Welcome back to the Fourth Way podcast. We are continuing our discussion on consequentialism by exploring how God began to uncover the impact of consequentialism in my own life. So, in the next 4 episodes, we'll take a look at what God has been showing me in my own life. The first area in which God uncovered my consequentialism was in my grace, or lack thereof. You know, in most of my life, I was never in a position to show much grace.

At least, it in retrospect, it doesn't feel like I had much opportunity to do that, because I was surrounded by people who were mostly like me. And of course, God knows I didn't need much grace, right? I was a pretty upstanding Christian school, church going, person. So, everybody else around me was, for as as much as I knew, just like me. That changed a bit when I joined our church's diaconate, because, part of what our diaconate did was that we met with individuals who were in in need of grace.

And, of course, now that sounds very, very condescending to me because I am and was in need of grace, and so was everybody else I knew around me. But, the types of people that we would meet with, that would that would come into our church and seek assistance, they were clearly in need of grace. Now, me and and my denomination, we tended to lead with our heads more than we led with with our hearts. And there are a lot of things I love about, the passions and gifts that God has given to me, and the denomination that I am I am in. I love it.

But there are there are pros and cons to everything. And for me and my denomination, one of the major cons was that most of us tended to lead with our heads more than our hearts. And maybe that's even, a little too soft. We led with our heads and many of us don't really have hearts. That might be a better way to put it.

Though, perhaps, that that goes a little bit too far the other way and it's too harsh. But I mean, we we had a formal, sterile process for evaluating the needs of people when they, when they came in. You know, an individual would walk into the church while the church service was going on, we'd take him to a a side room, ask him a bunch of questions, a lot about, you know, do you attend another church? What job do you have? Are you divorced?

I mean, all all kinds of questions to try to figure out, are are they worthy of of giving or not? Do they have other other ways that they can get money or not? And while I I'm not saying that that process is necessarily bad and that some of those questions shouldn't be asked, the process was sterile. It it wasn't at all relational or gracious. And I don't mean this at all, to be a criticism of of, our diaconate, or our church, or our denomination, or Christianity, whoever uses this type of process.

Because I was not a product of this process or this system. I was 100% a participant. And, just to give you one example of of how I I was worse than our system was, is that, you know, when it was when it was my my turn to kind of be on call, it was really frustrating to me that these these people would call. And I I know that a lot of them are kind of working the system or, have have other ways that they can get finances or whatever. And I was really frustrated that they would call in and then of course, it would always be an emergency.

It'd be like, well, my my lights are getting shut off tomorrow, so I need the money right now within 2 hours before, before things close down. So it was always an emergency, and we always had to go out to them, and and it was just frustrating. And understandably so, I'm still frustrated when I think about it. But, I had a a really good idea. You know, I decided that, I was gonna propose this idea that, Hey look, if these people are really in need, then they can wait.

And not only can they wait, but they can come into our church. They, you know, okay, so if they're poor, and we had lots of single mothers come in. If it's a single mother who has kids, she can get a babysitter. If she can afford a babysitter, she can find a friend or family member. If she really wants the money and needs the money, she can figure out a way to make it in to the church.

She needs to come to us. They need to come to us. Because, us just running around like chickens with our heads cut off, at the last minute, that no. They need to show some initiative. And so, I decided that I wanted to propose that.

They come into us on Sundays when we're already there, because I don't want to have to leave my my newborn and my wife and go to church at night after a long day of work. I mean, that's, it's just so much. So, they need to come, when we're at church, the 2 hours a week that we're at church, and that's what we'll do. And people, I guess, thought it was a good idea because we, or at least I, implemented it and started making people come in. In that time frame, God brought us, a woman, named Sarah.

Not really named Sarah, but Sarah for this this podcast. And Sarah jumped through all of the hurdles that I set up to avoid having these awkward conversations with people and and sitting down in a room with them and asking awkward questions. She jumped through the hoops. She brought a friend who had a her friend had a car because she didn't. Her friend brought her and her kids.

