Usher sang “Amazing Grace” at the emotional Los Angeles Lakers game on January 31, 2020 — the first game following Kobe Bryant’s death in a helicopter crash. “Amazing grace, how sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like me. I once was lost, but now am found, was blind but now I see.” Watching his stirring performance, I couldn’t help but think of the power and presence of that song in American culture. Google “Amazing Grace” and you will be surprised at how many popular singers have sung that song in a wide variety of settings and styles. And for good reason.
Yet I also remembered a fairly heated seminary discussion, all those years ago. We were planning a seminary worship service, and one of the planners suggested that we sing “Amazing Grace.” Who doesn’t like “Amazing Grace”? Well, at least one of my seminary classmates did not. I remember being confused. The issue was not with the beauty of the song or the overall impulse of the sentiments. (See the aforementioned widespread popularity!) The issue was one word: wretch. “I am not a wretch,” my seminary friend insisted. “We are not wretches.” The discussion went on, as seminary discussions do, about sin and human nature and the nature of God. I can’t remember if we sang that hymn in that service, but I remember with some clarity the intensity of the discussion. (I have since learned, often in funeral planning meetings with families, of others who do not like “Amazing Grace,” but rarely for theological reasons.)
I remember an equally intense debate (albeit with a bit more decency and order) at a General Assembly meeting in the late 1980s, when the church was considering the adoption of the Brief Statement of Faith following reunion. In the section on the first person of the Trinity, the drafting committee initially suggested that we use “we deserve God’s condemnation” as a kind of summary statement on sin and the human condition. After significant churchwide feedback, the drafting committee changed the line to “we deserve God’s judgment,” that is, from condemnation to judgment. The debate was that serious to prompt the proposed change. The 1989 standing committee, who received the draft, had second thoughts about the second thoughts, and after reflection recommended returning “judgment” back to “condemnation.” The language was clearer and less ambiguous, though questions about word choice persist. Even now, when I lead officer training or adult education sessions on the Brief Statement of Faith, inevitably someone will mention – with some discomfort, even disagreement – that particular phrase.
And I remember conversation after conversation with church members who question the need for a prayer of confession every Sunday morning (maybe you’ve had these conversations, too). Why? they ask. I had a pretty good week. I didn’t do any of the things listed in the prayer, or all of them, anyway. I wasn’t perfect, but seriously? Besides, all of this negativity is no way to attract new members who want to feel good and don’t want to be so focused on human shortcomings.
We don’t have the authority to change the words to “Amazing Grace.” The General Assembly decided – and rightly so, I believe – that we do deserve God’s condemnation. And we need a prayer of confession each Sunday for many reasons. Even if we didn’t specifically do the things the prayer said or did not do the things we ought to have done, someone did, a fellow human traveler with whom we are connected. And besides, a regular reminder of God’s graciousness and mercy is never a bad thing.
But to the original question: Are we beloved children, created in the image of God? Or are we wretched “sinners in the hands of an angry God” (per Jonathan Edwards) and therefore deserving of whatever God decides for us?
This is where our theology doesn’t always help us, or at least our general perceptions of it. Notions like “original sin” and “total depravity” – and yes, even “double predestination” – float freely in our collective consciousness, reinforcing our grim and dour Presbyterian reputation.
If this were a forced choice exam, a binary proposition between “aren’t we great” and “aren’t we the worst,” the choice seems clear. Read a history book or scroll through the headlines on your phone and you will discover, and rediscover, human propensity for sin, for wretchedness. Yes, some people do some good things, but not always. And aren’t they exceptions anyway? Doesn’t the overall contour of human behavior trend toward violation, deceit, exploitation? And if that’s the case, and if we, as we affirm, believe in a sovereign God, then don’t we deserve God’s condemnation? Additionally, if we condition or relativize the affirmation, saying “we deserve God’s judgment” or “some deserve God’s condemnation” or “or we sometimes deserve God’s condemnation,” then grace itself becomes a work, perceived as our achievement rather than God’s gift. The Confession of 1967 frames it helpfully: “All human virtue, when seen in the light of God’s love in Jesus Christ, is found to be infected by self-interest and hostility. All people, good and bad alike, are in the wrong before God and helpless without God’s forgiveness. Thus everyone falls under God’s judgment. No one is more subject to that judgment than those who assume that they are guiltless before God or morally superior to others” (Inclusive Language Version).
No theology is without context. I am mindful – as much as I am able to be – what the tradition of this affirmation has done to individuals and communities for whom this theology has been no friend. Individuals and groups of people (women, communities of color and the queer community, among others) have been beaten down, physically and verbally, across history and to this moment, when what the church has believed has been weaponized. Perhaps my seminary friend had a point. That is, being told repeatedly that you or your community is a wretch, second class even in God’s eye, has consequences. These beliefs and behaviors should be included in the confession we make, we who have perpetrated and perpetuated harmful theology. Not only should we seek to “hear the voices of peoples long silenced” (again, per the Brief Statement of Faith), we should lament, repent and act to remedy our history.
