The Amazing Grace of God--He's not your kindly grandfather

God is always good, but not always kind.  When we travelled to DC recently and approached the Lincoln Memorial, my wife had a flashback.  She recalled seeing the memorial when she was four or five, and ever since has viewed God as sitting on his throne.  When we see God as sitting on his throne, we typically either view him as sitting in judgment (with a finger wagging in chastisement) or as a kindly grandfather (loving, to the exclusion of truth).  Thankfully, neither view is correct.  Instead, God is entirely "other."  In the OT, Moses is only allowed to view his "backside," God appears as a tornado to Job, and a dark cloud to the Jews.  He is other.  He can't be captured as a king sitting on his throne--whether he be a judgmental king or a kindly king.  This is one of the main reasons why God revealed himself through his son--so that we would have an accurate picture of who God is, so that we might know Him and have a relationship with Him.  Let's take a look at Christ--He's not someone with a wagging finger, nor is He a kindly grandfather who never speaks a harsh word.

Jesus hangs out with the prostitutes, wine-bibbers, and tax collectors.  So, if Jesus was going to "wag his finger" at someone, He had plenty of opportunities.  But, He doesn't.  Instead, Jesus loves the unlovely.  He embraces the social outcasts, and in Second Temple Judaism, there was no one more reviled than the tax collector.  The tax collector was a "turncoat," a Jew who was assisting the Roman oppressors.  Yet, Jesus ate dinner with him--the other Jews wouldn't even extend social graces to him.

In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus talks about separating the sheep from the goats.  Importantly, the goats appear outwardly to be following Him.  They call Him "Lord, Lord," and they "heal and prophesy in His name."  Yet, Jesus tells them that He never knew them.  This is one of the most chilling passages in the bible.  Then, when Jesus is sending out his disciples to certain persecution, He warns them to be mindful of the One who can kill both body and soul, not to relent to the persecutors who can only kill their bodies.  Jesus doesn't sound like any grandfather that I know.

So, Jesus' disposition towards man is "other"--it's often incomprehensible.  But, then, Jesus steps into our lives and makes himself known.  His harsh words are actually words of life.  Jesus desires for us to turn from our will for our lives to His will for our lives.  When I reached 40, I finally realized that I had no control over my life and that, to the extent that I did, I would screw my life up.  In fact, I had screwed my life up seeking good things--seeking to provide well for my family, seeking to ensure that my wife and children were orderly, well-mannered, well-appearing persons, so that they might have success in this world.  As my wife has said, "Many times we are hurt by each other's good goals."  I was trying to love my wife and children, but I was getting it all wrong.  Coming to the "end of myself" allowed God to begin working change in me.  That's the difference between the goats and the sheep.  Are we still "hell bent" on having our way (creating my wife and children in the image that I had for them), or are we bent on Christ's way?  The problem is that many times Christ's way doesn't appear good--it appears "other."  But, His "other"ways always are good.

I want to address Christ's otherness on a "macro" and "micro" level.  One of my favorite seminary professors has said that, but for God's intervening hand, the world would already have been destroyed.  I knew that we came to the brink of nuclear annihilation during the Cuban missile crisis, but we actually came closer in 1983.  In 1983, the Russian leaders, a group of elderly paranoid men, became convinced that Reagan was going to institute a nuclear first strike.  Reagan had called Russia that "evil empire,"  America had stepped up preparedness at all of its military installations due to the bombing of the Marine barracks in Beirut, and NATO was engaging in a nuclear war game.  The Russian leaders told their KGB agents to look for signs that America was preparing for a first strike.  As one Russian agent said:  "If you were told to look for those signs, you better come back with them."  And, there were the afore-mentioned signs.  The Russian leaders moved to their equivalent of Def-Con 2, they fueled their missiles, got the navigation systems "spun up," prepared their mobile launchers, and moved their subs under the arctic ice so that they would then be prepared to launch further strikes after the first strike was over.  The world was on the precipice of nuclear annihilation.

Then, Reagan saw a movie about the end of the world.  Reagan had not previously been particularly squeamish about nuclear war.  Now he realized that he could never allow it to happen.  So, they changed the NATO war game so that Reagan would not be involved.  The war game had originally called for them to send the final request to Reagan to initiate the strike.  They decided that the Russians might intercept this communication and believe that it was real.  Many believe that this movie, and the change in the NATO war game to exclude Reagan, is what saved the world.  So, a TV movie may have saved the world--karma or the "otherness" of God?  So, God's "otherness" works in a macro sense, but He also works in a micro sense.

My sons have played soccer for our town's soccer club for 9 and 8 years, respectively.  Every year there is some drama due to the way that the club is run.  Many families have been impacted, but then it happens to you.  Perhaps this is true for all soccer clubs, perhaps not.  Two years ago, my son, Mathis, played football in the fall season, and not soccer.  When the spring season rolled around, Mathis tried out for the soccer team.  He and I were told by the Soccer Director that the coach wanted to keep the same team together from the fall, so there was no place for Mathis on the team.    Mathis was plenty good to make the team, and did so the next fall when open tryouts were allowed.  Mathis played full-time in the fall on the team that he didn't make in the spring.

Low and behold, it then happened to Mathis' younger brother James, this current soccer season.  (Given Mathis' previous issues with the club, he was able to offer empathy, love, and encouragement to his younger brother.  This bodes well for their future relationship.)  James had played in Fall 2011 with a Homewood team with a coach that none of the kids liked, and the majority of the parents were seriously dissatisfied with.  The Homewood Soccer Director was informed of the parents' and kids' issues with the coach, but were told that he was a good coach and would be returning in the spring.  Nevertheless, the kids decided to try out for the team again, because they wanted to play together.  In the meantime, last spring, while the kids were playing for the high school rather than club ball, the coach had found a group of players that he utilized to form a team.  Many club programs discontinue teams in the spring when their players are playing for their schools.  Not so with Homewood.  So, when time came for Fall tryouts, instead of having open tryouts, the coach determined that he wanted to keep this group of 8-9 kids together--they essentially come as a group.  If you want the good players from this group, I understand that you have to take all of them.  So, just as with Mathis, James was not given the opportunity to really try-out.  It had been pre-determined that these kids would fill the defender slots, which is James' position.  (So, the try-out wasn't really a try-out.  Perhaps this is defensible--to pre-select players--but, if so, it should be adopted as the club's policy.)  We even gave Homewood the opportunity to place James on a U16 D2 team, where he was better than many on the team, but they didn't.  Then, God stepped in.  (By the way, given the way that James and another defender, his friend Tommy, were treated, three excellent players, including perhaps the best U15 keeper in the state, decided not to play for Homewood.)

After James had been rejected for the U15 and U16 Homewood games, we received a call from the father of one of the Hoover players who had rejected Homewood's offer.   Hoover was still having tryouts, and the Hoover parent had told the Hoover coach about James and Tommy, and he remembered them.  So, we drove directly from the Homewood tryout (where James and Tommy had been rejected on two teams) to Hoover where he and Tommy made a U16 D1 team.  Hoover regularly beats Homewood.  So, James and Tommy were rejected on a U15 D1 team and a U16 D2 team in Homewood, only to be accepted by a U16 D1 team at another club--arguably a better club.  God works in mysterious ways.  He certainly wasn't a kindly grandfather when James and Tommy were rejected by two Homewood teams, but a kindly grandfather is not what we, as humans, need.  We need a God that moves us out of "comfort zone" so that we can recognize his grace.  But for the rejection by Homewood, we would not have had the opportunity to experience God's grace.  God's actions may not appear loving in the first instance, but ultimately they are.