WRITINGS

Crazy Grace
It's a shame what we've done to Amazing Grace. It doesn't seem to strike us as truly amazing anymore. I'd go so far as to say we're not even hardly enamored by God's offer to trade His big, pretty vestures for our ratty, little robes. The most amazing tradeoff in the world, in all of creation, has become common to us. And that's especially true for those of us who've grown up hearing sermons about grace, singing songs about grace, reading books about grace, and enjoying grace dramas.

He didn't write the melody, but I wonder how many ideas ended up on John Newton's floor when he was working on the lyrics of Christianity's most transcending and popular song. Amazing is a great word. It simply means we're amazed. To be amazed is to be in wonderment, taken aback, startled, surprised, gasping... How do you respond to something so outlandish? Digging through John's trash can, fishing through the crumpled sheets on the floor, the torn-in-two pages, the empty ink wells and scratched out lines, I wonder what we'd find. What other words were tested while John tried to describe God's obviously one-sided offer?

There have been times I've been reading through a particular passage of Scripture when I would have to stop and just say to myself, "This is amazing!" I wonder if that's what John did. I wonder if he just sorta blurted it out as an automatic response to the Passion story, or Jesus' compassion for a whore, or maybe one of Paul's explanations of God's mind-boggling love for sin-tainted humans.

Nowadays when song writers sit down to create, they have to consider rhythm, rhyme, metre, melody, culture, phrasing, hooks and other stuff important to the song's science. Thought has to be given to its structure, its length (Radio sometimes won't program a song if it's too long.), its comprehension (It has to be a good listening-while-driving-while texting-while-talking-while-eating song.) A song's relateability, and its marketability are very important. If you're a song writer these days, to put it simple, you have to write something that people will pay for.

Keeping to the need for metre, rhythm and phrasing, maybe John could've called it Endearing Grace or Beloved Grace or Compelling Grace or Desirous Grace or Unending Grace or any other number of properly structured, accurately descriptive words. All of those are true, and if you want to be more descriptive than structured there are lots of other adjectives we can attach.

Incredible is one of the first that comes to my mind. You gotta admit, what God offers us is pretty incredible - and remarkable and marvelous and stupendous and astonishing and dumbfounding and stupefying and sensational and breathtaking and fabulous and wonderful and, and, and... This really doesn't have to end.

How about astounding, eye-opening, flabbergasting, shocking, startling, stunning, extraordinary, bewildering, awesome, unimaginable, phenomenal, wondrous, striking, outstanding and spectacular? At the very least God's grace is impressive, noticeable, notable, unique, rare, and uncommon.

If you want to get past the purely personal response to God's affection toward us, you can consider the absurdity of God's grace. It is conspicuous, confusing, discomfiting, befuddling, confounding, dismaying and perplexing. Considering our skepticism and suspicious nature when we're offered something that's too good to be true, the trade God is willing to make with us is disconcerting, inconceivable, staggering and prodigious.

Other words that come to my mind right now are incomprehensible, portentous, unbelievable, unthinkable and unusual. I think a good word for it is crazy grace.

It doesn't meet with the melody's phrasing requirements, but the only other word that I can think of that comes even closer to describing the un-purchasable, un-earnable, unnegotiable favor of God is miraculous. Otherwise, I think Mr. Newton hit the nail on the head when he considered all the ways to verbalize something that is beyond words. It truly is amazing.