The Garden of Grace

 [Foreword: This is a short, fictional story, written in response to a heretic in the Church of England who recently asserted that God's grace is so radical that no repentance is required.  Her implication is that the Church must not even bring up the subject of sin, no one has any need for repentance (though they may if they like!), and everyone should accept everyone else just as they are.  Most heretics in the Church of England deny that homosexuality is a sin, but this heretic wants to go one step farther in dissolving the category of sin because, she falsely claims, grace simply accepts everyone as they are.  Of course, this is an impossible reading of all the Bible, but it also rids the Church of the need for Jesus' death on a cross for our sins.  John ran into this heretic's forebears when he wrote in response to them, 'If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. 10 If we say we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us' (1 John 1.9-10, ESV).]

‘Oh, you startled me!’ said Eve.

‘Terribly sorry—I did not mean to.’  The creature had the tail fin of a small fish emerging from its mouth.  With a quick slurp, the fin disappeared.

‘What are you, if I may ask?  You look vaguely familiar, but I must say you are a different creature from those I’ve met so far.’

‘I am a salamander, dear soul.  You might call me by that name.  I do look rather like the Snake that you met in the Garden, don’t I?’

‘You know about that?’!

‘Eve, I am the Snake of the Garden.’

‘What?  How?’

‘It does seem strange, doesn’t it?  In there, I am the Snake.  Out here, though, I am the Salamander.  In there, I am cursed to slither on the ground.  Out here, I have four legs to lift me above the dust of death.’

Behind her, across the water, the flaming swords of the angels that stood guard at the Garden’s entrance could still be seen in the distance—flashing lights in the grey of late evening.  To look in that direction brought a stab of pain.  She knew, of course, that ‘in there’ meant in that garden—the Garden from which she had been evicted with her husband, never again to enter.  ‘In there’ was also where she held an enlightening conversation with the Snake, who taught her that to follow one’s own definitions of good and evil is to be god to oneself.  The temptation was irresistible, and both Eve and Adam bit into the fruit offered by the Snake but forbidden by God.  This resulted in their expulsion from the Garden of God, but not before God had graciously clothed them from the starkness of their naked disobedience that had opened their eyes to sin lest the shame overwhelm them.

Now, outside the Garden, Eve had been collecting firewood and looking for something in which she might carry water from the lake while Adam was building a bivouac just inside the forest.  He could be heard breaking branches and releasing the occasional yelp as his tender hands took the piercing jab of some wood.  The pain was a new sensation, unpleasant, yet curiously interesting—as was the sight of the blood from his hands on the tree.  The shelter was coming along.  He had positioned a sturdy branch as a main beam between two trees.  As the trees were a little too far apart, he had cleverly tied a mid-pole vertical to the ground to give it support.  The mid-pole rose above the beam, and where they crossed, he had tied them together.  He had been testing the use of a sharp rock as an axe, and he used it to cut tree bark into long strips that he then used to tie his pole to the beam.  Something about the smell of the forest, the urgency of his work in the waning hours of the day, the axe, and his bloodied hands energized him.  He also instinctively felt a duty to protect and care for Eve, and the excitement of an adventure was restrained by this responsibility.

Eve, however, appeared to be getting along well enough without Adam’s efforts on her behalf.  She was now laughing freely and heartily at the Salamander’s wit.  He was every bit as charming as the Snake.

‘And what kind of a joke is that?’ she asked.

‘A pun,’ replied the Salamander.  ‘It works by giving meaning a slight twist that surprises and then delights.’

‘And the other one—the one you told first?’

‘Oh, it doesn’t really have a name yet, but I was thinking of calling it a Boundary Crossing.  The humour is in the shock the hearer has of crossing some boundary, some taboo, or some rule.’

‘Are there other types of jokes?’

‘Many.  There are jokes that work off of false assumptions, jokes that exaggerate, jokes that poke fun at others, and others still.’

‘Oh, tell me another one,’ said Eve, tossing her lovely black hair behind her and widening her deep, brown eyes in an abandonment to the pleasant intercourse that kept her from her duties.

‘Well, how about this one?’ said the Salamander.  ‘Why did God not give elephants wings to fly?’

‘Why?’

‘Could you imagine the poop falling from the sky?’

Eve was in stiches laughing.  She pretended to dodge elephant poop falling from the sky and laughed some more.  What made this so funny to her was not the childlike, crass humour itself but the new horizons the jokes opened up in her mind.  Here was a handling of the order of creation in a humourous way, probing its purpose, imagining alternatives, posing the possibility of some other ordering of existence.

Adam had come over to see what was making Eve laugh so.  He was drawn to her joyful, even life-giving spirit, but he was also a little annoyed that she would be laughing so while he laboured by the sweat of his brow. 

‘Oh, hullo!’ he said.

‘Oh, Adam, I want you to meet Mr. Salamander, a delightful fellow and a new friend.’

Adam looked around quizzically, then spotted the creature on a rock beside Eve.

‘Pleased to make your acquaintance.’

‘And yours.’

‘Have we perhaps met before?’ asked Adam.

