Checkers

In today's culture, it seems the whole world is in the business of sorting and categorizing everyone else. And everyone else is in the business of busting through that imposed mold and proving the world wrong with any argument that comes to mind. As a middle-aged, conservative Christian, I see this very clearly in the rapidly changing world in which I currently find myself, leaving me more confused than ever before.

America is in a tangled mess of a politico-religious war with Christians, Christians with America. Some of us have navigated these dangerous waters gracefully, some of us not so gracefully, some of us with tolerance, some of us with intolerance. The question we Christians seem to be asking ourselves is how do we see God existing in each other’s lives and in our world and what do we do to fix it, but maybe the question we should be asking ourselves is how does God see us.

That’s an interesting question. I think most of us have a distorted view of how God sees us mixed with visions of biblical clarity. We know that God loves us and John 3:16 often pours from our lips, but we also project our own limited and broken experiences of love and relationships onto a perfect and Holy Father, thereby skewing the picture.

We’re told to look at the only perfect one for a model of how to live, but the life of Jesus is not even remotely easy to understand, let alone copy.

So how do we begin to understand how God sees us? Maybe if we look at our relationship with him from the beginning.

The Bible tells us that through Adam and Eve sin entered the world and separated us from God. Isaiah 59:2 says, “It’s your sins that have cut you off from God. Because of your sins, he has turned away and will not listen anymore.”

The Bible tells us that in order to define sin to us, God gave us the law through Moses. Romans 3:19, 20 says, “Obviously, the law applies to those to whom it was given, for its purpose is to keep people from having excuses, and to show that the entire world is guilty before God. 20 For no one can ever be made right with God by doing what the law commands. The law simply shows us how sinful we are." This also tells us that those under the law are doomed to eternity apart from God because “no one can ever be made right with God” by the law.

The Bible tells us that God sent his son to die in our place, thereby reconciling us back to him if we accept the gift of this grace through faith. Romans 3:24 says, "Yet God, in his grace, freely makes us right in his sight. He did this through Christ Jesus when he freed us from the penalty for our sins."

So what does this mean? I believe we are categorized into two, and only two, separate and distinct groups by God: Those who choose grace and those who choose the law.

There are no groups for those who sin more or less or those who have committed a higher sin. There are no subgroups for those of us who have pillaged or killed or raped within the weightiest sin category. There are no extra-credit stars for those who returned the extra change we received at the quickie mart or the wallet we found in the parking lot. No, we are categorized into two and only two groups: Grace or law. Red blood of Christ or blackness of the law. Red or black. Like checkers.

There’s no difference in the blurred gender lines we see at our favorite coffeehouse or the family member choosing to cohabitate outside of marriage. There’s no difference in the inked up, opinionated boyfriend your youngest daughter met at church camp or the clean-cut preacher’s kid you wish she would be interested in instead. And there’s absolutely no difference between me and the person I may be comparing myself to at the moment to pull my ego out of whatever current crisis I think I’m in.

We’re checkers. Every single one of us starts out blackened with sin. Some of us choose to get permanently coated red by Jesus, some of us will someday, some of us (and this should break our hearts) never will.

However we see each other through the microscope we use, we are without exception only black or red; nothing more, nothing less. Therefore, our collective goal, all of us, should be simply to care enough about our neighbors to find out which color they are. Through our love for Jesus and each other, we should point to the one who taught us what real love is by dying for us when we deserved it the least. We should humbly and lovingly introduce as many as we can to the only one who can change us from black to red. And then get out of the way before we mess it up.