guilt and grace.

"the beauty of grace is it makes life not fair." 

probably one of my favorite relient k lyrics ever written. and it's true...grace really gives us an undeserved upper hand in life. 

i'm a rule follower by nature and believe that there should be consequences to actions; grace comes and blows that notion right out of the water. obviously there are still natural consequences for actions but grace says that if we are truly sorry that all is forgiven, wiped clean. what incredible news!

but sometimes (okay, a lot of the time) it's hard to extend grace and even harder to accept it. 

recently a friend confessed to me that he's sleeping with his girlfriend. they aren't married, he's in his mid-20's, he loves her and plans on marrying her. oh, and he's a pastor's kid. 

he asked me not to hate him. he literally said, "please don't hate me." 

firstly, it showed how un-grace-giving i must come off because how could i hate someone for sinning when i sin daily? the Holy Spirit was at work during that conversation because i would be lying if i said i didn't want to judge him. the human part of me wanted to wrinkle my nose in disgust at his blatant disregard for what Scripture says on the matter...then i was reminded of my own nature. i'm not out murdering people but pride counts as sin the last time i checked and sin is sin, right? there's a whole parable about a plank and a speck and eyes and who wants to be the jerk with the plank in their eye? 

secondly, it's weirdly humbling when someone confesses something to you. they trust you enough to pull the skeletons out of their closet and lay themselves bare saying "this is me at my most guilty." when someone is nervous to tell you something because they care about your opinion of them, there is a sense of weightiness that comes with that. being vulnerable with people is hard and when another human exposes their secrets to you it changes your idea of who they are. he was concerned i would think less of him but the fact that he was honest about his wrestlings with his own humanity made me appreciate him more. 

thirdly, he struggled to accept the fact that i wasn't disappointed in him or mad at him. do i think he should be having sex outside of marriage? no. he even knows he shouldn't be having sex outside of marriage, he called it "one of the big bullet-point sins." he grew up in the church, his dad is a pastor, he knows the Bible, and he has probably been on the receiving end of disapproving looks by well-intentioned Christians who think that a pastor's kid should have it all figured out. so when he told me his secret and i didn't disown him on the spot he felt the need to keep apologizing and explaining. it's a struggle most Christians can relate to, myself included. we want to pay for our mistakes because otherwise it seems too easy. like getting caught with our hand in the cookie jar only to be rewarded with two cookies. receiving grace is hard.

so those lyrics ring true...grace makes life so incredibly unfair and it's the most humbling experience of your life.

xo