Accepted Tenderness

I'm kind of off the subject of "Is God Listening" now, but this blogging is kind of all flowing together as one piece, so I'll keep picking up where I left off, until I have no more to say.

What I've been talking about, I will try to sum up in short: That true grace, not only in doctrine or definition, rolls over the spirit like floodwaters over a piece of dry ground, convicting the heart and mind that God's gifts and his love belong simply to those he chooses based on his nature as Giver and Lover, and not to those who prove their spirituality and right-thinking. God's Grace is here (Repent, believe, for the Kingdom of God is at hand...), it's powerful(bringing sight to the blind, setting the captives free, good news to the poor...), and the Church changes the world when they walk in it, demonstrating in their response of worship, and manifesting it in their acts of mercy and lifestyles of grace. The "siamese twin" of worship is mercy, justice, and faithfulness[Matt 23:23]. Correct worship(or doctrine, or orthodoxy) is a product of transformation, and not something that is worked up or contrived at its expense.

Brennan Manning, in The Wisdom of Tenderness, says not a few things that heavily jive(yeah, man) with this theme(116 pages and 1 day into the book). Manning's premise is that our need as Christians is not to do better, love better, adhere better, or worship better, but to "wholeheartedly trust that God likes me(not loves me, because...God loves by necessity of his nature.)" Manning suggests that "Jesus experienced in the depth of his human soul how much his Father liked him...[that] the Man who was like us in all things but ungratefulness discover[ed] his own truth in the light of the loving gaze that rested upon him."

This liked-ness(which insists on unconditionality in a way that 'love' does not, at least in our perception of the word) deserves the most attention of anything in the New Testament, Manning would have us believe. Because it is from this position, that of "receiver" that His mercy(termed "given tenderness") is allowed to roll over us. The imperative then is to "live in the wisdom of accepted tenderness." From this initiative, our own righteousness springs. To accept that you are loved by God is more important than to love God.

Not to receive(respond to) the unconditional love of the Father is to live in fear...crippling fear that one will not be accepted by his/her peers, him/herself, and finally God. It is to hopelessly and endlessly scrub one's actions, beliefs, and worship toward the end of approval and acceptance by others, rather than to genuinely respond to the Famous One's overtures of love. How then, do I deal with this fearful and sin-scarred state, which has and continues to characterize me? Well, having ruthlessly taken stock of myself in terms of sinful motives and desires as well as actions, I am to "be gentle with myself, as the Master is, humbly acknowledg[ing] that the Word hasn't taken sovereign possession of my life, accept my own need for further conversion, quickly repent, ask forgiveness, waste no time in self-recrimination, and smile at my own frailty."

It is in a post 9-11 world of this fear that the Church can stand out like a sore thumb among the dictates of fame, position, and wealth: "In the face of fear and uncertainty, the faithful remnant-- anawim in Hebrew, "ragamuffins" in the vernacular--remain agents of hope in what theologian Oscar Cullman calls the 'isness of the shall be.' The twinkle in their eye suggests that they possess a higher vision." The vision of accepted tenderness for themselves and others, even--especially--in the place of sin's devastation.