GRACE and TRUTH

I spent the day with a wonderful elementary school principal who leads the most challenging school in our community. Filled with kids, most whose home life is lacking. And that is describing it politely. Most of these kids live in an environment that we wouldn’t wish on our worst enemy. Her stories haunted me last night, wondering what I would do if I were the principal.

I bounced back and forth, “Kick them out. Send them home. Zero tolerance.”

“But why would you send them back to the living hell that will just make their behavior worse?”

“Well, then call the law on the parents.”

“That mom is just parenting how she was parented. She doesn’t know any better. She doesn’t know how to get out of her situation nor does she have the emotional intelligence to help herself.”

“Well then let’s get the state involved and let’s remove the kids from the home?”

And that argument would play over and over in my head. This struggle between my heart and head about GRACE and TRUTH. I struggled with this tension in my heart.

Often I want to push my faith and my heart in one direction or the other. Andy Stanley describes at as, “We like the verses about GRACE when it’s about me and we like the verses about TRUTH when it’s about someone else.”

The TRUTH makes me want to say that you’re accountable, but GRACE makes me say you’re forgiven.

GRACE tells me to say you will be fine, but TRUTH make me say yes, but you are broken.

TRUTH says you must work on it, but GRACE says God loves you.

If we as a community, especially a faith based community, are going to address the generational poverty around us, we are going to have to balance the tension between GRACE and TRUTH. We can’t just play one card or the other, it must be both.

John, who was an eye witness to Jesus, tells us that Jesus was full of GRACE and TRUTH. “For the law was given through Moses, but grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.” John 1:17.

The issues facing this school, this neighborhood, our community……we will not fully address the potential for transformation until we balance both TRUTH and GRACE. 

Be Salt and Light.