Evil and Good
Matthew 5:45b
“[God] makes the sun rise on both the evil and the good…”
Nadia Bolz Weber says that God’s superabundant grace can feel “f#cking offensive” in its impartiality.
Especially in a world of manufactured scarcity, where for one person to gain, another must lose.
Especially steeped in a culture where justice is punitive, is about cordoning off “the bad” from the “civilized.”
But prison abolitionists teach us that there is no such thing as irredeemably Evil people. We all have both bad and good within us; we all have the capacity to grow and change, to recognize the harm we do and do better.
God’s grace is not something we earn by “being good,” or lose by messing up. And it’s not a scarce resource that I’ll get less of if you get plenty too. It’s truly free, and truly infinite. That’s good news for all of us!
What are some actionable steps we can take to kick the Puritan out of our head who tells us we have to work for God’s grace? The capitalist in our head who says we have to compete for what should be free? The cop in our head who has us policing one another and ourselves?
— Avery Arden
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