Truth Minus Grace

Again, I'm posting more thoughts on Grace . . .

These thoughts (below) are from my reading in Grace Notes, by Philip Yancey (taken from his writings in several books). Today's (April 26,2011) was about Tolstoy and Dostoevsky, and was titled "Truth Minus Grace". Today's thoughts were excerpted from Yancey's book Soul Survivor (pp 131-134). It's continued from the last few pages in the book of other excerpts in Soul Survivor but it stands alone concerning the thoughts about Grace that I want to convey. With appreciation to Philip Yancey:

"I feel sad as I read Tolstoy's religious writings. The X-ray vision into the human heart that made him a great novelist also made him a tortured Christian. Like a spawning salmon, he fought upstream all his life, in the end collapsing from moral exhaustion.
"Yet I also feel grateful to Tolstoy, for his relentless pursuit of authentic faith has made an indelible impression upon me. I first came across his novels during a period when I was suffering the delayed effects of "church abuse." The churches I grew up in contained too many frauds, or at least that is how I saw it in the arrogance of youth. When I noted the rift between the ideals of the gospel and the flaws of its followers, I was sorely tempted to abandon those ideals as hopelessly unattainable.
"Then I discovered Tolstoy. He was the first author who, for me, accomplished that most difficult of tasks: to make good as believable and appealing as evil. I found in his novels, fables, and short stories a source of moral power.
"A.N. Wilson, a biographer of Tolstoy, remarks that "his religion was ultimately a thing of Law rather than of Grace, a scheme for human betterment rather than a vision of God penetrating a fallen world." With crystalline clarity Tolstoy could see his own inadequacy in the light of God's ideal. But he could not take the further step of trusting God's grace to overcome that inadequacy.
"Shortly after reading Tolstoy I discovered his countryman Fyodor Dostoevsky. These two, the most famous and accomplished of all Russian writers, lived and worked during the same period of history. Though they read each other's work with admiration, they never met, and perhaps it was just as well--they were opposites in every way. Where Tolstoy wrote bright, sunny novels, Dostoevsky wrote brooding, interior ones. Where Tolstoy worked out ascetic schemes for self-improvement, Dostoevsky periodically squandered his health and fortune on alcohol and gambling.
" Dostoevsky made many mistakes in life, but achieved an amazing feat in art. His novels communicate grace and forgiveness, the heart of the Christian gospel, with a Tolstoyan force.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Dear Readers
A couple of weeks ago, I posted the first of my intended postings on Grace, then once more got sidetracked. In that post on April 2, I excerpted from Philip Yancey's book Grace Notes (first published in the mid-90s, I think), and in yesterday's "reading" from this book, he had more to say about grace, and I've decided to repost that selection here for my second post on grace. (By the way, the conference he mentions attending was held in New Harmony, Indiana, and I also attended with 100 or so other writers, would-be writers, publishers, and others who wanted to use any gift that they had been given for writings to be used for other Christians. It was a "Writer's Conference" thought up by well-known author Walt Wangerin, who hosted the conference and who at that time lived in nearby Evansville, Indiana. Good conference!)

From the April 10 reading in Grace Notes (today's reading from the book Finding God in Unexpected Places (254-57).


