I've been taking a writing class for a few weeks and I'm really enjoying it. Here's a piece I wrote on Dietrich Boenhoeffer's take on STS vs. STO, or cheap grace versus costly grace. It's kind of long but this is around my 3rd draft and I thought I'd share it here. I even threw in a link to EE for effect. Please let me know what you think of it.
What do you think? Too long to post here? Not accurate? Just curious :)
“Cheap grace is the deadly enemy of our Church. We are fighting today for costly grace.”
-Dietrich Boenhoeffer
This paper is based, with humble respect to the original, on the work of Dietrich Boenheffer. A man with the blood of artists, theologians, and philosophers flowing through his veins, he served as an inspiration to his fellow captors in what was Nazi occupied Germany. As a pastor who gave up everything to fight the Nazis, his philosophy inspired an opposition in a time of utter hopelessness. A central piece of his thought, and a bold declaration, is that there is a fundamental difference between cheap and costly grace, or what we may think of as cheap and costly faith. For this man it was of urgent necessity that those who could hear would attempt to find in themselves the costly grace, grace that gave him the integrity and solidity of purpose to face the Nazis with strength.
The National Socialist Party had, as a part of its general strategy, sought to bribe the Church with the power that it had exerted over the great empires of the past. In order to please the Nazis and grow in political strength the Church did away with its Christian obligation to humanity, and it instead chose to placate its congregations with ministry steeped in propaganda. In this paper I hope to root out the spirit of cheap grace the Church gave to appease its congregations and the spirit of costly grace. In the process we may find the method that will help us to discern the two. Dietrich Boenhoeffer’s thoughts are just as relevant today, in the wake of another man-made disaster, and his calling just as urgent, as it was in the dark, oppressive streets of Nazi Germany.
Much like in previous generations, the role of cheap grace is central to the demands of our society. It demands no work and yet it gives the ultimate satisfaction, usually insinuating that we have been saved. It is most abundantly obvious in a religious context whenever we, in any religion, say, “I am saved”. When we say or think this we are affirming a commitment to cheap grace. It is a sense of being closer to God and, hence, safer, when we have actually not taken a single step. In essence, we have lied to ourselves. But I do not believe Dietrich laid the blame for these lies at the foot of the individual, at least not in the way we would imagine. A man who stood calm and dignified before the Gestapo, a man executed for his compassion and strength, would not blame us for this lie. We lie because we need an escape from the stress of suffering.
As we try to cope with the challenges of the world, usually after we’ve been cheated, abused, or jaded, we readjust our perception of our lives. What happened? Who is to blame? Why is there evil in the world? We see those we grew up with, and those who live far in the distance, suffering. Why? In confronting this question we may seek salvation. We may find in salvation, or cheap grace, a temporary relief from pain. I have been hurt because I am a sinner. Others have suffered because they are sinners. If I must repent I will, but, then I am saved from eternal damnation, right? And now that we have been saved we can live our lives again, right? Is this what Dietrich Boenhoeffer saw in the German congregations? “The Nazis may be in charge but we are still saved in Christ. We can live our lives comfortably.” Responsibility was denied, and the consequences are well known.
In our corporate world hopelessness and misery are sold at a wide array of prices. Fashion goes in and out of style, it is hopeless to try and follow the pace. Fast food fills you up but, nutritionally, lets you down. It is just a matter of time before physical misery and depression. The 9 to 5 behind the counter, insecurity about losing the job the next day, and a feeling that we’ve adjusted ourselves to meaninglessness, this is suffering as we well know. Why is it that this corporate environment seems to be antithetical to human needs? It is a well-known stereotype that only the most cut-throat, scheming, charismatic snake-charmers climb the corporate ladder. Well why is it that this is the same profile of the psychopath? Do we really want the corporation, the institution of our times, in the hands of a psychopath? And if it is, do we wonder any more about the chaos and disaster it’s created?
The cognitive dissonance between what one considers right, and what occurs every day, growls at us in a very primal way. We have been told that we were sent out as sheep amidst wolves, but did we think to prepare? Salvation and cheap grace do not prepare us for the pathological, underhanded, even murderous, actions we see occurring outside our windows. They do not explain them either. They do not end them, they do not explain them, but they keep us in line for a fleecing.
