One Way Love: Inexhaustible Grace for an Exhausted World (6 page)

One doesn’t have to look far to find an ought; they are as ubiquitous as they are oppressive. For example, infomercials that promise a better life if you work at getting a better body, a neighbor’s new car, the success of your coworker—all these things have the potential to communicate “you’re not enough.” Maybe you feel that you
have
to be on top of everything if you’re going to make it; you
have
to infallibly protect your kids if they’re going to turn out okay; you
have
to control what others think about you if you’re going to feel important; you
have
to be the best if your life is going to count; you
have
to be successful if you’re ever going to satisfy the deep desire for parental approval, and so on and so forth, world without end, amen.

People themselves can represent the law to us (and us to them!). For example, a particularly beautiful or successful person next to whom we can’t help but feel inadequate. Or maybe a boss whose very presence makes us feel like we are not working hard enough, no matter how many hours we put in. They are
not
the law, but that is how we perceive them.

Not long ago, I was driving down the road near my house, and I passed a sign in front of a store that read, “Life is the art of drawing without an eraser.” Meant to inspire drivers-by to work hard, live well, and avoid mistakes, it served as a booming voice of law to everyone that read it. “Don’t mess up. There are no second chances. You had better get it right the first time.”

The sad truth is, the world is full to the brim with laws. From the craziest communes of Portland, Oregon, to the sunniest streets of South Florida, from the straight-laced small towns of the Midwest to the untamed jungles of Paraguay, the law is a universal human reality. Conditionality is written into the fabric of every society and relationship because it is written into the fabric of every heart and mind (Rom. 2:15).

YOU KNOW YOU’RE A LAWYER WHEN …

If you want to know where you’re encountering the law, do a quick inventory of your fears. What are you afraid of? I mean, really afraid of? In their book
Stranger Than Fiction: When Our Minds Betray Us
, Drs. Marc and Jacqueline Feldman reference a survey of the general public that asked people the same thing. Death came in at number six. Number one, by a significant margin, was public speaking. I don’t think it’s much of a stretch to say that the fear of public speaking has more than a little to do with a deeper fear, the fear of judgment, of being the vulnerable focus of a roomful of people, all of whom are evaluating what you are saying and how you look. They may like you, or they may reject you.

The fear of judgment, arguably the deepest of all fears, creates much of the stress and depression of everyday life. And it derives a great deal of its power from the fact that, deep down, we all know we don’t measure up and are, therefore, deserving of a guilty verdict. We are aware that we fail, that our best is never good enough, that we’ve been weighed in the balance and found wanting. One young mother recently put it as honestly as anyone can:

Deep down, I know I should be perfect and I’m not. I feel it when someone comes into my house unannounced and there’s a mess in every corner. I know it when my children misbehave in public and I just want to hide. I can tell it when that empty feeling rises after I’ve spoken in haste, said too much, or raised my voice. There’s the feeling in my stomach that I just can’t shake when I know I’ve missed the mark of perfection.

The judgment of others—social law, if you will—is a surface echo of a judgment that lies beneath. We are ultimately afraid of the judgment that the law wields. We instinctually know that if we don’t measure up, the judge will punish us. When we feel this weight of judgment against us, we all tend to slip into the slavery of self-salvation: trying to appease the judge (friends, parents, spouse, ourselves) with hard work, good behavior, getting better, achievement, losing weight, and so on. We conclude, “If I can just stay out of trouble and get good grades, maybe my mom and dad will finally approve of me.” “If I can overcome this addiction, then I’ll be able to accept myself.” “If I can get thin, maybe my husband will finally think I’m beautiful.” “If I can make a name for myself and be successful, maybe I’ll get the respect I long for.” There are other responses to judgment that we will look at in the next chapter. Suffice it to say, if there is an element of fear behind our everyday afflictions—workaholism, people pleasing, self-loathing, etc.—then the law is probably not far behind.

