Friday, August 21
A backfire of grace?
Below is a section of an e-mail update from Bart Campolo. He seems to always get me to deepen my understanding of grace while at the same time helping me see that it's okay to still wrestle with it…The background: In January of 2007, Bart and his family established something called 'The Walnut Hills Fellowship' in the city of Cincinnati. From their web site: The Walnut Hills Fellowship is just a small group of inner-city neighbors learning to love each other and the rest of the world according to the teachings of Jesus.
Here is part of that e-mail:
I know I always say this thing is more about loving people than trying to fix them, but it turns out I have been secretly hoping that if our little core group set a tone of mutual love, we would unleash the 'inner good neighbor' in everybody else, and a true fellowship of friends would emerge, wherein everybody genuinely cared about each other. It never occurred to me that if folks couldn't --or just didn't want to-- start improving their lives or giving back to the group, the warmth they initially enjoyed might end up feeling like some kind of negative judgment. It never occurred to me that grace could backfire.
God, how do you keep loving people who can't stand being known? If you pray, ask that for me.
Sincerely,
Bart Campolo
Mark Nelson at 9:33 AM 0comments