What if we started with grace?

During our youth group small group time on Wednesday night we were given a list of compromising or difficult situations and asked to write out what grace would look like in the situations. They included "a kid gets caught with their hand in the cookie jar" and things like "in a marriage relationship, one party says regretful and hurtful things to the other". It was interesting to think of what grace looked like, and even more interesting to hear what others thought.

One situation really grabbed my attention, however. The situation was "a student gets caught cheating on a test", and another related one was, "a student turns in a term paper late." It wasn't interesting purely because of the situation, but in how most of the students responded. The immediate responses were:

"the teacher should realize how hard it is to be a student"

"the teacher should let us get away with it"

and similar...

Every youth in the room knew that they would fail or get kicked out for cheating, and also knew that most teachers will not take late term papers, or at least give you a hefty deduction of points.

But the point that almost all of the students in this small group began commenting on how mean, rude and apathetic the teachers were struck a hard chord in my body. After all, I'm a very academic person at heart, as well as also one who believes in earning what you get, so I'm thinking immediately, "it's your fault for doing the wrong thing!" But grace doesn't always work this way does it?

I began to challenge myself that maybe grace in this situation looks like the teacher giving the student a second chance, a day extension, a new test to retake...but I couldn't get over the issue that the student completely didn't live up to the covenant with the teacher, no matter what the circumstances. So what does grace look like in the student's case?

Grace is generally thought of as something that a superior gives to an inferior, which is the way that many see God giving us grace, as something that we do not earn, but is only given. This is theologically sound, but I'm not sure the power dynamic needs to be there in human terms. It is true that a teacher has the power in the classroom ultimately, but the students hold a share when they are themselves apathetic, rude and disruptive. They then undermine a teacher's effort to educate, causing the teacher to then shut down.

So, in essence, the education system is having to deal with students who walk into a classroom with the immediate assumption that "the teacher hates me" and teachers who walk into a classroom with the immediate assumption that "the students hate me." Not a lot is going to get accomplished.

So maybe instead of "what does grace look like" we ask the question, "what does grace accomplish?" What is the end result of grace, because we need to know that if we're going to inspire people to act.

The end result of God's grace towards us is that we are able to live fully in the vision and mission of God, to be the humans that God created us to be, because of the mercy and grace given to us through the incarnation, death and resurrection of God in the person of Jesus Christ. We gain eternal life and a life with meaning in this world.

In this relationship, there is still a relationship, however. We have to accept that grace, even though it is freely given. It's not forced upon us. So when we accept it, that's when the special stuff happens.

What if we extended this to all of our relationships? What if we didn't respond with grace, but we preempted with grace like God does?

Imagine a classroom in which the teacher prepared for the first day of school with an open heart and the attitude that "no matter what, I am going to love these kids and teach my heart out for their benefit." On the other side, what if the students walked in with the attitude of "no matter what I think of this teacher, I am going to love and respect them and work as hard as I can to learn from them."

If people stayed true to this ethos, do you think people would cheat or miss an assignment? Perhaps, we're human, but I bet people would take more responsibility for it. Do you think there would be as many fights among friends or spouses? If we truly went into every encounter with every person with the assumption that I was going to treat them with the utmost love and respect, even if they don't deserve it...I wonder if we'd have to do as much reacting.

The issue of course comes from the problem of getting people to do this and keep doing it. It's hard to bring grace first, because we want people to prove themselves to us, or we want people to "earn" our trust...as though we couldn't just give it for free. We might get burned sometimes, we might get taken advantage of sometimes. But won't we be an incredible witness to the doubters, skeptics and all those who claim that Christians are more judgmental than the rest.

I'll be thinking about this for my next blog post..."can a Christian really stage a protest and not be accused of judging his/her neighbor?"