MIGHT AS WELL FACE IT, YOU’RE ADDICTED TO LAW

If it sounds like our relationship with the law is one-dimensional, let me assure you: it is not. The truth is, we are very conflicted. We may dislike being told what to do, we may hate being judged, but as we learned in the last chapter, we
love
being in control. And the law, at least on the surface, assures us that we determine our own destiny. As the great Scottish churchman Ralph Erskine so beautifully wrote, “The law could promise life to me, if my obedience perfect be.”
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This we understand. This we like. The outcome of our lives remains firmly in our hands. “Give me five principles for raising exemplary children, and I can guarantee myself a happy family if I just obey those five principles.” If we can do certain things, meet certain standards (whether God’s, our own, our parents’, our spouse’s, society’s, whomever’s), and become a certain way, then we’ll make it. It feels like it works—at least that’s what we’ve been told. Conditionality lets us feel safe, because it breeds a sense of manageability. The equation “
If
I do this,
then
you are obligated to do that” keeps life formulaic and predictable, and more important, it keeps the earning power in our camp.

People who are addicted to control are addicted to the law as a means of control. And this sadly applies to Christians as well as non-Christians. In fact, far too many churches are completely in thrall to the law, so much so that most of the non-Christians you meet will describe Christianity as a religion of law. They may not use those terms, but listen closely, and what you’ll hear, almost without fail, has to do with rules and judgment. As Walter Marshall says in his book
The Gospel Mystery of Sanctification
, “By nature, you are completely addicted to a legal method of salvation. Even after you become a Christian by believing the Gospel, your heart is still addicted to salvation by works … You find it hard to believe that you should get any blessing before you work for it.”
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Against this tumult of conditionality—punishment and reward, scorekeeping, you-get-what-you-deserve, big-L Law, little-l law, whatever name you choose—comes the second of God’s two words: His grace, His one-way love. Grace is the gift that has no strings attached. It is what makes the Good News so good, the once-and-for-all so that we may be free. Ironically, though, this amazing word of relief can be offensive to us.

I’ll never forget hearing Dr. Doug Kelly (one of my theology professors in seminary) say in class, “If you want to make people mad, preach law. If you want to make them really, really mad, preach grace.” I didn’t know what he meant then. But I do now.

The law offends us because it tells us what to do—and most of the time, we hate anyone telling us what to do. But ironically, grace offends us even more, because it tells us that there is nothing we
can
do, that everything has already been done. And if there is something we hate more than being told what to do, it’s being told that we can’t do anything, that we can’t earn anything—that we are helpless, weak, and needy.

However much we hate the law, we are more afraid of grace. Because we are natural-born do-it-yourselfers, the vitriolic reaction to unconditional grace is understandable. Grace generates panic, because it wrestles both control and glory out of our hands. This means that the part of you that gets angry and upset and mean and defensive and slanderous and critical and skeptical and feisty when you hear about God’s one-way love is the very part of you that is still enslaved.

The Gospel of grace announces that Jesus came to acquit the guilty. He came to judge and be judged in our place. Christ came to satisfy the deep accusation against us once and for all so that we can be free from the judgment of God, others, and ourselves. He came to relieve us of our endlessly exhausting efforts at trying to deal with judgment on our own. The Gospel declares that our guilt has been atoned for, the Law has been fulfilled. So we don’t need to live under the burden of trying to appease the judgment we feel; in Christ, the ultimate demand has been met, the deepest judgment has been satisfied. The internal voice that says, “Do this and live” gets drowned out by the external voice that says, “It is finished!”

But I am getting ahead of myself.

URBAN MEYER IS DEAD; LONG LIVE URBAN MEYER

After Urban Meyer’s very public collapse, he took some time off. He went on a road trip with his son. He attended his daughter’s volleyball games. He made peace with his father. He even rediscovered the reason he got into football in the first place: love of the game. Eventually he took a new position as coach for Ohio State, and above his new desk he hung his contract—not the contract he signed with the university, but the one he signed with his wife and children—the one that prioritized his family and his health. An expression of love rather than judgment. It’s a beautiful story, and it’s not over.

An article about Urban during his transition mentions a book he used to live by, written for business executives, called
Change or Die
. He has talked about the book in speeches, given away countless copies, invited the author to meet with his teams, but never did he realize the book described him down to a tee. The article recounts an episode that occurred in the car on the way to Cleveland, in which someone read Urban a passage from the book:

“Why do people persist in their self-destructive behavior, ignoring the blatant fact that what they’ve been doing for many years hasn’t solved their problems? They think that they need to do it even more fervently or frequently, as if they were doing the right thing but simply had to try even harder.”

Meyer’s voice changes, grows firmer, louder. “Blatant fact,” he says.

He pauses. A fragmented idea orders itself in his mind. “Wow,” he says.