The Salamander winked at Eve for their little secret.  ‘You might have mistaken me for the Snake.  All the animals do.’  Eve wondered why the Salamander did not tell Adam directly that he was one and the same, just altered in appearance outside the Garden.  Maybe this was a kind of joke, too—letting some people into the secret and leaving others out.  Maybe in the Garden, where God’s rules ruled, people lived simply with truth and falsity.  Here, outside the Garden, one could withhold information from others and leave them uncertain as to truth or falsity.  One could turn feeling in the tumbler of self-will so that it shone like the truth or polish opinion so fine with the cloth of rhetoric that it gleamed like fact.  The thought of having secrets, turning feelings into truths, and not giving others all the facts enticed Eve.  She and Mr. Salamander would have a wink between them, without Adam.

‘Ah, yes, you do remind me of the Snake in the Garden a little,’ said Adam.  ‘And snakes out here, too!  I’ve run into one while building the bivouac.  So many things out here are similar to things in there, but also a little different.’

‘Yess,’ said the Salamander, holding onto the last letter a little eerily.  ‘And in there is God’s Law, out here is God’s Grace.’

‘What do you mean?’ asked Adam.

‘Well, think about it.  You are still alive, aren’t you?  In there, God said you would die if you disobeyed His Law.  What happened, though, was that He sent you packing into His land of Grace. And you are still alive.’

‘I see what you are saying,’ said Adam.

‘And would you rather live under Law or under Grace?’ pressed the Salamander.  ‘In there, you get cursed for disobeying God.  Out here, you disobey God and find grace.  In fact,’ the Salamander delivered his reasoning slowly in order to appear to be discovering a great truth, ‘our sin causes God’s grace to abound.’

‘Something seems a little off in that,’ said Adam.  Eve, however, thought that the Salamander was making another of his jokes and laughed.

Some further reasoning was needed, the Salamander could tell.  He would have to take them both further down this path.

‘Quite right,’ the Salamander said, looking into Adam’s eyes.  ‘How could that be so?  And yet, here we are, in God’s Garden of Grace.’  The thought of still being in a garden—in another of God’s gardens—cheered the exiles.  ‘And, Adam, you are right that things are a little different out here.  In there, there is Commandment, Sin, Punishment.  Out here, we have evolved.  We live not by Law but by Grace.  And where there is no Law, there is no Sin.  And where there is no Sin, there is no Punishment.  There is only Grace.’  Everyone was silent for a moment.  The reasoning seemed right, but not quite right.  Then the Salamander said, ‘I see you both have some work to do while there is still a little light in the sky.  Why don’t we talk more about this another day?  It has been good to meet you.’  And with their goodbyes, each turned to his or her own duties.

Around the campfire that night, Eve felt a little remorse for her secrecy with the Salamander without Adam.  She repented, telling him that the Serpent was the same as the Salamander.  She apologized, and he forgave her with a kiss.  She and Adam discussed their conversation with the Salamander further.  ‘I must admit that I am a little confused,’ said Eve.  ‘Well, I’m a little disturbed,’ said Adam.  ‘But what confuses you?’  ‘Well, it all makes a certain sort of sense, doesn’t it, but the conclusion seems to be wrong.’  ‘I agree,’ said Adam, ‘but the Salamander has a way with words that leave you dazed, as if you are sitting in the smoke of the campfire not seeing properly and without enough oxygen!’

‘It occurs to me,’ said Eve, ‘that in the Garden of Eden the debate was not over whether something was a sin or not but over who was to say what was a sin.  Out here, if the Salamander is right, we are no longer worried about something being a sin because everything is Grace.  But,’ and she paused a little, collecting her thoughts, ‘if it is Grace, then don’t you have to have sin first?  I mean, you can’t give someone grace if they don’t need it, right?  Grace doesn’t mean anything if someone hasn’t done something that needs God’s grace.’

‘I see what you are saying, Eve.  And we actually did receive God’s grace in the Garden of Eden, too.  First, His goodness was the foundation of all that He created.  We received it with thanksgiving, not as though we deserved it.  Then, He gave us the goodness of life together and life with a purpose and life in His presence.  And, when we sinned, He covered our shame.  Even being exiled from the Garden was an act of grace alongside judgement, because if we had remained there, eating the fruit of the Tree of Life, we would have continued forever in our sin.  Judgement for sin is a step in a larger act of Grace.’

‘And if that is so,’ said Eve, ‘then there must be some further act of Grace to come.  So, it is not that God cancels the Commandments.  It is not that there is no Sin.  It is not that there is no Punishment.  It is that, despite all that, there is also Grace.’

The Salamander had been listening in the darkness beyond the firelight.  He saw his slippery reasoning was being undone.  He emerged into the ring of the fire, surprising the couple again.  ‘I could not help overhearing,’ he said.  ‘Small world, isn’t it?’  The couple knew, however, that he had been eavesdropping, and they were not comfortable.  ‘If I may,’ he proceeded, ‘perhaps there is a deeper level of Grace than you are considering.  You may be right that sinning boldly does not shed a good light on our understanding of Grace.  Maybe that is a little twisted.  But what if there is a much deeper level of Grace in which there is pure acceptance?  What if Grace means accepting everyone as they are, no questions asked, no fingers pointed, no judgement, no need for repentance, no guilt in struggle with desire, no punishment for acts?  Would that not be, let’s call it ‘Deeper Grace’?’