Her friend watched her kids while she talked with us through the process. And, I mean, she she jumped all the hurdles she got through. And, for whatever reason, the the other guy that was on the shift with me at that point, we just decided to walk with Sarah. And instead of ending it at that process, we began to pursue her. And that was, that was not of me, I did not have a wonderful heart that decided to do that.

God must have just done something in me to make me pursue that, and he brought the heart later. But whatever my motivation was in pursuing her, I don't think it was good at the time. I think I think I was fortunate that God was gracious to me in not letting me persist in in my ungraciousness. And we walked with Sarah, and we did all kinds of things, for her. Her fiance was in prison.

We visited her fiance. When he got out of prison, like 5 am in the morning, I was there before I had to get to to school to teach. And we picked him up and drove him to his place, the place that we found for them. And, and, I think our diaconate spent like $2,000 on them, getting their home set up, getting them like a rental, and, and all kinds of things. So we, you know, we we just walked with her.

She came to our house, I think it was for Thanksgiving or, like, the day before or something, but we we had her family to our house. And, we gave her some of our pots and pans, and, my wife came along with us, and she taught her how to grocery shop. Sarah didn't know how to price compare, and we walked with her. And, by the end of it, Sarah's fiance and, her kids, I think, ended up doing okay. But Sarah just sabotaged the relationship, and things went down in flames.

It just, I think she got back into drugs, and it just wasn't good. But, you know, out of we might have helped a lot of other people with paying rent and and all kinds of stuff. But I'll tell you what, the only person that I treated rightly was Sarah. And it's not because the consequences, the ends, the the thing that came about, justified the grace that Sarah was shown. But because Sarah was the only person that I actually showed grace to, the case went down in flames, but I have I have no regrets with the money that we spent on her, with the time that we spent, because I know that if Sarah came back, and she was clean and she was able to to reflect, she knows that she could come back to us, And and we would be there, and we'd have expectations, and we wouldn't just hand her money, but we would be seeking her best.

I can't say that about anybody else, even though we gave we gave, money to other people or not to them, but, we paid some of their their bills and such, I don't know that anybody else ever felt that way from interacting with me. And that is is sad, that I just didn't show people grace. So my diaconal experience and my specific experience with with Sarah has it really started this thought process on grace. And when when, my understanding of consequentialism came a few years later, and merged with a lot of the struggles I had in showing grace and the questions I had, things began to make a lot more sense of why I acted the way that I did, and and just what my problems were with grace. I think one aspect in which I can emphasize what started to unravel for me the most is is in discussing, probably, financial means.

Because that's what our diaconate dealt with, and that's a lot of a lot of the the consideration I had in in how to show grace. It tended to be through through finances. And, most Christians that I know, when when you talk about giving to other people, they're absolutely infatuated with this idea of the avoidance of enabling others. And I get it, as as an American, the whole independence thing is a is a really big deal. And, if you're all about independence, enablement is the antithesis of independence, because that creates dependence.

And, we don't want that. And so, we're we're just so infatuated with not enabling others. And this this can extend beyond finances, and it can go to to time as well, like, the time you spend with people, or the assistance you give them, the the jobs you do for them, etcetera. And we think that if we give grace too early, or too much, or too often, that we will enable somebody. And while I'm not gonna deny that that that can be the case, it's a it's a really odd notion, especially in in my denomination, which is reformed, where we proclaim that grace precedes faith, and that Christ loved us before we could love Him, that that His pre gracing us is actually the thing that motivated us, and changed us, and, transformed us.

That His free grace to His enemies in measure beyond measure of what we could imagine, I that's that's what Christianity, and especially with the emphasis in the Reformed circles, that's what Christianity is. That's the gospel. You know, I I experienced that too. Now, I I was, you know, I came to Christ when I was supposedly like 3. I I don't know a time when I didn't follow Christ, or believe in Him, etcetera.

