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Salvation Is A Gift Given, Not A Bargain Struck.

-Robert Farrar Capon

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Salvation Is A Gift

Robert Farrar Capon

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Salvation Is A Gift Given, Not A Bargain Struck.

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I Like A Cook Who Smiles Out Loud When He Tastes His Own Work. Let God Worry About Your Modesty; I Want To See Your Enthusiasm.

Grace Is The Celebration Of Life, Relentlessly Hounding All The Non-celebrants In The World. It Is A Floating, Cosmic Bash Shouting Its Way Through The Streets Of The Universe, Flinging The Sweetness Of Its Cassations To Every Window, Pounding At Every Door In A Hilarity Beyond All Liking And Happening, Until The Prodigals Come Out At Last And Dance, And The Elder Brothers Finally Take Their Fingers Out Of Their Ears.

But All The While, There Was One Thing We Most Needed Even From The Start, And Certainly Will Need From Here On Out Into The New Jerusalem: The Ability To Take Our Freedom Seriously And Act On It, To Live Not In Fear Of Mistakes But In The Knowledge That No Mistake Can Hold A Candle To The Love That Draws Us Home. My Repentance, Accordingly, Is Not So Much For My Failings But For The Two-bit Attitude Toward Them By Which I Made Them More Sovereign Than Grace. Grace - The Imperative To Hear The Music, Not Just Listen For Errors - Makes All Infirmities Occasions Of Glory.

... The Divine Knowing - What The Father Knows, And What The Word Says In Response To That Knowing, And What The Spirit Broods Upon Under The Speaking Of The Word - All That Eternal Intellectual Activity Isn't Just Daydreaming. It's The Cause Of Everything That Is. God Doesn't Find Out About Creation; He Knows It Into Being. His Knowing Has Hair On It. It Is An Effective Act. What He Knows, Is. What He Thinks, By The Very Fact Of His Thinking, Jumps From No-thing Into Thing. He Never Thought Of Anything That Wasn't.

He Comes To Us In The Brokenness Of Our Health, In The Shipwreck Of Our Family Lives, In The Loss Of All Possible Peace Of Mind, Even In The Very Thick Of Our Sins. He Saves Us In Our Disasters, Not From Them. He Emphatically Does Not Promise To Meet Only The Odd Winner Of The Self-improvement Lottery. He Meets Us All In Our Endless And Inescapable Losing.

Grace Cannot Prevail...until Our Lifelong Certainty That Someone Is Keeping Score Has Run Out Of Steam And Collapsed.

Every Real Thing Is A Joy, If Only You Have Eyes And Ears To Relish It, A Nose And Tongue To Taste It.

... The Proper Self-knowledge And Self-love Of Every Created Thing Is Ipso Facto A Participation In The Knowledge And Love Of God. The Entire Universe Moves By Desire For The Highest Good Simply Because Every Part Of It Loves What God Loves - Namely, Its Own Being.

At The Root Of Many A Woman's Failure To Become A Great Cook Lies Her Failure To Develop A Workmanlike Regard For Knives.

A Silent Lover Is One Who Doesn't Know His Job.

Preachers Are Stewards Whom The Lord Has ‘set Over His Household Servants To Provide Them With Food At The Proper Time.’ After All The Years The Church Has Suffered Under Forceful Preachers And Winning Orators, Under Compelling Pulpiteers And Clerical Bigmouths With Egos To Match, How Nice To Hear That Jesus Expects Preachers In Their Congregations To Be Nothing More Than Faithful Household Cooks.

The Truth That Makes Us Free Is Always Ticking Away Like A Time-bomb In The Basement Of Everybody's Church.

Lord, Please Restore To Us The Comfort Of Merit And Demerit. Show Us That There Is At Least Something We Can Do. Tell Us That At The End Of The Day There Will At Least Be One Redeeming Card Of Our Very Own. Lord, If It Is Not Too Much To Ask, Send Us To Bed With A Few Shreds Of Self-respect Upon Which We Can Congratulate Ourselves. But Whatever You Do, Do Not Preach Grace. Give Us Something To Do, Anything; But Spare Us The Indignity Of This Indiscriminate Acceptance.