The Salamander’s eyes glistened in the firelight.  He seemed to shining.  How very thoughtful, no kind, were his words.  They were welcoming, inclusive, even loving.  He crawled forward and sat by the fire, grateful for its warmth.

At long last, Adam spoke.  ‘If this is so, then God would have led us straight to the Tree of Life in the Garden of Eden after our sin rather than exiling us from it.  Or you actually need to posit two gods.  There is the God in the Garden of Eden, and a different God in this Garden of Grace.  But we know that that is not so.  So, we have to find a way to put this puzzle together so that we end up with only one God, not two.  And though all this thinking is exhausting after quite the day, I think you might be right and wrong about Grace, Mr. Salamander.’  His hands were sore, and he looked at them in the firelight.  They were bruised and bloodied from where he had pierced himself with the wood when making the cross of the beam and the pole.  ‘I think you are right that there is a deeper Grace, but I think you are wrong about what it is.  The deeper Grace must be the difference between Mercy and Grace.  Mercy is when someone forgives you when you deserve to be punished.  Grace is not a matter of doing away with calling anything a sin and just welcoming everyone whatever they do, though.  The deeper Grace we are trying to understand must be when God goes beyond Mercy to pay the penalty of Sin Himself and change us by His own work to become like Him once again.  Mercy is forgiving grace.  The Deeper Grace is Mercy and Transformation through God’s own bearing of our Sin.’

Adam looked at the Salamander.  He had drawn too close to the fire and burned his feet.  He excused himself quickly.  Unable to walk, he slithered into the grass.

Eve looked up at her husband with a smile.  ‘Adam, this might be a thought experiment of yours, but it is pretty profound.  And even if it is a thought, I have to wonder if you—if we—can think of a greater Grace than whatever is the Grace of God.  I mean, if we can think of this, then God’s Grace can’t be less, can it?’

‘Surely we can’t think of a greater Grace than God’s,’ agreed Adam.  ‘But the price of sin is death.  That is what God told us.  “In the day that you eat of this fruit, you will surely die.”  Somehow the deeper Grace of God must go beyond Mercy to payment for sin and transformation to a righteous life, not continuation in sin. If the wages of sin is death, somehow God’s Grace must bring eternal life.’  He studied his smarting hands, pouring a little water on them and wincing.  ‘A deeper Grace would call for a Righteous Man to die for the unrighteous.  Not a man like me.  A Second Adam in whom there is no sin.’

The couple sat looking into the fire and then at each other.  Finally, Eve said, ‘Adam, remember when I said something about not being able to think of something greater or more profound or better than the reality of God a little earlier?’

‘Yes.’

‘Well, what if that Righteous Man dying for our sins not only shows God’s Mercy and Deeper Grace, as you say?  I can also think of something greater than that!’

Adam gasped.  ‘I thought we were already in the outer limits of theological speculation,’ he said.  He looked up at the brilliant sky and wondered if there was any limit to the universe.  Maybe the truths of God were limitless, too.  ‘Well?’ he said, looking at Eve.

‘I wonder,’ she began.  ‘I wonder whether imagining a Righteous Man will get us anywhere, Adam.  I mean, look at us.  We are sinners.  There is no Righteous Man.  But I can imagine a further level of God’s Grace where He—the Giver of Life—bears the penalty of sin, which is death.  Would that not be a Deeper Grace still?  Mr. Salamander’s notion of Deeper Grace is one that disregards sin and ends up being no Grace at all.  No sin, no repentance, no need for Grace.  But if Deeper Grace is God’s dealing with sin itself, it acknowledges sin as sin, it includes repentance and forgiveness, it reconciles us to God, and it transforms us into His righteous image.  And all that happens because He bears the penalty of sin for us.  Now that, Mr. Adam, that is a Deeper Grace than which there is no deeper.  Do you think God would do that for us?’

She looked at him.  She saw he was crying.  It brought forth her own tears.  This Garden of Grace was not the distortions proposed by Mr. Salamander but surely something far more profound.  It was not dismissive of sin.  It was not permissive, either.  Surely the same God of Eden was the God of the Garden of Grace and His Love was so deep that He, the only One who could, would pay the penalty of death for sin and restore righteousness and life to those who did nothing to deserve it.

Adam and Eve were exhausted.  They retired to their shelter.  Eve paused to look at it.  He had done a good job, and she was proud of her husband.  They stood at the wooden cross.  Eve could see bloodstains on it in the flickering firelight.  She took his hands in hers and looked at them.  They looked swollen and blistered.  She took some water and cleansed them.  Some of the water and the blood spilt on her as well.  She smiled at Adam.  ‘And what will wash away our sin, Adam?’ she asked.