So it's hard for me to look at my life and and see this this pre gracing and this transformation that occurred in my life. But, I'll tell you, through my diaconal experience, my experience with Sarah, I will say that it was the one time that I led with grace with Sarah, that I felt freed when I was able to to lead with grace, rather than with stipulation and, just sterile processes. And that leading with grace, that's the only time that I I did not have nagging regrets in, in how I handled things. And that's not to say that I I didn't do anything wrong with, with Sarah's situation. You know, I always could have done something differently, but there is a big difference in in what it did to my soul between overgracing somebody and undergracing somebody.

And, and I'm sure what I just said there is probably sacrilegious to a lot of people, because we we have this other term that we throw around quite a lot, because it we we perceive that if enabling is bad, and we think that over gracing is this tool for enablement, and our job is to be efficient with our resources, we call this stewardship. Right? Our our resources need to be stewarded really well. The stewardship though, it sounds like a really, really good term and it sounds like like something that's, that's that's very biblical and something that is going to, help us to do the right thing. And I I do think that stewardship is a biblical term, but it's always ironic to me that when we use the word stewardship, we almost always mean, financial goods or material goods.

We have to steward those things. And sometimes people talk about stewarding time as well. But we don't talk about stewarding grace either. Like, you know, with with with Sarah's situation, was it better for me to steward the finances of our church, or to steward the grace that I doled out to Sarah? And, when we say stewardship of the finances of our church, what we mean is, is there a bang for my buck?

If I spend $2,000 on Sarah, she better become a Christian, because if not, then that's a waste of my resources. Me showing grace to Sarah is less important than, me not wasting $2,000 on Sarah, if she doesn't really have a good chance of becoming a Christian. And so stewardship is consequentialistic. It's, it ends up being, about outcomes rather than stewarding the the love and the the wonderful things that God has given to us. It's all about material goods.

It's all about outcomes. And, to elaborate on this, I want to, to kind of tell you a story and and then, kind of have another story inside of a story. So, so let me start my story with the youth group in Romania and and a game that we played. It was called, courageous or stupid? So I want you to to play along and I want you to think about these these statements that I make.

And I want you to answer, is it courageous or is it stupid? So here we go. Number 1: walking into a fire. Is that courageous or stupid? Number 2 jumping into a frozen lake is that courageous or stupid?

Number 3 running across a busy highway is that courageous or stupid? Well, it if you answered correctly, like like all of the kids did and like the the leaders, like the leaders said, all of those things are stupid. Walking into a fire, jumping into a frozen lake, running across a busy highway, they're just they're dumb because they're they're really dangerous. But, you know, as I as I thought about each of those statements, I recognized that that's not true. Those things are not necessarily dumb, because they are significantly determined by context.

Walking into a fire to save a child who's trapped, that's courageous. Walking into a fire because a friend dares you to? That's stupid. Jumping into a frozen lake, for January 1st, so for New Year's, that's probably stupid. Jumping into a frozen lake to save a dog?

Maybe courageous. A cat? That might be stupid. Jumping in to save a cat. Jumping in to save a person?

Yeah. That would be that would be good. Right? That's, courageous. Running across a busy highway.

Once again, it just depends. Like, are you running across a busy highway to escape from the police? Or, are you running across a busy highway because, you're trying to save somebody? It really just depends on your situation. Let's take that that thought process now, and I wanna look at another courageous or stupid example from one of my favorite books, Les Mis.

And, in that story, you it's a very long story, so I'll try to I'll try to summarize it really quickly, the beginning part, which, has important context for for the story that we're gonna see. That is, you have this guy named Jean Valjean, who, to feed his family, because they're they're in great need, he seals some bread, but he gets caught and he goes to prison for a long, long time. An inordinate amount of time for for what he did, at least in our culture standards. And he goes to prison, he gets out, and of course, he's he's marked, he he can't do anything, he can't get work, he can't like, what what's he supposed to do? He can't support himself.

Well, he comes along to this church, and a priest lets him stay there. Against the nuns and the household's wishes because, you know, they don't know what he's gonna do. Is he gonna steal something? Is he gonna try to kill them? They don't know what he's gonna do.

