Defying Logic

“Grace defies reason and logic.” – Bono

Suffice it to say, a rock star summed up my truest beliefs about grace, which could not be a better example of grace and it paradoxical nature. That is grace that a rock icon, not a pastor or prophet, speaks to the deepest truth of grace – namely that it so defies reason and logic. Truth is when it comes to grace is it best to just experience it and not analyze it. Bono goes on to say in the rest of this quote, that [paraphrased] “love interrupts the consequences of our actions, which in my case is very good news indeed, because I’ve done a lot of stupid stuff.”

Good news indeed since I am a wounded whack job, a recovering alcoholic in need of grace daily, hourly, in order to live this life that I have.

Grace defies logic. Grace defies reason. As interpreted through human constructs, God’s grace is totally absurd. We need to create limits and things like prohibitive structures to grace, things like religious institutions, dogma, doctrine, denominations all with the express purpose of meting out this Reality called grace. We find it almost impossible to let grace alone, we need to fix it up with trappings, we can’t just let grace operate in God’s time and way.

And God, like grace, is also absurd at times; God makes grace available to everyone, no matter what their belief system or lack thereof. Since as George Bernard Shaw said that “all great truths begin as blasphemies,” let us expand that truth past the point of comfort: Grace is available outside of the Church and religion. I should know since most of the grace I have experienced in life has been in the basement of churches at A.A. meetings more so than in the sanctuary of churches on Sunday mornings.

Grace is available to all who cry out for it -sinners, saints, queers, straights, Catholic radicals, and Tea Party NRA’ers, Muslims and Atheist, drunks and drug addicts alike. Man, that is disturbingly beautiful isn’t it?

Someone once said to me decades ago that God had a penchant for drunks and fools (of which I am both) that is grace. Along the lines of God’s grace defying logic is the truth that God makes all “saints” out of whacked job sinners and fools. The most broken among us become the greatest mystics and purveyors of grace as it transforms us into godly/goodly people. Those of us who have drunk deeply of the bitter darkness are also the ones that taste deeply the sweetness of light and grace.

Grace is a comfort to the disturbed and a disturber to the comfortable. Grace turns the world upside down and therefore right side up.

Grace is an eternal ocean, one where we can wade in the shallow parts or dive into the deeps; so shallow we shall not drown, so deep we shall never touch the bottom (thanks Martin Luther for the use of your concept).

Grace is available to anyone who asks for it. I am repetitious about this in the blog because I am a forgetful person with a short memory when it comes to God’s truths. I am learning that all I need to experience grace is a willingness to be honest about my pain and brokenness and an openness to ask od for help – then the floodgates of God are unleashed.