He asks to hear it again. “Blatant fact,” he says. “It should have my picture. I need to read that to my wife. I’m gonna reread that now. Self-destructive behavior?”
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This is a man who was addicted to the law, so much so that it destroyed him. Yet his defeat turned out not to be the end he feared it would be but the beginning of something new, the advent of a man finally free enough from the stranglehold of narcissistic performancism that he could not only laugh at himself but begin to love those around him. Self-destruction was not the end of his story; neither is the Law the end of ours. It is the first word, but thank God it’s not the last. The last word is the one that comes straight from the mouth of Jesus himself when he says, “For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him” (John 3:17
NIV
).

NOTES

CHAPTER 4

I FOUGHT THE LAW (AND THE LAW WON)

Kim and I were twenty-one when we got married. We met when we were nineteen, right in the middle of my “wilderness period,” and because we were so rebellious—me more than her—we brought quite a bit of baggage into our relationship. Those first five years were rough. Not abusive or anything, but I can distinctly remember wanting to hit the eject button on a number of occasions. The source of the friction was always one of two things: 1. I expected her to be a certain way, and she wasn’t meeting my expectations. 2. She expected me to be a certain way, and I wasn’t meeting her expectations. We were so hard on each other in those early years! Especially me. It makes me cringe to even think about all I put this incredible woman through.

Both of us were brand-new Christians at the time, which you might think would have provided a solid foundation for our relationship. But because I had grown up in a Christian home and she hadn’t, and because I had gone through such a wild period of living, I was a very legalistic young believer. It’s not uncommon for people who have recently undergone a conversion to experience an overzealous phase. In my case, I was trying to protect myself from going back to what I used to be. I wrongly concluded that, although I had been saved and pursued by God’s grace, it was now up to me to erect stringent boundaries and lay down the law on myself and everyone around me—only then would I be able to avoid the pain and self-destructiveness I had experienced before. I had wrongly concluded that my problems were circumstantial or due to outside factors. As long as I could avoid substances, women, and Johnny Law, my relationship with God was safe. Of course, while boundaries and law can curtail some of that stuff, my real problem was inside, and the law unfortunately can’t do anything about that. In fact, as we’ll explore in this chapter, it may even make things worse.

I put some heavy demands on both Kim and myself in those early years. We laugh about it now, but back then it wasn’t so funny. Most of it had to do with our spiritual life. I can remember being particularly strict about reading the Bible. So much so that if I woke up and read one chapter instead of three, I would feel miserable all day long. Even worse, I would project that same standard onto Kim, making her feel small and inadequate if she didn’t wake up and have a lengthy quiet time first thing in the morning.
Barefoot in the Park
it was not!

I was also absurdly uptight about not doing anything recreational on Sunday. If she wanted to go out and do something as innocuous as plant flowers, from my seat on the couch where I was watching sports, I would give her a withering look (pun intended) that said, “Shame, shame, I know your name.… First, it’s flowers on the Sabbath; next, you’ll be wanting to
exercise
!”

And then there was the whole realm of parenting, always an extremely ripe area for judgment and scorekeeping. Kim did not grow up in a religious home, so her mother and father never put her to bed and prayed with her, never read a picture Bible with her. I remember when our son Gabe was little and it would come time to put him to bed, Kim would walk into his room, put him down in his crib, and walk out. I’d be sitting there—not helping but ready with a million questions (that weren’t really questions). “Did you not pray with him, pray over him, sing a song to him? No ‘Jesus Loves Me’?” I’m sure Kim was extremely grateful that the bedtime police were on the case.

Possibly the most embarrassing moments, looking back, came during the hour-long prayer sessions I would insist on each night. We would keep extensive journals with long lists of thanksgiving and people to pray for—which, on the surface, is a wonderful thing. But that was just the beginning. I would strongly recommend that we get on our knees to pray (because everyone knows that God is more pleased when we pray on our knees). And I would typically go first, praying these long, lofty prayers. Kim would be scared to go next. She was afraid that she would say the wrong thing, or even if she said the right thing, that she wouldn’t say it eloquently enough. Because it was typically late at night when we would pray together, she would sometimes fall asleep during my prayer. I would gently wake her and condescendingly remind her about the time Jesus asked his disciples to stay up and pray on the night he was arrested only to discover them sleeping when he returned from his private prayer to the Father. We laugh so hard about that now. But it wasn’t funny then.