But the priest recognizes that this man is in great need, and he lets him in. And here's the question: was the priest's act to allow Valjean, a prisoner who has no means to support himself, and who looks all disheveled and crazy, is the priest courageous or stupid to let him stay in the church, where there are many material goods as well as lives that kind of hang in the balance. Now, the priest didn't know anything at all about what the outcome was going to be. He had no idea if anybody would be harmed, he had no idea if property would be taken, and he had no idea if he was going to have any impact on Valjean, good or bad, whatsoever. In fact, statistics would have said that the priest's action was unwise because damage to himself, as well as others in the house, and property was was very highly likely, while the transformation of Valjean was extremely unlike unlikely.

So, in this sense, the priest was a bad steward. Right? He he endangered himself, he endangered others, he endangered God's material blessings that had been donated by, by individuals in the community. And, maybe even in in our modern minds, the worst of it was that, by doing this, he might even be enabling Valjean. So, Baljon stays the night, and he ends up slipping away in in the middle of the night, stealing stealing, a bunch of, the I believe it was the the silverware or something, some of the the silver goods.

And he gets caught by the police because he's he's pretty conspicuous. And the police bring him back to the to the church, and Valjean knows that he's going back to prison, and there's nothing he can do. And, he's guilty. When they get there, they said, hey, we we caught this guy with with all of the stuff that we know came from the church. We're gonna take him to jail.

And the priest says, no. No. No. I gave this this man in need. I I gave this stuff to him.

And, in fact, I can't believe he left without the, you know, the most precious of of the things that we have here. These, I believe they are silver candlesticks. Here, take these silver candlesticks too. So, not only does he enable this criminal by not, not prosecuting him, but he gives him more. He gives him more than the criminal even stole.

What a bad steward, what an enabler this priest was. But absolutely nobody, nobody reads the story that way. None of us. It doesn't matter what side of the aisle you're on, it doesn't matter if you are like ultra libertarian, or conservative, or it just doesn't matter, you don't read the story that way, saying that the priest was a bad steward or an enabler. And we have to ask ourselves some questions then.

Is the priest do we think highly of the priest only because we basically have Valjean's story in this book, and we know that the priest's actions worked? Are we saying that the priest's actions were courageous and noble and good and not immoral, because they led to Valjean being a changed man. If the priest would have been wrong about Valjean, if Valjean would have just turned back to a life of crime and gone to another church and stolen from that church, if the priest's act didn't work, would we then say, Well, yeah, the priest was immoral. I mean, he was a poor steward, and he shouldn't have shown Valjean grace, and he just enabled a criminal. So, are we willing to say that as if grace enacted on its own isn't beautiful and good, but it it needs this outcome to to be something good.

So grace is only good if I know that I'm gonna get something out of it, if I know that I'm gonna achieve some result. And at least in reformed circles, if if grace is based on expected outcome or merit, and that's essentially what expected outcome is, merit. Like, did Valjean deserve to be graced? Well, if he changes his life and does a good thing, then he deserves it. How is that grace?

That's not grace. That's that's merit. That's earnings, as Romans would say. Right? Wages, a worker receives his wages.

That kind of thinking would just turn morality and altruism here, grace, it would turn it into relativism. Something that's determined by outcomes and something that in its, in and of itself, is not good. And something that, how could we ever actually perform true grace? Because we're only working with statistics here. If I grace somebody that I think it won't if I think it won't enable them, and I think I'm being a good steward and I grace them, but the outcome isn't good, now all of a sudden my grace wasn't good.

I mean, I was statistically thought it would be good, but that just doesn't make any sense. That grace is determined the goodness of grace is determined by outcomes and not by the fact that grace in and of itself is beautiful and meritorious, and and good, and, and awesome, and like God. It just doesn't make any sense. So, how does everyone intuitively know that the priest's action in this story is good, regardless of what happens to Valjean? How do we know that while still, coddling this enablement idea as much as we do?

And, again, I'm not saying that we should seek to enable people or we shouldn't be wise, but it how is it something that is just the, the heart of the question that we ask when we deal with with gracing people. I can't answer that question for everybody, but I I think I can answer it for myself. How would I have explained that before God convicted me of consequentialism? And I think it it would go to the story where Jesus says, that he who has forgiven little, loves little. For most of my life, I intellectually understood that I was a sinner and that I needed to be forgiven, but I didn't really see myself as a big sinner.

