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Out of My Chains and Into Your Mercy

I finally did it. I made an appointment with a therapist. After 6 1/2 years of depression, anxiety, and good counseling, my counselor thought that a therapist might be able to help me heal. I’m broken inside. Something is not right in my brain. The healing for deep hurt is not happening like it usually does in most of us. And it’s not a sin issue. I need help with mending my soul.

While driving to my appointment on the freeway my anxiety began to grow. What if she said I was imagining this? What if she said that I just needed to get over it, like so many others have said? What if I can’t be fixed? What if this is what I will feel like for the rest of my life? So I turned the music up. And up and up until I was sure the other cars around me could hear it. Sometimes that’s the only way to push down the fears. To cancel out all of the Continue reading “Out of My Chains and Into Your Mercy”

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The Absurdity of Antinomianism

It’s absurd. The accusations of “Antinomian” and “Hyper-Grace” that we keep hearing about ourselves and many of our grace-centered friends is disappointing. Our commentaries, creeds, church constitutions, bylaws, and theological statements may champion sola gratia but move it from paper into real life and it scares the hell out of us. It scares us because in real life, grace can’t be tamed. It can’t be managed or balanced and we so desperately want to manage and balance it. Move it from a theological treatise or a doctrinal statement into something that goes deep into our souls and takes over from the inside out, and we begin to panic because we’re losing control. We want grace to be reasonable, balanced, and within easy reach of our supposed control. But a tamed grace is no grace at all. It’s bondage masquerading as freedom. Grace is wild, uncontrollable and always finds its way to all the wrong people at all the wrong times and in all the wrong circumstances.

Here’s what saddens me; the people we’re hearing these accusations from have never asked us what we believe. They’ve talked to others about us, but they’ve never taken the time to talk with us about our understanding of grace. They prefer instead to stand far off and cause dissension and misunderstanding. I guess it’s easier to just dismiss us altogether and sling mud from afar and label us Antinomian than it is to have a conversation. It’s cleaner that way. The assumption is that we have a low view of God’s law because we have a high view of God’s grace. But that’s not true.

Continue reading “The Absurdity of Antinomianism”