I put so much pressure on her. I made her feel like a second-class citizen. She was spiritually blue-collar, I was spiritually white-collar, and she had a lot of growing up to do if she was going to get to
my
level.

In my infinite wisdom, I would even compare her to my mother—lesson number one of what
not
to do when you are a young married couple! My mother, of course, wasn’t just any woman. As far as I was concerned, she and my grandmother were the embodiment of godliness, the gold standard of what a Christian wife and mother should be. How could Kim possibly measure up to that? She soon began to feel insecure, both as a person and in our relationship. When she picked up the Bible, even though she often didn’t understand what she was reading, she would do it because she was afraid I would look down on her if she didn’t. Our actions may have looked holy to an outside observer, but underneath, we were operating out of fear and guilt rather than faith and grace. No wonder we were so unhappy. It is a testament to both the grace of God and Kim’s own incredible character and beauty that she stuck with me.

Those early years turned out to be an extended lesson in what the law can do to a relationship. We learned firsthand that relational demand creates relational detachment, that judgment has the power to kill love. And you don’t have to be religious to find that out! The impossible demands in our relationship were soaked in Christian language and practice, but that was simply our context. I’ve seen husbands and wives who are hard on each other about the most ridiculous things, from the way they chew their food to the way their voice sounds when they’re speaking on the phone to the type of presents they give each other. Kim and I may not have been yelling and screaming at each other, but our marriage was relationally rocky during that time. The fruit of judgment proved to be unbearable amounts of self-righteousness on my part and crippling amounts of insecurity and fear in her. It’s a good thing God intervened!

FIGHT, FLIGHT, AND APPEASEMENT

Most parents and spouses, siblings and friends—even preachers—fall prey to the illusion that real change happens when we lay down the law, exercise control, demand good performance, or offer “constructive” criticism. We wonder why our husbands grow increasingly withdrawn over the years, why our children don’t call as much as we would like them to, why our colleagues don’t confide in us, why our congregants become relationally and emotionally detached from us. In more cases than not, it happens because we are feeding their deep fear of judgment—by playing the judge. Our lips may be moving, but the voice they hear is that of the law. The law may have the power to instruct and expose, but it does not have the power to inspire or create.

Think about it in terms of when you’ve encountered some form of accusing demand from another person. The gap between who we are and who we should be always produces a reaction. If we’re criticized, we defend. If we’re rejected, we sulk. It’s never neutral. When we feel this weight of judgment against us, those who are addicted to their own sense of control—all of us—tend to slip into the slavery of self-salvation. Our three most common and instinctual self-salvation strategies are fight, flight, or appeasement. All of them are consuming, but none is particularly productive. The opposite, in fact.

Perhaps your instinct is to fight. You know the judge isn’t leaving anytime soon, but you’re not either, so you put up your dukes. As my friend Ethan Richardson writes, “You bicker with your boss about his unrealistic expectations, condescend about the
vanity
of going to the gym, blame your parents for what they’ve done to you, or wear leather and turn the speakers up.”
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Maybe you spend your time and energy trying to demolish whatever system you feel judged by, telling yourself that right and wrong are just social constructs and you see through them. Or maybe you are so sensitive to criticism that every interaction becomes a power struggle, and you can never let your guard down. But the law is bigger than we are—it will win every time. That is simply its nature.

Maybe your response is flight. You run from whatever standard you perceive to be accusing you. You leave home and travel the world. You stop answering
their
phone calls. You close your eyes and cover your ears and maybe even change your name. You’d be surprised how often this happens. I’ll never forget an experience at summer camp. A good friend got in trouble for some inappropriate behavior and was sent home. When we got back, a number of us reached out to see how he was doing. None of us ever heard from him again. We’d all come to represent the condemnation he experienced. Whatever form it takes, the idea is: the judge isn’t going anywhere, so I will. Sayonara!

Then there’s appeasement, probably the most popular path. The judge (friends, parents, spouse, ourselves) has found us wanting in some way, so we beg and plead and show him how hard we are trying. We tell him we’re sorry, promising that we’ll do better next time. Appeasement involves cowering before the judge, hoping at some point he/she/it might understand and sympathize with our situation. We try to appease the judge’s demands with hard work, good behavior, impressive achievements, and so on. We conclude, “If I can make a name for myself and be successful, maybe I’ll get the respect I long for.” “If I lose ten pounds and buy some new clothes, maybe my husband will finally think I’m beautiful and pay attention to me.” “If I help out more with the kids, maybe my wife won’t criticize me as much.” We buy into the delusion that we are capable of silencing (or reasoning with) that voice of demand.