And, consequently, consequently, I I didn't view myself as being in need of that much forgiveness, even though I knew that Christ had died on the cross. That, you know, he was there 99.9 percent for the other guy, and that 0.01% for me. That that's kind of how it felt. And I think I felt like I was forgiven little. And so, I I loved little.

You know, that that individualism, in in my community, in our our nation, and this idea that people we need to give people what they deserve, that played a very big role in my life. And I would have never said that, I believed in, like, work salvation or anything like that, But, in ways I didn't even imagine, the idea of merit and works seeped into the way that I viewed myself in standing before God, and the way that I viewed other people. Because God didn't have to forgive me as much, in my mind. I became an arbiter of God's grace whose job wasn't to administer in the same measure that grace was administered to me, because God didn't really have to spend that much grace on me. So instead of of being an arbiter of God's grace, my job was to protect it.

I needed to make sure that other people didn't take advantage of it. I needed to make sure that not too much grace was shown, that that we didn't waste God's grace, especially on those who didn't deserve it, especially on those who had no chance of changing. And this this idea of God's, grace being wasted came up, in my life just about a year or 2 ago, and and kind of put the nail in the coffin for my my ordeal struggling through this concept of grace and what it should look like, and how consequentialism had deformed that in my life. We were going through a a book study on Tim Keller's The Prodigal God, and, we were allowing, or we asked our, one of our, friends, attendees to lead the study 1 week, one of our Romanian attendees. And when he came to lead the study, he led with this question, he said, you know, in Romania, we have this phrase which says something like this, it says, That which is good is rare.

And he asked us if we agreed with that. I thought about it for for a bit. You know, diamonds are rare, but they're really good, they're expensive. You've got, like, yachts and mansions, front row seats at a concert, vintage wines. I mean, the things that are are more rare tend to be better and tend to be more expensive.

So, I was like, Yeah, sure. That's, I mean, generally true. I wouldn't make that a universal claim, but, yeah, I think that's that's pretty true. Then he kinda threw a zinger and he said, Well, the the chapter that we just read on on God's grace says that God's grace is limitless. It it's not only limitless in terms of how much there is of it, but in who it's available to.

Like, it it is for everybody to whatever extent they need it. So, if good things are rare and God's grace is not rare, doesn't that devalue God's grace? I mean, isn't that isn't that inflation? Isn't that God flooding the market with grace? How does that not devalue it?

You know, that was a very good question, and it's it's one that I continue to think through. And when I bring it up, I mean, people are like, Yeah, that's that's really tough. It took me a long time of thinking through it to to come up with, I mean, just a a few points that I think are gonna help us here in our discussion on consequentialism. One of the first observations I I made was that, you know, I I do think that the best things in life are rare, like the diamonds, the odds, all those things. But, you know, the the interesting thing is that the necessary things in life are not rare.

You know, we view grace like a diamond, when I think it should be viewed more like water or air. It's kind of like the the paradox of of the diamond in the desert or water in the desert. You know, you you realize that water is actually more valuable than a diamond, but it takes you some pretty extreme circumstances to figure out that water is more important than a diamond. And that's because, for most of us, water is just ever present. And I think God's grace is a lot like water and air.

And for me, growing up in a Christian home, in a Christian school, and and, and just all of these just surrounded by my Christian environment, grace was like air, at least the way we talked about it and things. The experience of grace, I would say, was was pretty rare. Because yeah. Well, I mean, that's that's another story. But, I don't think the experience was all there, but, man, we talked about it, and we believed in it, and and all of that stuff.

It was it was present, and we we would recount stories of people who experienced great grace. So we kind of lived vicariously, through the changed lives of other people. We recognize that that it was like air. But it it's a God taking me to the desert, meeting Sarah, and walking with her for a little bit, to recognize that grace wasn't just something that I could talk about and say, Oh, yeah. That's awesome.

