The Common Grace Reflex
The arrival of a global pandemic did nothing to stop the ongoing seismic shifts taking place in Western culture. If anything, it accelerated them. Here in Greece, we experienced our own #metoo moment as the worlds of athletics and entertainment exploded with revelations of sexual abuse that went all the way to the top. The lockdowns also highlighted the mistreatment of refugees by the authorities, as camps were cruelly locked shut during national holidays, leaving the inhabitants cut off from the outside world. With all of these events providing renewed momentum to activist movements, there can be little doubt that the fight for social justice is turning into the defining concern of our time.
While Athenian society is pressing conversations about social justice, many within our churches are hesitant to engage. This is not to say that a majority of Christians have been pushing back against these issues, but there is much ambivalence within the church regarding the best way to engage with this cultural moment. Those who wish to engage find themselves in heated discussion about the meaning and goals of social justice.¹ Others, however, are seeing schisms emerging within the church and are urging us to opt out of this fight altogether.
One key sticking point for those who want to opt out of the discussion is that many proponents of social justice will not entertain even the slightest objections to the movement’s ideology or actions. Questioning is seen as tantamount to being against justice itself. Anyone not on board is perceived as being out of touch, and even dangerous.
Yet many in the church, even as they criticise this stance, end up doing something very similar themselves.
Consider a scenario that often takes place when one of these hot-button issues is brought up. (This is not a hypothetical situation, but rather something I actually experienced not too long ago.) Someone brings up the topic of racism in the church. They have barely had a chance to articulate what they mean by this when someone interrupts, decrying the dangers of cultural marxism or “wokeism” as the greatest threat to the church today. Whether the rest of the conversation goes well or badly, this initial interjection has already told the casual observer all they need to know.
So often, a modern Christian’s positions are rejected because their initial response to a person, idea, or situation was knee-jerk, dismissive, or alarmist. Yet many Christians compound the problem by fixating on the rejection itself, without taking the time to examine their own conduct. They then resolve to either double down on their combative approach or opt out of public debate altogether.
Perhaps the rejection of such dismissive responses is more warranted than we would like to admit, however. Many outside the church do not expect agreement on everything, but from Christians they expect, at the very least, a display of Christian character. So when faced with a response that is devoid of grace, dripping with self-righteousness, and full of barely-disguised disdain, they feel well within their rights to reject the whole package. Why should they give us a fair hearing when we are not being true to one of the most fundamental tenets of our own faith: to love our opponents? Rejection does not always mean that we and our beliefs are being rejected wholesale; it could very well be that the prospect of fruitful discussion was stymied from the outset by an unpleasant, reflexive response.
I want to propose a general principle that will hopefully help us to weigh our responses better, and in the process develop a more authentically Christian approach.
I am naming this principle the “common grace reflex”—“reflex” because it refers to the first stage of our response, the part that takes place instinctively, intuitively, and pre-reflectively.
What, then, is the “common grace” reflex?
A MORE THEOLOGICALLY AND HISTORICALLY SOUND APPROACH
The Christian doctrine of common grace reminds us that there is something good to be found in every human idea, movement, and innovation. In his kindness, God continually grants all people, without exception, to think better thoughts and do better things than their fallen nature should naturally lead them to.
All goodness and gifting in the world, whether displayed in the lives of believers or non-believers, is a gift from God and a sign of his continued favour—albeit not in a saving way. As James 1:17 states,
“Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights.”
John Calvin expounds this doctrine succinctly in the Institutes with the following argument:
“Therefore, in reading profane authors, the admirable light of truth displayed in them should remind us that the human mind, however much fallen and perverted from its original integrity, is still adorned and invested with admirable gifts from its Creator. If we reflect that the Spirit of God is the only fountain of truth, we will be careful, as we would avoid offering insult to him, not to reject or condemn truth wherever it appears.”²
The problem is that, even if we affirm the doctrine of common grace, it doesn’t always affect how we engage with the people and ideas around us. It is quite meaningless to assent to something if, in practice, we deny it daily or apply it only selectively.
