I, Erwin Raphael McManus, am an immigrant from El Salvador. My heritage is rooted in the long history of violence and oppression that has consumed Latin America for generations. We seem to have only two reoccurring approaches to government: revolution and dictatorship. With every revolution, there is the promise of freedom. Yet without fail, every revolution brings us a new dictatorship. In time, the oppressed becomes the oppressors. What history has proven is that we need more than a change of government – we need a change of heart (first, and second, a US Constitution would be helpful).
It is quite easy to mistake powerlessness for humility. It is easy to convince yourself that you are different from your oppressor when you are powerless to act differently. You can only know who you truly are when you are fully capable of imposing your will on the world around you. Who would you be if you were free to be yourself? Would you be better? Would the world get better?
There is an old adage that’s almost universally accepted: “Absolute power corrupts absolutely.” While most of human history seems to confirm this, I am convinced this conclusion is wrong. Absolutely wrong. Absolute power does not corrupt. God has absolute power, and he is incorruptible.
Actually, what absolute power does do is far more telling. Absolute power reveals completely. Power gives freedom to what has been hidden within the human heart. Power tells the truth about who we are. Power sets free what has been imprisoned within you. Jesus seems to have understood this. It’s why you can live in a free country and still be captive by the condition of your soul. (no longer any doubt about it now! Truth always prevails )
Those who use their power to oppress do not have the luxury of freedom. They are trapped within the small confines of their limited minds and hardened hearts. For them to see someone who is truly free is more than they can bear. There is a strange darkness within the human heart that feels the need to destroy what it does not have or does not know. (well said!)
It was 1986 and I was studying for my master’s degree while traveling across the country as a speaker. My schedule was often hectic. I spent days running at a deficit of energy while trying to do far more than I probably should have attempted.
In one of my classes, the professor allowed lots of open conversation and even dissension with his views. For whatever reason, I chose the path of dissension. Quite often I would find myself interjecting or interrupting his lecture to openly disagree with something he had just said. I remember thinking, I can’t believe he’s teaching this class. I wonder how someone with a PhD could be so wrong.
A I look back, I feel a significant amount of embarrassment at my lack of humility, openness, and teachability. I think I saw myself as a defender of the truth. Then one Tuesday, I rushed into the class – late as usual – and something seemed different. All of the students were quiet and completely focused on the papers in front of them. A wave of fear passed over me when I realized why. It was the midterm exam.
I felt so confused. The midterm is on Thursday. Today is Tuesday. It felt like one of those dreams where you’re naked in front of a crowd, only this time, I wasn’t asleep. I couldn’t contain myself. I groaned out loud and asked – not any one particular student, but the entire class – what was happening. I turned to my left, where my professor stood, watching the entire scenario. Maybe out of pity, ne looked at me and said, “Mr. McManus, please step outside.”
He could have humiliated me in front of the class, as I had done to him do many time during the class. But he didn’t. At least my execution would be in private. At least he would grant me that small kindness. Still, I worried. Was I being expelled from class? Would he fail me on the spot? This was his opportunity to return the disrespect I’d shown him throughout the year. He should take it, I thought. I certainly deserved it.
The professor was a quiet man. Thoughtful, introspective. A man of few words, and endless deep thoughts. I’ll never forget what he said to me that day, as I stood in the dark and dingy hall waiting for the hammer to drop. He took a deep breath, and finally broke the awkward silence.
“Mr. McManus,” he said, “there are times in out lives when our only hope is grace. Today is that day for you.”
He didn’t ask me for an explanation. He told me it was obvious that I had confused the dates. I didn’t need to justify my incompetence. He simple told me to come back Thursday for the midterm.
I’ll never forget that moment. A lessor man would have taught me a different lesson. It would have been fair of this professor to teach me the consequences of my arrogance and impertinence. Instead he taught mee a different lesson that shapes my life to this very day: There’s nothing more powerful than the power grace. Nothing more beautiful.
I never saw him the same again. Thereafter, his lectures resonated and reverberated in my soul in a way that had never been done before. I then understood that to sit at his feet and learn was a gift.
So, if God, who has every right to find us guilty, refuses to do so, how can we not forgive one another? If God, who see’s everything we’ve ever done and could easily drown us in our guilt and shame, seeks only to make us whole and gives us freedom, how can that not be our intention toward one another?
In our current environment, we have what is now known as “cancel culture.” We ransack the history of every tweet a person has ever written, every statement a public personality has ever made, any joke a comedian has ever delivered, or any mistake a person has ever made in the past, looking for ammunition to end their careers. We do not allow for change, or growth, or simply the imperfection of being human.
Condemning is easy. It’s also ugly and inelegant. Grace makes both the giver and the recipient more beautiful. Grace gives us room to grow, to change, to mature, to repent for a past we are resolved will not define our future. Oh…that’s important, too. Grace believes in your future.
You would assume that religion would exist so that grace would flow freely, but time and time again the opposite has been shown to be true. Religion dispenses grace as if it were the rarest of commodities, existing only in limited supply. It hoards power by demanding works of us to attain grace – and since the reality is that our need for grace is endless, perhaps insuring that we will always be indebted to the church or temple or mosque or synagogue for its dispensation.
Grace is only needed when it is undeserved. This is the elegance of grace. This its genius. Jesus left us with a new way of seeing the world. He freed us from the burden of judging each other and condemning ourselves. He lifts us above guilt and shame and shows a better way to exist. The genius of Jesus enabled him to find the grace for every moment and every person. When we choose to live by grace and give it feely, we, too, step into the genius of grace.
Jesus also reveals that empathy is the highest form of intelligence. Spiritual maturity reveals Jesus did not simply come to ensure that we understand God. Perhaps He came so that we would know that God understands us. It seems that God has fought over and over again to reestablish us in his love, though we keep replacing his intention with religions built on guilt and shame, judgement and condemnation. God was always a God of love.
In summary, to know God, or his mind, was never intended to be about information, but about intimacy. It’s about finding a depth of love that produces kindness, compassion,(compassion will move you to action, but empathy is what moves you to understanding… empathy is the deepest level of knowing). This was apostle’s Paul desire for all of us when he prayed in Ephesians 3:16-19 “that out of Christ’s glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through His spirit in your inner being, …. That you may be filled to the measure of all the fulness of God.”
Excerpts from Erwin Raphael McManus latest book “The Genius of Jesus: The Man Who Changed Everything” recommended to me by my “reader” friend, Harry Wilkins.The Genius