The problem with fight, flight, and appeasement is not so much that they’re unwise, but that they don’t work. No matter how angry or strong or committed, no fighter can beat those granite tablets into a more manageable shape and size. Like anyone who spends their time punching a brick wall, fighters end up bitter, bruised, and alone.

Flight may work for a while. We may experience some relief from the external accusation we feel from a family member or church official. But we are almost always dismayed to discover that our problems have followed us. Our guilt before the law is not circumstantial, after all. It goes much deeper. We carry it with us wherever we go. I thought all my problems would be solved by getting out from under my parents and teachers, but I was dead wrong!

Finally, those who go the appeasement route, which is most of us, find that no amount of hard work, nice gestures, phone calls, or good works is ever enough. Appeasement, like people-pleasing, is a despair-producing process. If we’re living in an environment or we are in a relationship that feeds the fear of judgment with constant criticism, we deflate and detach because it becomes discouragingly exhausting trying to satisfy the demands and appease the judgment of the other. We become depleted of the hope that we can ever attain the affirmation that seems so necessary for us to live and breathe, and so the relationship flounders. How much money is enough, Mr. Rockefeller? Just a little bit more …

In his book
Who Will Deliver Us?
Paul Zahl writes:

I wonder if any of us are strong enough to withstand the perceived judgments upon our lives, which touch the fears within. Have you ever tried to win the favor of a person who actively dislikes you? To get him to like you, you may have changed your style of dress. You may have altered your schedule. You may have stopped something you’ve been doing or started something new. You may have carried out their wishes to the last detail. You may have tried once, then again, then a thousand times. But you have not won from this person the affirmation you so deeply desire. Judgment steamrolls over most of us.
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WALKING AWAY SORROWFUL

Let’s shift gears for a moment. Perhaps you are familiar with Jesus’s interaction with the rich young ruler. It is a remarkable case study in the nature of the Law and our response to it:

And as [Jesus] was setting out on his journey, a man ran up and knelt before him and asked him, “Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” And Jesus said to him, “Why do you call me good? No one is good except God alone. You know the commandments: ‘Do not murder, Do not commit adultery, Do not steal, Do not bear false witness, Do not defraud, Honor your father and mother.’” And he said to him, “Teacher, all these I have kept from my youth.” And Jesus, looking at him, loved him, and said to him, “You lack one thing: go, sell all that you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me.” Disheartened by the saying, he went away sorrowful, for he had great possessions. (Mark 10:17–22)

The rich young ruler approached Jesus with quite a question: “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” It may sound lofty and arcane, but it’s a question we are all very familiar with, one that we ask all the time. What is the right way to live? What
should
I do if I want to be a good person/father/Christian? Jesus naturally reiterates the Law of God, the divine standard of goodness and righteousness. The young man must be an appeaser, because he shoots back an answer that would leave most modern people speechless. He claims that he has kept all the commandments since his youth! The self-righteousness jumps off the page and is painful to read, especially since it’s so reminiscent of how I used to treat my poor Kim. A life lived according to the law breeds self-righteousness.

Christ knows that “no one is good”— appeasement is not possible, as no man is free of sin—so he says the one thing that will make the young man realize the gap between who he should be and who he actually is. He goes for the jugular: the young man’s pocketbook. His pocketbook is the sum of his worldly achievements, very likely something the young man is proud of. Christ knows that his money is emblematic of his self-salvation strategy, so he aims the hammer of the Law and brings it down, telling this poor guy to sell it all and give the money to the poor. Notice how the young man responds. Is he inspired to take the plunge and give it all away? No! He becomes sorrowful and leaves. The Law has exposed him as the sinner he is, a man unwilling to give up control over his life and soul, and this is not happy news. The information Christ provides him with does not translate into action. Correction: it prompts him to walk away with his head hanging Charlie Brown–style, to distance himself from the Lawgiver. He moves in the opposite direction. This is the key insight we find in the Bible about the nature of the Law (and demand and exhortation, etc.):
it does not and cannot produce its intended effect.
So what does it produce if not what it intends?