Like, we need it, and that's that's great. It was something that that I needed, like, not just other people. And and, that was that was transformational for me, to recognize grace as as, a necessity and, not something that needed to be guarded like, Fort like Gold at Fort Knox, but something that needed to be just needed to be distributed. More like aid to to refugees. I wasn't my job was not to, be an elite guard, my job was to be a distributor.

And the only way that that started to happen and is is continuing to grow is because God has allowed me to see that, I am a recipient of that great grace as well. That idea of being a distributor and not a a guard has really changed my my actions, And, I I need to be heard as as, saying not saying that we just give everyone everything, or that we throw off all discretion. I think more so I'm questioning a couple things. I'm trying to bring into question whether we're supposed to lead with grace or with caution. And, certainly, there are many times where grace and caution will be, present, maybe even close to being in equal amounts.

But, it it seems to me that grace is supposed to be the prevailing factor. Our father owns the cattle on A Thousand Hills, and if I gave Sarah more resources than maybe you would have been, the best to do, because I was leading with too much grace, then my father can sell one of his cows and can give us some of that money back. He can work in her hearts and he can prevent entitlement, enablement, whatever. But, for Sarah's only encounter with the hands and feet of Christ to not be gracious, that's that's not something that God tends to do in other ways. Yeah.

He can make the guy he he can make the rocks cry out if he wants to, but for whatever reason, God has chosen to use his church and his people as the means to carry the gospel and community to those in need. And, it Sarah needed to have grace from us more than she needed caution, and God can replace funds, but, Sarah needed to experience grace. And that that kind of touches on the second question as well, which is, is risking poor stewardship of finances or grace more risky? What's more risky? Risking stewardship of finances or stewardship of grace?

And I think risking the poor stewardship of grace is riskier. I think one of the third things that I'm questioning is whether a probabilistic outcome should determine our moral assessment of how to move forward. And I, again, I'm thankful to God for science and for all of the the wonderful things that He has given to us, and and the ways that we are able to make decisions more knowledgeably. But I don't know that making decisions more knowledgeably is equal to making them more wisely. If I know that the chances of the money I spent on Sarah had a 1% chance of working?

That's great that statisticians can tell me because of her demographic and situation and all that, that she's hopeless. That that's great that they can tell me that. But, man, that really that just undercuts the power of the Holy Spirit, that that undercuts, indiscriminate love and grace, and I I don't know. It just feels so so sterile and unchristian to to do a bunch of math and figure out who has hope and who doesn't, and let's spend our money accordingly. I get it, and and I'm not saying it's necessarily wrong, but I I don't know, I have to think more about about that.

But, even if it's not necessarily wrong, certainly there's nothing necessarily wrong with extravagant love towards people who have no hope either. And I I would just point back to the Les Mis story and the priest. And, we know that the outcome of an individual, the potential outcome, does not determine the goodness of a situation, the goodness of an action. And how do we, how do we wrestle with that in how we spend our resources? I fully acknowledge right here that mercy ministry and the distribution of grace and finances, they're difficult and murky topics, very murky.

I I certainly don't claim to be right about everything, or have all the answers. In fact, I might not even have many answers, and I might be wrong about a lot of things. But I I do know one thing, and that is that our consequentialist culture errs too far in its hoarding of the grace that we've been given, usually in favor of stewarding, quote, the the finances, that we feel are often more important than grace. It's a discussion that needs to be continued to find an appropriate balance, but one that certainly needs to be had. And, I, again, I I have just recognized how recognizing I've recognized how my consequentialism, the consequentialism in my life had stripped me of my joy in helping others because I wasn't helping others.

They were objects to me, to be fixed. And and I wasn't really showing grace. And my morality, my altruism was, relativistic and based on outcomes and not, God's Spirit and His goodness and all of that. I'm hopeful that you can see through my journey how consequentialist ethic has really marred our view of the grace that we need and the grace that we are to distribute, not guard. So as you go out, make sure that you turn to God and recognize the grace that you need for your life, it's a necessity, and, distribute that freely to others this week.

That's all for now. So peace, because I'm a pacifist, and I say it, I'm here.