"Not long ago I attended a conference held on the restored grounds of a century-old utopian community in Indiana. As I ran my fingers over the fine workmanship of the buildings and read the plaques describing the daily lives of the true believers, I marveled at the energy that drove this movement, one of dozens spawned by American idealism and religious fervor.
"It occurred to me, though, that in recent times the perfectionist urge has virtually disappeared. Nowadays we tilt in the opposite direction, toward a kind of anti-utopianism. Many churches have formed twelve-step groups that by definition center on members' inability to be perfect.
"I confess my preference for this modern trend. I observe far more human fallibility than perfectibility, and I have cast my lot with a gospel based on grace. Most utopian communities--like the one I was standing in--survive only as museums. Perfectionism keeps running aground on the barrier reef of original sin.
"How can we in the church uphold the ideal of holiness, the proper striving for Life on the Highest Plane, while avoiding the consequences of disillusionment, pettiness, abuse of authority, spiritual pride, and exclusivism?
"Or, to ask the opposite question, how can we moderns who emphasize community (never judgment), vulnerability, and introspection keep from aiming too low? An individualistic society, America is in constant danger of freedom abuse; its churches are in danger of grace abuse.
"With these questions in mind, I read the New Testament epistles. I took some comfort in the fact that the church in the first century was already on a seesaw, tilting now toward perfectionistic legalism and now toward raucous antinomianism. James wrote to one extreme; Paul often addressed the other. Each letter had a strong correcting emphasis, but all stressed the dual message of the gospel. The church, in other words, should be both: a people who strive toward holiness and yet relax in grace, a people who condemn themselves but not others, a people who depend on God and not themselves.
"The seesaw is still lurching back and forth. Some churches tilt one way, some another. My reading of the epistles left me yearning for a both/and church. I have seen too many either/or congregations."

Grace-Starved

A while back I become very aware of the Grace that had been given to me, and became very interested in the subject of GRACE. I wrote a few posts on grace on a couple of lists that I was subscribed to, with some very positive private comments. My aim has been to write other posts on the subject of grace to my blog, but many interruptions and time constraints (and forgetting how to post to my blog) hasn't seen that happening yet.

Every day, as part of my daily devotional, I read the day's entry from a book titled "Grace Notes" (Daily Readings from a Fellow Pilgrim) by Philip Yancey. The reading selections are taken from his writings over several years. One of those writings was the book "What's So Amazing About Grace?", and yesterday's reading was titled "Grace-Starved". I decided to try to get back to my postings on grace, with an introduction to PY's excerpt that was yesterday's reading. On another note, it is connected to Easter and, since Easter occurs on the 24th of this month, it is very fitting.

"I saw in Russia in 1991 a people starved for grace. The economy, indeed the entire society, was in a state of free fall, and everyone had someone to blame. I noted that ordinary Russian citizens had the demeanor of battered children: lowered heads, halting speech, eyes darting this way and that. Whom could they trust?"
"I will never forget a meeting in which Moscow journalists wept -- I had never before seen journalists weep -- as Ron Nikkel of Prison Fellowship International told of the underground churches that were now thriving in Russia's penal colonies. For seventy years prisons had been the repository of truth, the one place where you could safely speak the name of God. It was in prison, not church, that people such as Solzhenitsyn found God."
"Ron Nikkel also told me of his conversation with a general who headed the Ministry of Internal Affairs. The general had heard of the Bible from the old believers and had admired it, but as a museum piece, not something to be believed. Recent events, though, had made him reconsider. In late 1991 when Boris Yeltsin ordered the closing of all nation, regional, and local Communist Party offices, his ministry policed the dismantling. "Not one party official" said the general, "not one person directly affected by the closings protested." He contrasted that to the seventy-year campaign to destroy the church and stamp out belief in God. "The Christians' faith outlasted any ideology. The church is now resurging in a way unlike anything I have witnessed."
"In 1983 a group of Youth With A Mission daredevils unfolded a banner on Easter Sunday morning in Red Square: "Christ is Risen!" it read in Russian. Some older Russians fell to their knees and wept. Soldiers soon surrounded the hymn-singing troublemakers, tore up their banner, and hustled them off to jail. Less then a decade later, all over Red Square on Easter Sunday people were greeting each other in the traditional way, "Christ is risen!" . . . "He is risen indeed!"

(from the book "What's So Amazing About Grace?" (256-257) by Philip Yancey).

I highly recommend Yancey's book "Grace Notes" -- it's a one-page-a-day selection from Yancey's writing, and I agree with Billy Graham's comment on the back cover of the book that "There is no writer in the evangelical world that I admire and appreciate more.

Grace and Peace,
Elaine