The fundamental question – who are we, honestly? – must therefore take seriously the legacy of a theology that rightly has embraced grace as a response to our understanding of the nature of God and human sinfulness. At the same time, we must understand that that grace has been made conditional to some within the human family. For grace to be “amazing,” it must be allowed to be freely experienced by all of us, regardless of the human categories we impose. One of our covenantal tasks is to remove barriers, so that all may experience God’s grace. That is what justice leading to reconciliation looks like.
With that caveat, can we return to the binary matter — sin or no, condemnation or no? If “wretch” is not our language of choice, perhaps the insight behind it can be. We fall short. We say things and do things, or we don’t say things and don’t do things. And, we are part of a human family that behaves similarly. We have that in common. We may not be among the most wretched of the wretches, but can we not locate ourselves in that universe somewhere?
That is to say, our theology at its best reflects the breadth of the biblical narrative, which is rarely binary but rather illumines the human condition in all its complexity and messiness. Time after time, in both testaments, humans fall short. They turn from God and reveal their full humanity — deceitfulness, selfishness, misdirected piety, greed. Even when our biblical forbears get it “right,” it is often imperfect and incomplete. And yet when we turn from God, God is always waiting for us when we turn back. In spite of it all, God will not break relationship with us. “Like a mother who will not forsake her nursing child, like a father who runs to welcome the prodigal home, God is faithful still” (Brief Statement of Faith).
There is great power embedded in the smallest of words. In this case, the word is “yet,” as in this affirmation from the Brief Statement of Faith, after “condemnation,” the words that follow immediately after are: “Yet God acts with justice and mercy to redeem creation.” That is to say, we may deserve God’s condemnation, but we are not condemned. No. What we receive is justice and mercy. What we receive is redemption. What we receive is grace.
The impulse to change the creed’s wording from “condemnation” to “judgment,” though ultimately and correctly rejected, still had a point. While we do not receive God’s condemnation, God’s gracious, loving judgment forms us and reforms us and transforms us. Paul Tillich was right to insist that we accept that we are accepted, “not in our goodness and self-complacency, but in our certainty of the eternal meaning of our life.” We are always works in progress, but our shortcomings, our fallenness, our commissions and omissions will never place us outside the circle of God’s welcome, God’s “yet.” Fred Rogers liked us “just the way we are,” but that was about acceptance, not perfection. Even then, he knew that we were evolving creatures, seeking to learn and grow in our very humanity. This is not Billy Joel singing “don’t go changing,” but rather God calling us into an ongoing relationship where we change and evolve, motivated by love and not fear, always with the confident hope that the God who judges is the God who accepts. Again, from the Confession of 1967: “All who put their trust in Christ face divine judgment without fear, for the judge is their redeemer.”
Who we are is really and always and ultimately a reflection of who God is. Who we are, honestly, is God’s. We belong to God. That affirmation should provide both comfort and challenge to each of us. It should also give shape to the church’s mission and ministry, from its worship life to its education and formation to all the ways it serves beyond its walls. All of us, of every age and stage and worldly condition, need to hear the good news that while all fall short of the glory of God, God’s glory offers a sure and steadfast embrace. Whatever is true about the human condition, yet God’s love perseveres and prevails.
In “Gilead,” Marilynne Robinson reflects on God’s “yet.” She writes, “Love is holy because it is like grace — the worthiness of its object is never really what matters.” God loves us in spite of who we are, which really means God loves us because of who we are.
These are big and heady topics, the nature of God and the nature of humanity. When the best of our theology fails, there are tried-and-true places I return to that help remind me who I am and whose I am. Our teaching document “Belonging to God: A First Catechism” is such a place for me. Perhaps it can be for you.
Question 1. Who are you? I am a child of God.
Question 2. What does it mean to be a child of God? That I belong to God, who loves me.
Question 3. What makes you a child of God? Grace — God’s free gift of love that I do not deserve and cannot earn.
Question 4. Don’t you have to be good for God to love you? No. God loves me in spite of all I do wrong.
I am grateful for this good, even amazing, news, which we would do well to remember every morning, about ourselves and all with whom we are connected, friend and foe, near and far. It will make all the difference.
John Wilkinson is pastor of the Presbyterian Church of Chestnut Hill in Philadelphia. Committed to urban ministry and the church’s confessional heritage, he also serves on the boards of Next Church, the Presbyterian Historical Society and McCormick Theological Seminary.
