Itsara

There have been a few moments in my life that I would label as truly “Defining Moments”. Growing up in church, I knew all the Sunday School answers, and as I learned more about my faith I could give intellectual assent to certain truths. But in these Defining Moments, something about the way I saw the world changed forever. Some aspect of the Truth moved from my head to my heart - instead of being something I would do if I thought about it, it became something I was. The change in my expectation of Heaven is one such Moment. This is the story of another.

I’m writing this as much for your benefit as for my own, so it will be long because of the details. I have split it into three parts: (I) the background, (II) how the decision came about, and (III) the results of the decision.

I had been a gamer since some time in the early 80’s when Dad brought home our first Apple ][e. I didn’t own a PC until college, but there were plenty of classic games on the Mac and we owned every system Nintendo had ever made, from the NES and the original GameBoy to the GBA and the Gamecube that I owned less than a year ago. I spent most of my freetime playing video or computer games and I even spent a year and a half after college working for Black Isle Studios making Planescape: Torment and testing or designing other titles.

There were times when my love of games approached an addiction, but this story isn’t about addiction. Jesus didn’t ask me to give my games away for my benefit, but for Him.

As my faith grew more and more in college, there were times when I considered stopping, or at least cutting down, my gaming. Often when I heard a talk on having no idols before God or surrendering all and following Jesus, it would occur to me that games held an undeservedly high position in my life. But I had always decided that, for one reason or another (some true, some rationalizations), I didn’t need to give them up at that time. Sometimes I would cut back, but I would never give them up. Gaming was who I was, though I would not have put it in those words.

Last Spring, our Bible study began going through The Cost of Discipleship by Dietrich Bonhoeffer. I was home alone on a quiet and cloudy day reading the first two chapters in preparation for our home group. Bonhoeffer didn’t pull any punches. He immediately cuts to the core of the Christian faith and makes a distinction between what we have been selling as “cheap grace” versus what he calls “costly grace”. He wastes no time attacking cheap grace with his very first words:

Cheap grace is the deadly enemy of our Church…. Grace is represented as the Church’s inexhaustible treasury, from which she showers blessings with generous hands, without asking questions or fixing limits. Grace without price; grace without cost!… Cheap grace means grace as a doctrine, a principle, a system. It means forgiveness of sins proclaimed as a general truth, the love of God taught as the Christian “conception” of God. An intellectual assent to that idea is held to be of itself sufficient to secure remission of sins…. Cheap grace means the justification of sin without the justification of the sinner. Grace alone does everything, they say, and so everything can remain as it was before.

It sounds harsh at first. Surely God’s grace is the only reason we haven’t been wiped out already? Certainly he’s not suggesting that we have to work for our salvation! I can assure you that Bonhoeffer is not suggesting that we can earn our own salvation. In this book, he is saying no more than James says in chapter 2, verses 14-26: “Show me your faith without deeds, and I will show you my faith by what I do…. As the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without deeds is dead.”

By comparison, here is Bonhoeffer’s initial description of costly grace:

Costly grace is the treasure hidden in the field; for the sake of it a man will gladly go and sell all that he has. It is the pearl of great price to buy which the merchant will sell all his goods. It is the kingly rule of Christ, for whose sake a man will pluck out the eye which causes him to stumble; it is the call of Jesus Christ at which the disciple leaves his nets and follows him.

Costly grace is the gospel which must be sought again and again, the gift which must be asked for, the door at which a man must knock.

Such grace is costly because it calls us to follow, and it is grace because it calls us to follow Jesus Christ. It is costly because it costs a man his life, and it is grace because it gives a man the only true life. It is costly because it condemns sin, and grace because it justifies the sinner. Above all, it is costly because it cost God the life of his Son: “ye were bought at a price,” and what has cost God much cannot be cheap for us. Above all, it is grace because God did not reckon his Son too dear a price to pay for our life, but delivered him up for us. Costly grace is the Incarnation of God.

I grew up believing in cheap grace. I never felt it was necessary to act out my faith. I thought, “I’m saved, and that’s the point isn’t it? So I don’t need to do anything else. And anyway, from the way people are talking, it sounds like it would be sinful to even try to do anything else.” But something just didn’t feel right when I would read that “faith without works is dead”, and told that “dead” really only meant “not growing”. It made me feel better, but it didn’t seem to fit with what James was saying.

The next post will describe how what Bonhoeffer said did seem to fit with what I was reading in the Bible.