Keeping score; making confession

“Grace cannot prevail,” writes Robert Farrar Capon, “until our lifelong certainty that someone is keeping score has run out of steam and collapsed.”*

In spite of the fact that I am a terrible golfer, golf has provided me with a grand metaphor for the concept of original sin:  keeping score. [Just an aside. I don't conceive of an original sin which has infected all human beings always, but rather, an action or attitude that continually breaks our relationships with one another and with God.]

So.....in golf, you are either at par (average), above par (which appears to be a little better, but is, in fact, worse) or below par (which appears to be worse, but is in fact better).  By the end of 18 holes, the winner has the lowest score, but can easily be 'above par' and so not really that good.  Likewise, a loser could end up below par, but not far enough.  It's an Alice in Wonderland sport.

Keeping score is what we do. We claim our  better jobs, better schools, better grades, better sports teams are the easy examples.  Our Instagram pictures prove we take better vacations, go to better concerts, have better friends.  Our family reunions are a cacophony of often not so subtle one upmanship.  Somehow we have convinced ourselves that we are in a lifelong race with every other human being near us, and so we keep score.

Because we are so busy keeping score, watching one another, greedy for advantage, envious of another's good fortune, lusting after power, we can't imagine that God - or however you image the Divine Creator - isn't keeping score as well.  God is just waiting to 'catch' us in some indiscretion or outright nastiness, recording this failure for all eternity, and often planning some kind of punishment for our failure.  No wonder no one wants to talk about God or sin.  The result is that the concept of grace is more dense than nuclear physics.

Grace is both the gift given and the manner in which it is given.  Grace is forgiveness without requiring a pound of flesh or deep groveling.  Grace is making whole what was broken without constant referral to the repaired cracks.  Grace is love.  Love is Grace.  In the end, there is no greater gift. It is a gift we are loathe to accept because first, it speaks the truth and therefore, we want to earn it.  Of course if you have 'earned' it, it isn't grace.

But in our heart of hearts we know that there are a slew of things that someone should be keeping track of - things we have done, or not done, for which we are to blame, which have caused harm to others.  You make up your list; I have my own. So, we are suspicious of such a gift because we know our own flawed history. We also know how hard it would be for us to be truly gracious.

Enter the gift of confession.  Yes, I said 'gift'.  The act of confession allows us to stop running (away from ourselves and away from others) and speak truth - about who we are and what we are capable of doing.  It is a moment when all the posturing comes to an end and we admit - mostly to ourselves since everyone else has known all along - that we were out of bounds, missed the target, broken the rules, hurt someone else.  We say it aloud (even if only in our heads) to make it real. No getting around it.

Then grace happens. Like a warm blanket on those nights when the temperature plummets.  Like a cup of tea with a friend.  Like the gentle touch of a loved one who has been wronged.  Words of forgiveness that allow us to breathe deeply once again.  An outstretched hand that invites us back into relationship.  A voice that calls us 'beloved'.

Certainly consequences will be paid; amends will have to be made.  We will need to do work to strengthen the relationship that somehow we broke.  But we can stop running and begin living. We can be a part of someone else's better tomorrow.

Now that's amazing!  That's grace.

*Robert Farrar Capon, Between Noon and Three: Romance, Law, and the Outrage of Grace (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1997), 7.

Evans, Rachel Held. Searching for Sunday (p. 265). Thomas Nelson. Kindle Edition.