Wow… what an interesting, funny, and convicting book. If you haven’t read Don Miller’s book, Blue like Jazz, you really need to get a copy and discover what transparent Christianity looks like. I laughed, and then quickly sobered as the truth of our fallen-ness and God’s manifold Grace came crashing through the pages. If you need to get a “feel” for his prose, the first chapter is online.
I think what resonates so with me is the open approach to the Gospel so carefully hidden by our own feeble attempts at understanding the inscrutable nature of the God who offers Grace to counter our need for redemption. We want to offer up our own “payment” in the form of some sort of religous work or effort. God instead offers his own Son as payment for our sins, and then extends that offering to all that he calls his own.
God is Love. We don’t know what that means until HE comes crashing into our stony hearts and makes them hearts of flesh again.
Ezekiel 11:19,20
19 And I will give them one heart, and a new spirit I will put within them. I will remove the heart of stone from their flesh and give them a heart of flesh, 20 that they may walk in my statutes and keep my rules and obey them. And they shall be my people, and I will be their God.