Lose That You May Find (Part 4)

Thursday, Mar. 26, 2009 Posted: 11:02:01AM HKT

According to Manning, the grace of God is not just a noun describing our passive receiving of God's favour through keeping our eyes on Jesus. No, not at all! Although on one level, we will keep our eyes on Jesus, as we allow Him to work in our lives. Like St Francis of Assisi, Manning taught through his own life, that growing in God's grace comes through embracing, what Foster elsewhere calls, the spiritual discipline of simplicity. So in willful and deliberate contrast to the American Christian Evangelical but consumerist-driven lifestyle, Manning went about some thirty years ago and developed a modern day (and Protestant version) Franciscan community. Manning’s traveling community drew membership from a number of financially secure followers. Most notable of whom was the late and Grammy awarding winning Christian songwriter, Rich Mullins (who died in a car accident in 1997).

According to Manning, the first introductory example of God’s grace in the Bible begins not in the Gospels, but in Genesis, in the story of Abraham’s journey up Mount Moriah. It was there as we recall that God called Abraham to sacrifice Isaac on the altar. It is in fact this story, which Manning uses to begin his meditation upon the meaning of God’s grace. A meaning, which as earlier mentioned, means nothing less that “the active expression of his love." Manning writes,
"The child of God knows that the graced life calls him or her to live on a cold and windy mountain, not on the flattened plain of reasonable, middle-of-the-road religion. For at the heart of the gospel of grace, the sky darkens, the wind howls, [and] a young man walks up another Moriah . . . Unlike Abraham, he carries a cross on his back, rather than sticks . . . Like Abraham [eg, He climbs], listening to a wild and restless God who will have His way with us, no matter what the cost. This is the God of the gospel of grace.

Manning then goes on to say that the experience of God's grace should, if we're truly open to the full meaning and implications of grace, cause in us a radical disjunction between our entire existence and the setting we live in. It will thus cause a genuine distaste for the status quo of our modern world. The reason for this all boils down to the very experience of realising that God has accepted us, just as we are. This experience of having been accepted just as we are by God, thus leads to our own and genuine self-acceptance. For we then realise that, "genuine self-acceptance is not derived from the power of positive thinking, mind-games, or pop psychology. It is an act of faith in the God of grace. Therefore, as Manning concludes,
"The acceptance of self does not mean to be resigned to the status quo. On the contrary, the more fully we accept ourselves, the more successfully we begin to grow. [For] Love is far better stimulus than threat or pressure."

So the life-style implication is this: We no longer find ourselves bound to the social mirror. For, "When we accept ourselves for what we are, we decrease our hunger for power . . . We are no longer preoccupied with being powerful or popular. . . “ What then happens, as the rest of Manning's book demonstrates, is that we begin freely entering into the "downward flow" of God's grace.

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Rev Monte Lee-Rice
The Christian Post (Singapore) Guest Columnist