The Apathy of Grace

Talk to anybody in the so-called “Grace movement” who has been involved with it for any extended period of time and the elephant in the room sudden rears its head and blasts out a resounding alarm which by-and-large no really cares about. Welcome to apathy. What’s the alarm: people are lazy. Yup, laziness and apathy go hand in glove. Or do they?

Professionals who deal with mental health issues call apathy the emotionless emotion. They claim that most people react to a variety of stimuli throughout their daily lives. When there is an over-abundance of stimulation some people cope simply by shutting down. On another front, apathy is the product of a depressed state of mind. One of the common effects from apathy is the loss of motivation to perform simple tasks, make or plan for long-term goals. This makes people often appear passive in all their actions which most active people assume to be indifference or detachment.

Religion is a great carrot-and-stick motivator. Programs, seminars, guest speakers, bible studies, choir practice, homeless shelters, food assistance to the elderly, unwed mothers, prison ministry…on and on it goes. To be plugged in to a church means get that person to fill a slot in the machinery of “aiding” the community, not make them disciples of Jesus first.

Of course, all of these programs are your daily reminder that you’re, somehow, not quite at the level you need to be. Being involved is like penance to some people. “I spread the gospel by helping drug addicts because I was one myself. It makes me feel more whole helping these folks.” The more empty you feel, the more you’re urged to accept greater responsibility by being involved in our “new program.” Not that anyone would actually put in that manner to you, they’re more “caring” than that, but the result is the same all the while.

Then suddenly grace hits. (You ever notice how it always “hits” rather than “strolls” in?) Your penance is exposed for what it is: works. The entire host of programs are work-oriented! You realize that you have a life with grace! You suddenly face the shock that whether you do or don’t do something, it doesn’t affect your eternal soul one bit. To top it off, the revelation that this applies to every single person in the entire world, yes, even the homeless, pregnant teenage felon jonesing for another hit, becomes such a shock to your religious system that you…

“Jesus, did it all so I don’t have too.” The apathy of grace exemplified.

Here is the fault with the line in this logic. “…have to…” implies that you still what to or feel an inkling of compulsion to do something under the prior knowledge of how “work of the ministry” was accomplished. You don’t have to do anything, but breath…and pay taxes, unless you’re in a particular bracket, but I digress.

You don’t have to do anything if guilt, shame, or an overly inflated sense of self-worth was your motivation. Grace wipes all of that away, levels the playing field, makes all wrongs…well you know where this is leading.

I think what really needs to be addressed now that grace has taken a big bite out of the religious carrot and snapped the stick it dangled from is whether our programs, our little kingdoms of high esteem, are designed to promote everyone into the family of God according to the measure of grace we’ve all been given.

If die-hard believers suddenly don’t act excited about the message given on Sunday, or seem to disappear whenever a new idea is brought up, or don’t volunteer like they used to, maybe it’s time to show what grace-filled motivation looks like and operates from. Maybe we need to stop doing things (programs, sermons, prayers, worship, ect.) the way we’ve always done it out of religion and evaluate how to get things, and even people, functioning from the realm of grace.

Apathy and depression are very valid responses to the grace message if your entire life has been spent trying to measure up to the things of God by the works that you do which represent the “Christian traditions.” Laziness, or better yet, inactivity is a product of a grace-filled revelation to a person’s eternal identity. It takes time to find an eternal purpose worth getting out of bed in the morning for. Many don’t know where to begin looking for one since their entire focus had been propped up on a works pedestal.

Now I understand that some of you might think that I might be promoting this apathy/laziness approach to grace. You might cite my posting from a few days ago entitled, It Doesn’t Matter, as an example of this. Granted the title might lead someone to this conclusion, but reading the post will be a different story. Grace seems to always get a bum-wrap from some religious, law-abiding, fundamental wing-nut job.

I’m a grace guy through and through. Call it cheap, call it sleazy, call it greasy, call it whatever you like, it comes from a kingdom we know not of, hope to go to and, expect will make a change in the world if the “world” would just lie down and listen us. I’ve experienced this first hand and honestly, time is the only cure for it. A time to stop doing, a time to be aware, a time to listen carefully, a time to rest. The urgency of religion is not the rest of His grace we have all entered into.