How Grace is Like the Wind
In the Gospel of John, Terrence Malick, and Martin Luther
Martin Luther believed that the “grace of God is a very strong, mighty and active thing…[i]t is hidden, but its works are evident.” Basically, Luther is presenting the idea of grace as something similar to the wind. People can feel the wind and the effects of its power and might, but they cannot see it no matter how hard they try. Just because the wind is something that cannot be seen does not mean it is not there — it is constantly at work around us. Grace is similar. We cannot see grace, but we can feel its effects and we know that it is all around us.
How then, can something so “mighty and active”, whose evidence can be felt all around us, be so hard for people to comprehend? Grace is hard to understand because it goes against human nature. “Grace doesn’t try to please itself,” states Terrence Malick in The Tree of Life, “It Accepts being slighted, forgotten, disliked. It Accepts insults and injuries.” Human nature has the opposite priorities. In his work, Malick explored conflict between relationships, especially between the natural and supernatural. Malick goes on to say that “Nature only wants to please itself. To have its own way. It finds reasons to be unhappy when all the world is shining around it.” I believe that is why grace is hard to extend to those who have wronged us. The nature of grace conflicts with our natural responses to those who have sinned against us.
The reason we as humans find it difficult to extend grace to others is that the very idea of grace confronts natural human “reasoning”. Bono agrees when he states, “[g]race defies reason and logic. It interrupts, if you like, the consequences of your actions.” When someone sins against another person — by all standards of logic — they should be punished and pay the penalty for what they have done. By giving that person grace they are, in a sense, “avoiding punishment”. People do not understand this idea of thinking because they are quick to punish for sins, but slow to offer forgiveness and mercy. They follow Malick’s definition of Nature “only want[ing] to please itself.”
In The Single Woman: Life, Love, and a Dash of Sass, Mandy Hale instructs her readers to “[p]ray for people who have wronged you. It won’t just change their life…it’ll change yours.” In praying for the people who have wronged you, you are extending grace to them. Even though this response violates the natural reaction to people who have done wrong against you, Hale argues that by praying for them and extending grace to them, it will change the lives of those involved. It is incredibly difficult to give grace to those who hurt you, and I speak from personal experience.
I remember a circumstance in which I was hurt so badly, I could not even hear the names of the people who hurt me without feeling anger bubble up within me like a volcano on the verge of exploding. Showing grace to those people was the last thing I wanted to do. In my foolishness, I decided to hold on to my anger and “bury” it with the pretense that everything was fine. I buried it so deep within me that after a while I convinced even myself that I had moved past the situation and I was okay.
My teacher in high school did a devotion one morning about holding on to grudges, and the feelings that I had buried were uncovered. I realized that I had to deal with the hurt and anger, and I prayed about it, which is what I should have done to begin with. I forgave the people that hurt me and I dealt with my feelings the right way.
Grace is not something that can be fully understood or confined to a set definition or “rule book”. God’s grace is puzzling because He gives it generously, and there is not a limit to how much grace someone can receive before they run out. We do not see it, and there is no way to measure it, but we can feel the effects of it in our lives. Like the wind, grace “is hidden, but its works are evident.” John 3:8 says,
“The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear its sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.”
Malick created a short film called The Four Elements, in it he includes a perfect illustration of the wind found in John 3:8. There are clips of the wind whipping wildly through a field of grass — you can see the effect of the wind, but not the wind itself. Grace is the same way. There is a certain wildness about it that cannot be controlled, yet its effects are all around us. It is evident in every area of our lives, and the only one who can control it is God.