What would happen if we were to foreground this teaching? What would happen if we always actively assume that there is something good to be affirmed in a matter brought before us, and are intently searching for it to boot? Then, even if we need to settle on a position that is broadly more negative or critical than it is positive or affirming, at the very least we will lead with some kind of affirmation and positive engagement (and we might learn something in the process).
This is the common grace reflex. It doesn’t preclude being open about our reservations. It simply ensures that we locate, affirm, and celebrate the good we see as both our point of departure and our ongoing connection.
For instance, when the matter of racism in the church comes up, a common grace reflex would lead us to assume that there is something for us to hear and repent of with regard to racism, even if it had never occurred to us before. This is not an easy process, for it usually involves us going against the grain. When none of our peers or people we respect consider something a problem, we usually dismiss it as well. A common grace reflex, however, will ensure that we hear out and seriously consider even the most apparently incredible claims.
Put simply, the common grace reflex is a uniquely Christian gut response to our fellow human beings, in which we first identify our genuine, God-given common ground and connection, and then use it to frame our discussion.
A DISTINGUISHED HISTORY
A common grace reflex is not some kind of functional adjustment to account for the challenges of today’s world. The best Christian apologists have always exercised this reflex as the path to fruitful discussion and authentic connection.
This is clear right from the beginning of church history. In De Testimonio Animae, written in the second century, Tertullian emphasises the close affinity between Christian and pagan beliefs before he goes on to state how Christianity takes us to a deeper understanding. For example, he writes that both pagans and Christians alike note the tendency of the soul to invoke the name of God, but it is only Christianity that has the resources to explain where this attitude of the soul comes from and what it means.
Modern pioneers such as Lesslie Newbigin have taught us how to do the same thing skillfully in our own time. As a result, there are many fine apologists today who model such an approach to the surrounding culture and our fellow human beings. Yet I fear that this much-needed aspect of historic Christian practice isn’t at the forefront of many Christians’ minds today. If we speak about common grace, we usually only invoke it to baptise the ideas and historical developments that we already agree with as God-given. Common grace as an impulse, however, pushes us to engage positively with ideas we find threatening too.
A WAY TO AVOID PATERNALISM AND ARROGANCE
Just over two years ago, I found myself plunged into the world of feminist activism and gender justice. The whole of Greece had been thrown into shock at the news that a young girl had been brutally raped and murdered. Cynthia, my wife, noticed that a local feminist group had called an assembly to organise a protest against this latest episode of gender-based violence. We attended the assembly and the march that followed, and I continued to closely monitor the developments of the trial.
I was still approaching the issue as an outside observer when one day I bumped into one of the women from the feminist group that organised the march. She had seen me there and could tell that I was interested in getting more involved, so she challenged me to follow through—if I was truly convinced that this act of violence was indeed a pressing concern and a sign of a deeper malaise, I should act on it by coming to their meetings. That was how I found myself regularly attending the meetings of a feminist collective, a development that turned into one of the most challenging, eye-opening, and enriching experiences of my life.
Through this group, I started reading Feminism is for Everybody by Bell Hooks. While I was still in the introduction, I was struck by this passage:
“When I talk about the feminism I know—up close and personal—they willingly listen, although when our conversations end, they are quick to tell me I am different, not like the ‘real’ feminists who hate men, who are angry. I assure them I am as a real and as radical a feminist as one can be, and if they dare to come closer to feminism they will see it is not how they have imagined it.”³
Much as I was reluctant to admit it, it was very easy for me to imagine an evangelical Christian on the other side of this conversation with Hooks. Assuming the worst about someone simply due to their group identity, only to patronise them when they turn out to be well-reasoned and agreeable, simply adds insult to injury. Yet it seems to be the modus operandi for many people within church circles.
We may think we are defending the gospel when we attack movements that seem to undermine Christian morality, but the way we go about this often does little more than give an impression that Christians are arrogant possessors of truth. If we are stuck in this mode, even when we try to appear gracious we end up doing so in a paternalistic way, since we never stopped to think that there may be some truth and beauty in the person or thing we find so threatening. At best, we may affirm the other person for being reasonable and agreeable, but our praise will only ever be in spite of their unfortunate blindness to the truth.
