But For The Good Decisions I've Made, There Go I

I enjoyed seeing the movie "The Grace Card" this week.  It sparked a lot of good discussion that night, and even more reflection since.  It may be easier to find on Netflix than in the theater, but I certainly recommend it for an evening spent with family or friends.  Just make sure to plan time to talk about it together when the lights come back on.

I'll jump to my main question: Does the movie effectively portray the grace of the gospel or not?

It certainly purports to do this.  After all, it's been called "Fireproof 2.0" as one of a new genre of "indie" films done by a local church.  The Calvary Church of the Nazarene in the Memphis, TN suburb of Cordova is the force behind this film.

The film certainly tackles subjects - racism, forgiveness, tragedy, marital and family tension to name a few - that need grace.

And while several reviews pan the movie's story as too improbable to connect with "the reality it aims to imitate," it's hardly like Fight Club, where the writer can drop in the perspective of Multiple Personality Disorder at the last minute.

So, does the movie effectively portray the grace of the gospel or not?  My vote goes for "I'm really not sure," and that is what makes the discussion so interesting.  I think the answer pivots on what happens in one climactic scene.  BE WARNED: You may want to stop reading here until after you have seen the film.  There is a moment when Sam joins Mac in the hospital chapel.  After some interaction, the scene ends with the two of them kneeling at the altar and praying together in an obvious, powerful moment of catharsis, surrender and decision.  It's emotionally intense, deeply personal and private even as you watch it.  But the answer to my question rests on what is happening in Mac's life at that moment, and the film does not dissect it enough for us to know.

Here's my sense of the options:

Mac may well be overwhelmed by the hurt and emptiness of his life growing out of years of bitterness and anger over the tragic death of his first son.  Every aspect of his life has been poisoned by the fruit of his unforgiveness.  We can all understand being willing, in a moment of deep despair like this, to want to turn from old patterns of behavior and try any new set of patterns that might relieve the pain, end the spiral of destruction and produce a different result.  Mac could be giving up the pattern of anger and taking on a pattern of forgiveness.

Or else, Mac may be seeing his own deep-rooted brokenness and the viral destruction that spreads through every corner of his life because of it.  In despair over that, he may see his own need for something beyond what he can do for himself and realize that what he needs is offered to him from the Cross of Jesus.  Not a change of strategies, but an exchange of where the trust of our heart is placed.  Will Mac live by trying to do what Jesus wants?  Or will he live differently because he stakes his life on what Jesus has done?

In the first, he is exchanging a strategy for life that has not been working for another strategy that he hopes will work.  In the second, Mac would be surrendering his life to One Who loves him and receiving by grace what he could never accomplish on his own.   The first path assumes "you can do it, if you just do the right thing," while the second says that you must learn to surrender all that you are in order to receive what you could never be yourself.

Now let me be quick to say that I think in God's universe the strategy of forgiveness will always bear better fruit than the strategy of bitterness.  And my life is testimony to the truth that grace moves mightily even when my motivations are confused at best.

But there is a difference between practicing forgiveness as a strategy for living your life, and facing up to the painful truth that you need a new life and heart for living, not just a new plan.  That difference is the Gospel of Grace

I fear many people have come to their moment - like Mac's in the hospital chapel - and sincerely intended to end their bitterness and choose to be more forgiving.  I fear it because trading in an unworkable strategy for life in order to start up with new strategy that should bear different results will always be prone to two problems: self-righteousness when you succeed and self-condemnation when you don't.  If we succeed with our new strategy, we plant seeds of pride and self-righteousness in our own heart, trusting in what we have accomplished.  Our hearts will eventually whisper, "There but for the right decision I've made, go I."  At the deepest level, our trust is in our new strategy.

The second potential pitfall is self-condemnation.  Even after initial success, there comes a moment when the hurt-that-is-bigger-than-our-own-power walks in the door, and try as I might I cannot climb the mountain in my own strength.  I may say the words "I forgive you," but the animal of anger is still alive deep in my heart, even if caged, waiting for another day.

At the end of the movie, the now reformed and thoroughly christianized killer of Mac's first son, enters the church service where Mac and his friend Sam join together to celebrate "The Grace Card."  Mac forgives his son's killer in a final proof of the power of his choice of forgiveness over bitterness.  Or had Mac realized that night in the chapel that he himself was a "big sinner" who could not go forward apart for the gift of grace.  Though he was a police office and the man who 17 years earlier had been the instrument of his son's death was a drug dealer, they both needed the same thing: grace.  Mac can now give to this man that which he has received himself: forgiveness.

Imagine if that man had stumbled into the church service as a dying convict who had continued to use and sell drugs, still endangering the lives of innocent people, what then?  Would the Grace Card have been so compelling when it didn't add up?

If forgiveness is just a different strategy for living in my own strength, perhaps not.  I can only be as sure as my strength.  But when I see that my standing before God is the gift of Jesus from the cross, I can then trust that He has the power to extend that same gift to others through me.  I forgive, because I have been forgiven, not because I want a better life.  That is how grace works.