Legalistic Grace

I am much addicted to mommy blogs, when I'm not obsessively reading the news (which is totally gonna stop now that I'm definitely going to start reading French–tomorrow, I'm going to get my life together tomorrow) and when no one has updated their blog (blast them all) I give Facebook a good long look and then, when I've gone through my feed three or four times, and looked at everyone's pictures twice, I get angry and finally crack open a book. The rage doesn't usually start until my second time through facebook, but it happened to me yesterday when I was reading a really nice blog, that I love, about how to better raise your children. The substance of the post was fine. It was all true–parent and teach from a place of grace. If you're always on about the law, and grace never enters in, your children may be academically in a place of marvelous happiness, but they may also turn out not to believe in Jesus. You may as well have sent them to public school for all their true knowledge of God. No one says it this starkly but I've read this same post on thirty different blogs over the years.

Now, of course, this is absolutely true. If you enforce the law all the time and never preach the gospel and never give your poor kid a break, you're not teaching him about Jesus. The whole point of all your work will be lost. But it is also possible, as we pile up the blog posts and memes, to make grace into the law. The more you try to do something, like totally depend on God, or deal with the heart of your child, not just the behavior, or put first things first, or depart from evil and seek peace, or give a soft answer so that wrath will turn away, or put it all in the hands of Jesus and trust him for the results, the more you try, the more you will either succeed and then feel really happy about yourself, or fail and feel miserable. Just likeevery single human endeavor the extending of grace is just as much an opportunity for sin and pride as enforcing the law.

Now, unfortunately and fortunately, I think I have been blessed with more than usual amounts of rebellion. Whatever it is you are telling me to do, my very first response is 'Oh Yeah, I'll do it because I want to and not because you tell me to'. If you tell me to follow the law, I embrace rebellion and trundle off to live a life full of grace. If you tell me to live a life of grace, I say 'a pox on you all I will follow the law'. When I see a lovely scrolling script telling me to do something on facebook, No Matter What It Is, I resolve not to do it. This is very bad, of course. I should try to be a better person. But also, I think we could all do with not trying so hard.

I think there's a whole lot to be said for just getting up in the morning, being who you are, badness and goodness all jumbled together, doing laundry whatever way you feel like doing it, putting whatever food you happen to have in your fridge onto the table, screaming at a kid if they're asking to be screamed at, leaving everyone in their own pools of dysfunction and selfishness to go to the store by yourself or whatever it is that you feel like doing, and stop worrying about your own spiritual state and those of your children all. the. time.

When I say you, obviously I mean me. There is a lot to be said for me doing that. Motherhood and raising children and homeschooling are hard. They are. And you're going to fail, in your own special way. Why pile up more guilt than necessary? You're not going to adequately preach the gospel to your children. You're not going to extend grace when you should. You're not going to hold to the law when that's the right thing to do. You are going to lose everyone's socks the only week everybody needs to wear socks. You're going to fail. Constantly reminding yourself not to fail isn't going to make it better.

Of course, that also is bad advice. If you do really stop trying, it could really all go to hell. You're damned if you do….just kidding. Really, that's the whole point. You're NOT damned. You're NOT going to hell (if you trust in Jesus and throw yourself on his mercy, if you don't do that, well, then, do that first). Jesus loves you. Or, as Adrian Plass so shockingly observed, “God is nice and he likes you.” Its HIS grace, not yours, that makes all the difference.

The three things I think a Christian person, and by that I also mean a Chistian Mother, should do are

1. Pray all the time

and, shocker

2. Stop trying so hard.

and, by stop trying so hard I really mean

3. Try very very hard but don't think about it too much.

And on that note, I'm going to go eat a delicately fried egg on a sausage, and, because I “don't eat carbs” I'm going to stand in the kitchen and eat all the Rhubarb Bread Pudding out of everyone's bowls. And when someone says, “What are you doing?” I'm going to shout at them to go work on something or practice the piano.

Have a lovely day!