We must ask ourselves a very chilling question. It is the same question for all of us. What is it that we seek to be saved from? For those captured by the concept of cheap grace this question may not be met with an answer. It may not even be met with a thought, but instead a myriad of associations will whir in our brains as we attempt to distance ourselves from a very dark mystery of life. We do not know why we suffered in the first place. This is why cheap grace is central to the demands of our modern society. It tells us that this suffering that we experience in our job, or in our unemployment, or in our close relationships to people who sometimes seem pleased to hurt us, is ordained by God. And this suffering is reaching such a pitch and few people know who to turn to for answers. Cheap grace is there to, temporarily, relieve the pain. But the pain may be telling us something. In fact the pain may be one of our oldest survival mechanisms.
It is in this fleecing, this suffering of the thousand let-downs in life, that we were led to consider cheap grace in the first place. Is there something more to our lives, is there another level that we could possibly aspire to? After a million more let-downs, disillusionments, mistakes, and lies, we tire of the old phrases. Salvation, popular music, political slogans, the relationship reruns that lead to disaster, all the disposable things of life, all of it seems to have a certain fiction to it. So we try and find an answer, go back to school, or learn something new. But we will be immediately drawn back into the realm that we try to escape. It is the realm of the same old thoughts and emotions, days that seem to loop over and over like a record, conversations that can only scratch our surface. This can happen instantaneously, and we will forget why we tried. All effort will become a burden.
Imagine for a second that you have no responsibilities besides the job you work. You are asked to wake up on a Monday morning and immediately begin the routine that prepares you for the workday. You shower, iron your clothes, brush and floss, and head out the door to work. All of this happens automatically; your body knows what to do. But six days pass in the same fashion, and you wake up on Saturday, your day off. You have no work to attend, and you find it difficult to imagine doing anything productive. You had something you wished you would do but it has been lost amongst the stresses of everyday life. It is just another burden. Costly grace is what you do with this burden, this personal burden, when no one is forcing you to earn, to work, to do anything. It is the exercising of something higher than what your body is accustomed to do. The suffering of everyday life becomes easier to tolerate, because you are suffering under your own conditions. The suffering may be writing, reading, catching up on what has been happening all around you, but all of these are just the side-effects of looking for something new in yourself. And if you are reading this right now I imagine you’ve been looking far and wide. If you haven’t already, you may want to begin meditating on what your life can be.
Inside this great, variegated field of compulsions we call life, we are searching for something new. It is the pearl of great price. As we continue to dig, to try and find ourselves despite the abundant opposition, we see in its reflection who we are, who we have become, and that we are not who we should be. It is what has led us back to school, back to church, back to ourselves. It was what Dietrich Boenhoeffer realized when he saw that, if he was silent and obedient as the Nazis attempted to impose their cold-hearted rule over the world, he would be complicit in their pathology. He chose costly grace, the desire to be real, to see and act on what he saw. It is the beginning of the end of cheap grace, and it is the beginning of responsibility, the kind that does not accept any counterfeiting. It takes its hold on all of us at different times and in different ways. But it always finds us in the dark, lost and confused. We must then pay for it according to what we have available to us, but we have to pay with ourselves and our effort to bring forth our talents. Ultimately, this is why Dietrich Boenhoeffer paid for it with his life.
Costly grace is earned slowly and in stages. We pass through these stages like a child developing into an adult. And, judging from the difficulties of growing up, we can see that it will not be simple. It is our choices that we examine, our relationships, our sense of reality. It is that voice that desires a choice that is free from anyone forcing it. If we do not struggle for this voice then we are not paying. And what is it we are paying for? We are investing in the repair of our future, in our responsibility to the world we are living in. This is the fundamental difference between cheap and costly grace. Whereas cheap grace is bestowed upon us and taken much like a drug, taking us on rollercoaster highs of hope and fear, costly grace is our effort to awaken to the world around us. It is our attempt to end our suffering not by running from it, but by taking it into our own hands, understanding it. It is slow and constant, and it warms our hearts slowly with the heartache of past failures and the future potential for a better life. It is in our hands always, and it cannot be given or taken away. Anyone who claims that they can give you grace, or salvation, or faith, is lying, and they offer it, often unconsciously, in the same way a psychiatrist offers Prozac. It may seem like a good idea for a while, but it does not satisfy. Cheap grace is not only the enemy of the Church, it is the enemy of our conscience. Costly grace is the heartbreak that comes when we realize this. The questions follow.
What do you think? Too long to post here? Not accurate? Just curious :)
