By Steve Behlke
June 12, 2008

The other morning I grabbed for my shampoo and, for whatever reason, remembered a Head & Shoulders commercial from the early 1970s. A handsome (I assume) young man in a black tuxedo was at a fancy party and was doing really well trying to impress some young "fox" (remember, it was the 70s) until she looked at his shoulders, gasped at the "flaky white styff," and rejected him!
 
She rejected him simply because of a few flakes of dandruff on his shoulders!

I was only like 10 years old and probably wasn't into girls yet but I think I begged my mom to buy like a case of Head & Shoulders - and I didn't even know what "dandruff" was before I saw that commercial!
 
Humans fear nothing more than rejection. (Okay, torture and abuse are really high on the list, but each of these seem to me to be extreme forms of rejection.) 
 
Regular people fear and strive to avoid rejection, especially from those we want to like us the most. So we suck in our stomachs, dye our hair, lie about our incomes and buy cars that we can't even afford; we purchase new clothes every season; we give the impression of being nicer than we are or more successful or like we have it all-together or that we're more spiritual or intelligent than we really are (how we try to impress people all depends on who we're trying to impress and what impresses them at the time); we pretend to be holier, less depressed, or less lonely than we really are (you get the point by now). That's just the human junk we all carry. Yuck.
 
Deep within we fear rejection. 

Yet this underscores how we were created for connection, relational acceptance, community; to experience love, commitment, and grace; and to walk closely with God and others in deep, authentic ways. 
 
It's normal, since the Fall, to fear rejection. But throw a bunch of rejection-fearing people into a "religious" club and give them a whole new list of laws and rules and merit points and demerit points and performance standards that are pretty much impossible to meet; then add to this the fear of judgment and eternal condemnation and the threat of Divine Wrath, and you've got a potent mix, a steroid enhanced communal fear, a toxic brew for creating the Phoniest Hypocrites you would never wish to meet.
 
Christians - the only people on the planet who might actually know the grace of God in Christ - oddly enough, can be the phoniest, most judgmental, hypocritical people of all. That baffles me. It makes me wonder sometimes if some of them really do trust Jesus for the grace of God to them, if they really do experience grace in a personal way. You know, a way that makes them smile, sing, forgive someone, or to just be kind to someone?

Of course, every Christian claims to understand God's grace and most of them who've been around the block can rehash the theological facts and standard faith-terminology that we've all read in our Bibles and theology books. But I'm talking about grace as a life-experience! Grace that is so real it transforms our hearts, and forever changes our understanding of God, and alters our self-understanding, and truly lifts and liberates us in Christ.

I think fear and control and pride are at the root of graclessness (or ungrace or whatever the opposite of grace is. Actually, the opposite of grace might be pride or selfishness or independence or self-sufficiency... pride.) The antidote is the Gospel. The antidote is Jesus Christ. The antidote is faith, repentance, maybe enough junk and pain and tears and being sick and tired of trying and faking and isolating and pretending. But the answer is Jesus, maybe Jesus plus a community that gets Jesus, that understands and practices grace. That might be good too.

Christians who are not part of a transformed, grace community; Christians who trust Jesus for heaven but still carry out their relationships in a rules-checking, grade-giving, freedom thwarting, affirmation-depriving community can be the phoniest, most difficult to please, rejecting, non-maturing, self-adoring people of all. That's what I've heard from those who've suffered rejection at the hands of Christians, both those who are Christian and those who are not.
 
This is not a criticism but a warning, a siren sound, a loving friend waking another friend up from a bad dream.

I don't want to be like that. I hate it. I don't want to be part of a community that is like that. I don't want to be part of anything that stands in contrast to the truth teaching and grace-relating ways of Jesus Christ.
 
Look through the gospels. How did Jesus communicate grace, scandalous grace, radical acceptance, undeserved forgiveness, unlikely friendship, and "why them?" partnership? Did He ever do this? If so to whom? How did Jesus reach out and engage with those who feared God's rejection and felt everyone else's rejection? What was Jesus' solution to rejection? What was His solution to sin? Was it a temporary bandaid or was it something eternal?
 
Jesus Christ wants us to trust Him and to be totally secure in God's grace, assured of God's eternal acceptance of us through Him. He wants us to trust Him for this and move on in our relationship with God confident in this, to move on, to mature, to become like Him in conveying grace to others. He wants us to be confident in God's love, no matter what, God's forgiveness no matter what, God's power. He puts all of this on Him, not on us: "I will never leave you or forsake you," that's His promise to people who sin and fear rejection and feel rejection.  

As those who trust Jesus, we are to be as confident as Paul was, that "nothing can separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus." These promises aren't tied to our being good or meriting acceptance or our perfect obedience to the Law or our determination to try harder to be a better person. These promises aren't tied to Law but to Grace, to Christ's promise that is by grace. 

Rejection by God, for a Christian, in Christ? That's not an option. Trust Jesus for this.