It Is Precisely Because No One Needs Soup, Fish, Meat, Salad, Cheese, And Dessert At One Meal That We So Badly Need To Sit Down To Them From Time To Time. It Was Largesse That Made Us All; We Were Not Created To Fast Forever... Enter Here, Therefore, As A Sovereign Remedy For The Narrowness Of Our Minds And The Stinginess Of Our Souls.

The Bread And The Pastry, The Cheeses And Wine, And The Sugar Go Into The Supper Of The Lamb Because We Do. It Is Our Love That Brings The City Home. It Is I Grant You, An Incautious And Extravagant Hope. But Only Outlandish Hopes Can Make Themselves At Home.

Christianity Is Not A Religion. Christianity Is The Proclamation Of The End Of Religion, Not Of A New Religion, Or Even Of The Best Of All Religions. If The Cross Is The Sign Of Anything, It's The Sign That God Has Gone Out Of The Religion Business And Solved All Of The World's Problems Without Requiring A Single Human Being To Do A Single Religious Thing. What The Cross Is Actually A Sign Of Is The Fact That Religion Can't Do A Thing About The World's Problems - That It Never Did Work And It Never Will

Salvation Is Not Some Felicitous State To Which We Can Lift Ourselves By Our Own Bootstraps After The Contemplation Of Sufficiently Good Examples. It Is An Utterly New Creation Into Which We Are Brought By Our Death In Jesus' Death And Our Resurrection In His. It Comes Not Out Of Our Own Best Efforts, However Well-inspired Or Successfully Pursued, But Out Of The Shipwreck Of All Human Efforts Whatsoever.

...there Is Therefore Now No Condemnation For Two Reasons: You Are Dead Now; And God, As The Lamb Slain From The Foundation Of The World, Has Been Dead All Along. The Blame Game Was Over Before It Started. It Really Was. All Jesus Did Was Announce That Truth And Tell You It Would Make You Free. It Was Admittedly A Dangerous Thing To Do. You Are A Menace. Be He Did It; And Therefore, Menace Or Not, Here You Stand: Uncondemned, Forever, Now. What Are You Going To Do With Your Freedom?

If God Seems To Be In No Hurry To Make The Problem Of Evil Go Away, Maybe We Shouldn't Be, Either. Maybe Our Compulsion To Wash God's Hands For Him Is A Service He Doesn't Appreciate. Maybe - All Theodicies And Nearly All Theologians To The Contrary - Evil Is Where We Meet God. Maybe He Isn't Bothered By Showing Up Dirty For His Dates With Creation. Maybe - Just Maybe - If We Ever Solved The Problem, We'd Have Talked Ourselves Out Of A Lover.

Jesus Came To Raise The Dead. He Did Not Come To Teach The Teachable; He Did Not Come To Improve The Improvable; He Did Not Come To Reform The Reformable. None Of Those Things Works.

The World Exists, Not For What It Means But For What It Is. The Purpose Of Mushrooms Is To Be Mushrooms, Wine Is In Order To Be Wine: Things Are Precious Before They Are Contributory. It Is A False Piety That Walks Through Creation Looking Only For Lessons Which Can Be Applied Somewhere Else. To Be Sure, God Remains The Greatest Good; But, For All That, The World Is Still Good In Itself. Indeed, Since He Does Not Need It, Its Whole Reason For Being Must Lie In Its Own Natural Goodness; He Has No Use For It, Only Delight.

Perhaps You See, Therefore, Why I Think Taste Must Come Before Nutrition? Our Infatuation For The Quasi-scientific Has Left Us Easy Marks For Con Men And Tin Fiddle Manufacturers.

Older Women Are Like Aging Strudels - The Crust May Not Be So Lovely, But The Filling Has Come At Last Into Its Own.

