The Way of Grace in American Culture
By Brien R. Sörne
It’s not an easy mix. The competing ideas of ambitiously achieving success and humbly avoiding self-promotion are equally valued and equally American. Somehow, we are to do both. Yet, trying to navigate between the two to maintain a balance can be daunting and confusing, especially to our children who end up getting conflicting messages on how to be successful in life.
In our culture, we are critical of those who have succumbed to blind ambition, but we also disparage those who are not driven to succeed, even though what constitutes “success” is largely undefined. Finding and preserving personal humility in the face of increasing cultural demand for achievement is a remarkable challenge, indeed. On the surface it appears to be impossible.
This collision of ideas shows up clearly in the repositories of our culture: our traditions, language, social institutions and even in our most treasured holiday traditions, such as Christmas. We love what Christmas represents to us – the idea that giving is more blessed than receiving. We herald it as the greatest gift God has given us without condition. But at the same time, we borrow ourselves into debt and aggressively fight through the department store mob to get that coveted item. While we reverently sing of a silent night, we unabashedly display ourselves silly with every string of lights, ornament and animated yard art we can get our hands on.
Remarkably, we do this to ourselves. This ongoing cultural confusion of contradictory messages is collectively self-imposed. And because that’s true, we can do something about it. In spite of our cultural confusion, we can find within the simplicity of the Christmas message an infant-like idea that can guide us through even the most confounded mix of conflicting dictates. It is the message of grace.
At Christmas and throughout the year, grace is there, gently reminding us that our ambitions are not the problem nor is humility necessarily the cure. We are reminded of three kings who possessed great power and wealth who humbly approached a peasant family in a rustic, unlikely setting to offer their unique gifts to a child they were seeking, but did not know. Like the star that guided them, their graceful expression of faith shines through to us, reminding us that money by itself is not evil, neither is its pursuit nor its accumulation. Nor, for that matter, is any achieved power, position or social status. Rather, as grace tells us, it is the love of money and our obsession with power and achievement that will always lead us into conflict inflamed by blinded pursuit of our own gratification.
Grace asks us whether or not we are willing to humbly and faithfully devote ourselves to doing the most good we can for the person or the people immediately in our path. Using whatever achievement, whatever power, position or resources we might possess, we are invited to consider what might be needed by those we meet in the course of a day. Rather than following some imposed mandate for success as defined by our consumer culture, it is grace that leads us out of conflicted thinking and urges us to embrace its own motivation and its purpose of doing good works. Grace is there, constantly, to confirm in us this appointed journey while we pursue with joy and gratitude the ambitions of our lives.
