A friend of mine the other day was talking about a woman she was working with on a volunteer project. This other lady was talking down to her, insulting her, and basically “being snotty” for no visible reason at all. (My boss just blogged about why this lady may have been acting this way in a good post titled “Hurt People Hurt People,” check out Mark Smith’s blog link below.) So anyway, my friend, who is a CHRISTian lady and sweet as could be, said to me, “Why do people like that make me want to act so unCHRISTian-like?”
It made me think of something I heard once, I believe it was in Yancey’s book on grace, that was a quote I believe was attributed to the Dahli Lama. He said, “I love your Jesus, but I don’t like your CHRISTians.” There is a good reason for this, and I can see why he said it. He said it because most people in the world, even CHRISTians who are held accountable to this standard by non-believers, do not practice the incredibly difficult art of repaying ungrace with grace. When it comes down to it, we just aren’t perfect, and we are oftentimes so wounded ourselves that anyone coming near us gets a tongue-lashing for stepping too close our woundedness.
Those are the walls that keep people at arm’s length and keep us armored from the world. I think of a beautiful princess being cooped up in a high tower of a castle, and no one can get to her. Really though, the princess yearns for love and connection. She just doesn’t realize that there is a way out of her tower, and she has the power to have visitors anytime she wants. I do not believe we are meant to live our lives isolated and behind walls. We need to have good fences (boundaries), of course, so that we don’t lose our own place in the world; but we are not meant to cut-off from others. Like the lady at the beginning who was being “snotty,” isolating herself from others and lashing out in her pain. Instead of isolation, we need to insulate ourselves with good boundaries, and instead of high walls, have short fences with gates in them. It allows people to see who you are, and those that are safe to come into our hearts for a visit, without completely cutting off from anyone who may hurt us.
So when you run into someone who is giving you a healthy dose of ungrace, do the hardest thing, and return that ungrace with grace. You will be amazed at the way it walks right around the high walls people have, and softens them. The world is full of people living walled-off and for themselves, hurting in solitude. In the presence of true grace, they will drop everything and listen intently, because more than anything, I believe it is what people long for the most: to figure out the way out of their towers. Grace lights the way. Thanks for coming by. Stop in again soon.