You Can Fold Up Spiritually, Morally, Or Intellectually And Still Be Safe. Because At The Very Worst, All You Can Be Is Dead —and For Him Who Is The Resurrection And The Life, That Just Makes You His Cup Of Tea.

Your Stew, So Long Deferred, Stands Finally Extra Causas. Greet It As Your Fellow Creature. It Is As Deliciously Unnecessary As You Are.

A Good Time Occurs Precisely When We Lose Track Of What Time It Is.

What Is Good Is Difficult, And What Is Difficult Is Rare.

Christianity Is Not A Religion; It Is The Proclamation Of The End Of Religion. Religion Is A Human Activity Dedicated To The Job Of Reconciling God To Humanity And Humanity To Itself. The Gospel, However - The Good News Of Our Lord And Savior, Jesus Christ, Is The Astonishing Announcement That God Has Done The Whole Work Of Reconciliation Without A Scrap Of Human Assistance. It Is The Bizarre Proclamation That Religion Is Over - Period.

Even To This Day, Grace Remains Hard To Swallow. Religiosity And Moralism Go Down Easier Than Free Forgiveness.

A Lost Sheep Is, For All Practical Purposes A Dead Sheep. It Is The Admission That We Are Dead In Our Sins---that We Have No Power Of Ourselves Either To Save Ourselves Or To Convince Anyone Else That We Are Worth Saving. It Is The Recognition That Our Whole Life Is Out Of Our Hands And That If We Ever Live Again, Our Life Will Be Entirely The Gift Of Some Gracious Shepherd. God Finds Us The Desert Of Death (not In The Garden Of Improvement) And In The Power Of Jesus' Resurrection, He Puts Us On His Shoulders Rejoicing And Brings Us Home.

What Are You Going To Do With Your Freedom?

Heaven Is Populated Entirely By Forgiven Sinners

The World Looks As If It Has Been Left In The Custody Of Trolls.

Only Miracle Is Plain; It Is In The Ordinary That Groans With The Weight Of Glory.

Salvation Is A Gift Given, Not A Bargain Struck.

We Are So Impressed By Scientific Clank That We Feel We Ought Not To Say That The Sunflower Turns Because It Knows Where The Sun Is. It Is Almost Second Nature To Us To Prefer Explanations . . . With A Large Vocabulary. We Are Much More Comfortable When We Are Assured That The Sunflower Turns Because It Is Heliotropic. The Trouble With That Kind Of Talk Is That It Tempts Us To Think That We Know What The Sunflower Is Up To. But We Don't. The Sunflower Is A Mystery, Just As Every Single Thing In The Universe Is.

Man Was Made To Lead With His Chin; He Is Worth Knowing Only With His Guard Down, His Head Up And His Heart Rampant On His Sleeve.

One Real Thing Is Closer To God Than All The Diagrams In The World

Do You Seriously Envision St. Paul Or Calvin Or Luther Opening Bottles Of Welch's Grape Juice In The Sacristy Before The Service? Luther At Least Would Turn Over In His Grave.

With Jesus, However, The Device Of Parabolic Utterance Is Used Not To Explain Things To People’s Satisfaction But To Call Attention To The Unsatisfactoriness Of All Their Previous Explanations And Understandings.

We Were Given Appetites, Not To Consume The World And Forget It, But To Taste Its Goodness And Hunger To Make It Great.

Why Do We Marry, Why Take Friends And Lovers? Why Give Ourselves To Music, Painting, Chemistry Or Cooking? Out Of Simple Delight In The Resident Goodness Of Creation, Of Course; But Out Of More Than That, Too. Half Earth's Gorgeousness Lies Hidden In The Glimpsed City It Longs To Become.

The Reason For Not Going Out And Sinning All You Like Is The Same As The Reason For Not Going Out And Putting Your Nose In A Slicing Machine: Its Dumb, Stupid, And No Fun. Some Individual Sins May Have Pleasure Still Attached To Them Because Of The Residual Goodness Of The Realities They Are Abusing: Adultery Can Indeed Be Pleasant And Tying One On Can Amuse. But Betrayal, Jealousy, Love Grown Cold, And The Gray Dawn Of The Morning After Are Nobody's Idea Of A Good Time.