Debates on whether a certain idea emerging from the secular academy is “compatible with the gospel” are completely beside the point. No human idea or theory is going to be fully compatible with the gospel, since all of our ideas are tainted by sin. However, this does not mean that these ideas do not contain any truth whatsoever or have any insights to offer the world and the church. If all truth is God’s truth, then we should not feel threatened by it, wherever we find it. Through my involvement with a radical feminist collective, I have discovered numerous blind spots and insights that have helped me immensely, in particular with regard to failings in my own life and ministry.
Exercising a common grace reflex will help us gradually discard our conviction that we are the only ones capable of bearing witness to the truth. This, in turn, will transform the way we carry ourselves in the world, beginning with how we treat people outside the church.
A WAY TO FOSTER TRUE INQUISITIVENESS, LEADING TO A DEEPENING OF OUR OWN FAITH
Neglecting to apply the doctrine of common grace is not just bad for our image; it is bad for our soul, too. When we treat people as if they and their ideas have nothing to offer, we end up limiting the gospel for ourselves.
Austin Farrer writes that,
“Faith perishes if it is walled in or confined. If it is anywhere, it must be everywhere, like God himself: if God is in your life, he is in all things, for he is God. You must be able to spread the area of your recognition for him and the basis of your conviction about him, as widely as your thought will range.”⁴
Our understanding of the gospel is always circumscribed by our experiences and our context. In a sense, it starts out as tribal, since our understanding is framed by the language and values of the community we belong to. By opening ourselves up to new questions and challenges, we create space for our faith and understanding to grow, too.
The more we allow the questions of each generation and culture to challenge our current conceptions of God, the more we are driven back to Scripture and enabled to go deeper in our understanding and grasp of the gospel. This is when Jesus starts looking less like us and more like the eternal Son made flesh that he actually is.
Just imagine in the aforementioned conversation about racism in the church if the reflex response of the Christian standing in the wings was to seek further understanding about how someone might come to that conclusion. Then at the end of the discussion, imagine that they asked for recommendations of reading material, or a documentary to watch, which would help them start seeing the issue from a new perspective. This is a process through which we have so much to gain, if we would only try it.
The common grace reflex enables us to do this by fostering true inquisitiveness. If we fail to engage truly with the world, then the gospel will become less and less compelling. On the other hand, if we are constantly searching for and collecting the artefacts of grace strewn around us in the culture, then our faith will be built up as we wrestle with each new issue through the lens of the Bible and gain fresh insights into who and how God is for us today.
A WAY TO LOVE OUR NEIGHBOUR TODAY
There is one final reason why a common grace reflex is indispensable. It is one of the key ways we can obey Christ’s command to love our neighbour as ourselves.
Even if we are convinced that the person in front of us has a deeply unbiblical agenda, we are still called to love them and treat them with respect. This becomes so much easier if we are already convinced that we have something to learn from them.
This is not about their usefulness to us, but their inherent worth as human beings. If God continues to treat them with dignity by showering them with His goodness, then who am I to treat them as anything less than this? They don’t suddenly gain worth, value, and dignity when their thoughts and actions align with mine; God has already given them all these things, and so my baseline must be to treat them accordingly.
This is wonderfully liberating. It means we don’t have to pretend. We can treat people we disagree with as equals, and really mean it. We can go that extra mile in seeking to understand their position, both as a way to respect and dignify them, and because we know that we have so much to gain from the relationship too.
It is impossible to remain paternalistic when you start viewing yourself as a child again, and that is what the common grace reflex does to us—it restores to us a sense of wonder. As we explore God’s world, breaking out of our tribal boundaries, we will encounter Christ in new places and faces. Not a different Christ, but the same eternal One made more alive to our experience.
NOTES
This article originally appeared on the Redeemer City to City blog here.
See in particular Tim Keller’s series of articles addressing social justice, which can be found at quarterly.gospelinlife.com.
John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, Chapter 2, Section 15.
Bell Hooks, Feminism is for Everybody: Passionate Politics (Cambridge, MA: South End Press), viii.
Austin Farrer, A Celebration of Faith (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1970), 60.