What They Never Told Us About Grace

The preachers and teachers taught us the shorthand meanings of a lot of religious words in the protestant church where I grew up. One of those words was “grace” defined as “the unmerited favor of God.”

Without wading through the theology, most Christians believe we are sinners and separated from God who showed His grace with an unmerited gift, his son, Jesus, a sinless being, who was sacrificed for our sins with his death on the cross, a concept called “atonement.”

Atonement — defined as reparation for a wrong or injury — has a long history in both Judaism and Christianity but for Christians it became more or less an inarguable truth when Saint Anselm, the Archbishop of Canterbury, wrote “Cur Deus Homo” (Why God Was a Man) from 1095 to 1098.

And, who can argue with a saint? Well, actually, lots of people (Anselm was exiled twice), but back to grace.

During the past year my wife experienced serious decline in Alzheimer’s Disease. She no longer knew me and she was no longer herself. We were living in purgatory with a disease that marked its own time, but for me it was a year of loss.

To help the journey, a friend passed along a little book, “Healing After Loss,” that had a quote on the back cover from Johann Wolfgang von Goethe: “It is the nature of grace always to fill spaces that have been empty.”

I was puzzled by this meaning of grace so I cast a wide net on the Internet and pulled books from my library to try and…