However Much We Hate The Law, We Are More Afraid Of Grace

The World Is By No Means Averse To Religion. In Fact, It Is Devoted To It With A Passion. It Will Buy Any Recipe For Salvation As Long As That Formula Leaves The Responsibility For Cooking Up Salvation Firmly In Human Hands. The World Is Drowning In Religion. But It Is Scared Out Of Its Wits By Any Mention Of The Grace That Takes The World Home Gratis.

The Church, By And Large, Has Had A Poor Record Of Encouraging Freedom. She Has Spent So Much Time Inculcating In Us The Fear Of Making Mistakes, That She Has Made Us Like Ill-taught Piano Students: We Play Our Songs, But We Never Really Hear Them Because Our Main Concern Is Not To Make Music To Avoid Some Flub That Will Get Us In Dutch.

The Shock Of Unemployment Becomes A Pathology In Its Own Right.

That, You Know, Is Why The World Exists At All. It Remains Outside The Cosmic Garbage Can Of Nothingness, Not Because It Is Such A Solemn Necessity That Nobody Can Get Rid Of It, But Because It Is The Orange Peel Hung On God's Chandelier, The Wishbone In His Kitchen Closet. He Likes It; Therefore, It Stays. The Whole Marvelous Collection Of Stones, Skins, Feathers, And String Exists Because At Least One Lover Has Never Quite Taken His Eye Off It, Because The Dominus Vivificans Has His Delight With The Sons Of Men.

We Are Not Saved By What Jesus Taught, And We Are Certainly Not Saved By What We Understand Jesus To Have Taught. We Are Saved By Jesus Himself.

God Makes The World Not Out Of Necessity But By A Divine Whim, And The World He Makes Is A Whimsically Romantic Place. We're All Crazy About Each Other Because We're Made In The Image Of Someone Who's Been Crazy About Us.

For All Its Rooted Loveliness, The World Has No Continuing City Here; It Is An Outlandish Place, A Foreign Home, A Session In Via To A Better Version Of Itself-and It Is Our Glory To See It So And To Thirst Until Jerusalem Comes Home At Last. We Were Given Appetites, Not To Consume The World And Forget It, But To Taste Its Goodness And Hunger To Make It Great.

...we Are Saved By Christ Alone Who Raises Us From The Dead - From The Absolution Of Our Death. We Come Before Him At The Judgement With No Handwriting Whatsoever Against Us. It's Simply Cheating To Say You Believe That And Then Renege On It By Postulating Some List Of Extra-rotten Crimes For Which Christ Has To Send You To Hell. He, The Universal Redeemer, Is The Only Judge; As Far As He's Concerned, The Only Mandatory Sentence Is To Life And Life Abundant.

Give Us This Day Our Daily Taste. Restore To Us Soups That Spoons Will Not Sink In And Sauces Which Are Never The Same Twice. Raise Up Among Us Stews With More Gravy Than We Have Bread To Blot It With... Give Us Pasta With A Hundred Fillings.

The Christian Religion Is Not About The Soul; It Is About Man, Body And All, And About The World Of Things With Which He Was Created, And In Which He Is Redeemed. Don’t Knock Materiality. God Invented It.

If You Take All Your Meals Seriously, None Of Them Gets A Chance To Matter.

The Life Of Grace Is Not An Effort On Our Part To Achieve A Goal We Set Ourselves. It Is A Continually Renewed Attempt Simply To Believe That Someone Else Has Done All The Achieving That Is Needed And To Live In Relationship With That Person, Whether We Achieve Or Not. If That Doesn't Seem Like Much To You, You're Right: It Isn't. And, As A Matter Of Fact, The Life Of Grace Is Even Less Than That. It's Not Even Our Life At All, But The Life Of That Someone Else Rising Like A Tide In The Ruins Of Our Death.

Christianity Is Not A Religion; It Is The Announcement Of The End Of Religion.

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