Hezo Kittie

God's Grace and the Prodigal Son

God's grace is the concept that God has a gift for every person who has ever walked on earth, no matter what they've done in their life. The concept behind it is that this gift from some abstract being is completely unconditional; someone is giving you the entire world and everything he (or she) owns for the price of nothing.

So we're supposed to think, "Oh what? Free gift! That's totally awesome. I'll accept it, thanks Mr. God."

And once we realize how awesome that was, to just receive something unconditionally, we think and believe to ourselves, "I wanna do that too."

This concept is so cool to me. It's completely aligned with Covey's "proactive" concept. It becomes irrelevant whether everyone in the world loves you or hates you, because the fact that "I can love" is unconditional.

It's aligned with Rob Bell's story of being a superpastor. He felt he had to say yes to helping this family and that family, yes to expanding the church, yes to holding extra seminars and whatnot, yes to everyone. He felt had to fulfill the expectations of others.

Two hurdles I want to overcome are dealing with the expectations people have of me, as well as dealing with the expectations I have of people. Firstly, expectations people have of me. I used to feel obligated to fulfill every favor that people have asked of me, but like Rob Bell, I had to learn that you don't have to feel guilty about saying no once in a while. And I hated asking favors of other people, because I didn't want to put the burden of "I have to say yes" over them, because that's what I believed. Now I don't feel guilty about occasionally asking for a favor, because I completely respect a "no" answer.

The expectations I have of others. This was another huge strain on my life that I never understood until the past year. For example, one weekend over freshman year Christen came to UCLA and was there for three days and I felt that she "didn't make a strong enough effort" to try and meet up with me. And it was frustrating at the time.

I used to ask myself questions like "Why didn't she just do this or that or why didn't she call me between when she did this event and that event?", "Why didn't so and so call me back?", "Why didn't so and so call me to get dinner when she called so and so? That's fucked up!"

But I was asking all of the wrong questions. All of the preceding questions and expectations are absolutely and completely irrelevant. The only question that matters is, "What do I expect of myself?"

Ah, the stars have aligned.

Anyways, the story of the Prodigal Son is one of the famous stories from the Bible. Basically, a man has two sons, and one son asks for a shitload of money from his dad, leaves the house and spends it all on drugs and booze and stogs. The other son never asks for anything and lives with his dad, helping him out with the house and the farm.

The first son then goes broke and hits rock bottom and hates himself, and he comes back to his dad and pleads for him to bring him back, that he doesn't want the spoils but just wants to be a servant, since he "doesn't deserve to be called his son anymore". But the dad rejoices and gives him the spoils and throws him a fucking huge triple kegger for coming back.

The other son is pissed and says, "What the fuck Dad? I fucking never broke a rule in my entire life, yet I never got a fucking awesome ass party that my stupid ass retard brother got. THIS IS SO UNFAIR."

Then the Dad just says something along the lines of, "My son was once lost but now he is found. We are rejoicing for this. Everything that I own is yours as well, Son #2. Don't worry." [or something like that, I never really understood what that last part meant]

So, Son #2 thought he was being righteous and shit, but in reality he wasn't because he EXPECTED to get more spoils than his law breaking brother.

"An inward change, the forsaking of old sinful ways, and being reborn in a spirit of generosity is to James the true test of conversion. Without these things, claiming to have 'faith' is a sham. Grace must be something that steers the Christian to avoid sin and practice charity. Without these signs, it seems likely that grace was never there."

So there is a huge burden and frustration on the loyal son, because he felt he deserved more. If he truly understood grace, he would realize that his generosity toward his father was intrinsic, and there would be no frustration or burden. The stars will have aligned for him and his heart would soar wih the eagles, to quote Kinavey.

Summary: Give without any intention to receive, and life will be totally awesome. Fuck everything else. Fuck whether or not anyone else does the same. Just do it.