Who Gets To Change The Words to Amazing Grace?


What's so Amazing about Grace if we don't REALLY need it?

Being a Car Talk fan, I was recently listening to a story on NPR on my way to a party with Alexina. Coming home, my radio was tuned to a program that I doubt I would have spent more than a minute listening to before I tried to find something interesting. It was about a family who was recovering from hearing loss, or some other tragedy, about the importance of support groups, and some other good stuff. At one point there was a place where a woman and son were at odds about a religion. The son wasn't into it, the mother was. And of course she knew that her sons' destiny stood in the balance, so she was very concerned.

I don't remember how it came up but she sang "Amazing Grace". Which was interesting because she was deaf. But she did a pretty fair job of it. But here's the point of all this. When she got to the point about saving a wretch like me, it wasn't a wretch at all, instead it was a soul. Here's how it worked:

Amazing Grace, How sweet the sound
That saved a Soul like me.

See what she did? She scratched the word Wretch and swapped it for Soul. Which is much nicer. Politically correct at least. Who wouldn't rather be a Soul than a Wretch.

It's got me concerned, though. We aren't just souls. It's not like we're neutral, spiritual "free agents" or something. We're deeply wicked. Not sort of, not halfway, we're all the way wretched. And that's what makes the Grace Amazing! Theologically we're so tragically steeped in evil that we will perish without God's Grace. Which isn't to say that God doesn't love us. He does, that's the whole thing!

Maybe it's just me, but I suspect that if there is a temptation that should scare us is wanting to be Souls when we are really Wretches.

Which isn't to make us feel bad about ourselves, at least in the long run. See we'd better feel bad about the shape were in or why would we need God's love and more importantly, what need would there be of Salvation? So if the story were just about us, then hopefully we can agree it would be a tragedy, or maybe a tragic comedy, but it wouldn't be funny, and it wouldn't end well. The thing is that the story isn't about us, mostly.

Mostly it's about God. And the beauty of the story isn't our love, or our moving out of wretchedness, but God's love for us, and His loving us even when we are wretches. It's through God's love of us that we get around to feeling good about God, and then we start to realize why it's ok for us to be wretches.

I guess I worry that this woman changing the words was trying to take the short-cut on the Grace & Forgiveness theme. Makes sense. Just assume that instead of being bad people, we're really just Souls needing direction. But the truth doesn't lie on that short-cut. It turns out it's not a short-cut at all. It's a totally new trail leading us away from truth. A hard truth, but an essential truth.

I think I'll take Grace the Amazing way, not the Short-Cut way.

Posted: Tue - April 13, 2004 at 04:42 PM        

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