spiritual life, it is this lens, this mental map, which so heavily impacts our experience of God, ourselves, and other people. A distorted lens always leads to a distorted life, and to navigate with a bad map is to live our lives perpetually lost.

Sociologist Christian Smith studied the religious beliefs of young adults in America. He coined the term "Moralistic Therapeutic Deism" to describe the lens through which many of them viewed God. Smith claims that most young adults in America believe in God and even self-identify as Christian. However, when it comes to important questions of faith, he noted that very few people have solid convictions. Smith claims Moralistic Therapeutic Deism is the new religion of America's youth. Here are a few highlights of this particular religious paradigm.

1. God's chief concern is that people are nice and good. Good people go to heaven when they die (moralistic).

2. God wants me to feel good about myself and to find happiness on earth (therapeutic).

3. God doesn't want to be overinvolved in my life. But it is fine to reach out to God from time to time when I am really in a jam (deism).

I offer Smith's work as just one example of a less-than-useful religious map. There are of course others — for instance, the belief that God punishes sinful parents by striking their child with blindness. But in my experience most religious paradigms, ancient and modern, have one key ingredient: they are fueled by an intense passion to get what we perceive to be fair.

An Unfair God

The "Laborers in the Vineyard" (Matt....