Why Liberals Want It Hard
Bonhoeffer, Luther, and the Problem of Self-Justification
TL;DR: Why do so many mainline Christians seem to want harder preaching? Drawing on Luther's Law & Gospel theology, Bonhoeffer's distinction between cheap and costly grace, and David Zahl's work on atonement, I wonder if many of us are more comfortable with Law than grace. Like the lawyer in Luke 10 who wanted to "justify himself," we often seek to prove we're good enough through justice work, activism, and being on the right side of issues. Costly grace, however, frees us from the need to justify ourselves. It doesn't simply challenge us—it transforms us and sends us toward others with the same grace we've received.
“They want me to preach harder at them,” she said. “They want me to make them feel guilty and tell them what they should do…”
A few weeks ago, I was having a conversation with a mainline pastor.
Initially, I was puzzled. Who wants that? Who goes to church hoping to feel worse about themselves?
As someone who grew up in conservative Baptist contexts, where guilt and obligation were often readily available, I can assure you it wasn’t particularly enjoyable or life-giving.
How odd, I thought.
Then I remembered another conversation I’d had several months earlier.
I was talking with a member of a mainline congregation about their new pastor and what the church was hoping for from this new season of ministry.
The response surprised me.
“We’re ready for him/her to push us harder.”
That conversation had struck me at the time, but hearing the pastor say something similar brought it back to mind. And I found myself wondering why.
Why do people seem to want things to be harder?
Why do so many of us want to be challenged, pushed, and told what we ought to be doing?
When I mentioned the earlier conversation to the pastor, she responded with a simple observation:
People want law, but really they want grace.
I’ve been thinking about that comment ever since.
Law & Gospel
Partly because it connects with another line of thought I’ve been exploring recently.
In a previous post, I suggested that Critical Theory often functions a bit like Martin Luther’s understanding of the Law. It identifies injustice, exposes where we fall short, and calls us to do better. In that sense, I think it can be tremendously valuable.
But one of Luther’s key insights was that while the Law can diagnose, it cannot save.
The Law can tell us what’s wrong. It can reveal our failures. It can expose our need.
But the Law cannot forgive us.
Lately I’ve found myself wondering if something similar might be happening in many of our churches. Not just progressive churches, but especially among those of us in the mainline.
What if we’re actually quite comfortable with Law?
What if challenge feels more concrete than grace?
What if being told what to do feels more productive, more tangible, and maybe even more spiritual than simply receiving forgiveness?
And perhaps most importantly, what if we’ve become so suspicious of cheap grace that we’ve forgotten what costly grace actually is?
Which brings me to Dietrich Bonhoeffer.
The term “cheap grace” comes from Bonhoeffer’s book The Cost of Discipleship, published in 1937 while Bonhoeffer was witnessing the rise of the Nazi regime. He looked on with horror as so many of his fellow German Christians unquestioningly aligned themselves with Hitler.
He wrote:
“Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, Communion without confession. Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate.”
By contrast:
“Costly grace confronts us as a gracious call to follow Jesus, it comes as a word of forgiveness to the broken spirit and the contrite heart. It is costly because it compels a man to submit to the yoke of Christ and follow him; it is grace because Jesus says: “My yoke is easy and my burden is light.”’
I think the reason so many liberal or progressive Christians want “harder,” more challenging, “tell me what to do” preaching is because they have never experienced costly grace.
In short, grace is not prescriptive enough because grace is illogical. It’s foolishness, as Paul says.
Which raises a question for me: If costly grace is so transformative, why do so many of us seem to prefer challenge over forgiveness?
The story of the lawyer in Luke 10 comes to mind:
25On one occasion an expert in the law stood up to test Jesus. “Teacher,” he asked, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?”
26 “What is written in the Law?” he replied. “How do you read it?”
27 He answered, “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind’[a]; and, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’[b]”
28 “You have answered correctly,” Jesus replied. “Do this and you will live.”
29 But he wanted to justify himself, so he asked Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?”
Seeking to Justify Himself
I want to focus in on those words:
“But he wanted to justify himself...”
In the book Law and Gospel, David Zahl, William McDavid, and Ethan Richardson write:
“Works righteousness—the attempt to justify yourself by works of the law (be they actions or attributes)—is the default mode of human operation, not just the select few who identify as religious.” (66)
And I think that’s especially helpful in naming what might be happening in this story.
Often, the lawyer is interpreted as trying to avoid being a good neighbor to others, as if to say, “So-and-so isn’t my neighbor, therefore I don’t have to help him.”
Maybe.
But I’ve begun to wonder if it’s actually the opposite.
What if the lawyer wanted to know who his neighbor was so he could detail all the ways he was already helping his neighbor?
What if he’s not looking for an excuse so much as looking for validation?
After all, Luke tells us he wanted to justify himself.
The Liberal Temptation
And I wonder if this is what many white liberals are trying to do.
To be clear, I don’t mean that cynically.
I think many white liberals genuinely want to know where injustice is happening and who is being harmed by it. They want to help. They want to advocate. They want to stand in solidarity. They want to do works of justice and mercy.
All of that is good.
But—and this is my key point—I wonder if their action is sometimes much like that of the lawyer.
Not avoiding being a neighbor.
Trying to justify themselves.
Like the lawyer, they want to demonstrate all the ways they are fulfilling the law and living out justice.
Not because they are trying to avoid justice and mercy, but because deep down they feel the need to prove that they are doing enough.
That they are good enough.
That they are on the right side of things.
That they are justified.
And that’s the thing. Like the lawyer, they feel the need to justify themselves because they haven’t really experienced costly grace. Instead, grace remains something that must somehow be earned by fulfilling the law.
I wonder if this is part of the challenge within mainline Protestantism.
Middle- and upper-class white Christians generally don’t think we’re that bad. We tend to assume that sin is primarily ignorance or imperfections, something we can educate our way out of, rather than outright rebellion, failure, or brokenness.
We know we’re imperfect.
We know we’ve made mistakes.
But we don’t often experience the sort of desperation that makes grace feel like relief.
And if we don’t think we need much grace, then what we need instead is improvement.
Growth.
Progress.
One more thing to do.
A Big Relief
Recently, I was interviewing David Zahl for the podcast about his book The Big Relief. I asked him about atonement and why that word is often seen as embarrassing, unnecessary, or even offensive among liberal mainliners.
He mentioned that for people who have really done wrong, people who have really failed, atonement is, to use his words, “a big relief.”
That struck me.
In the book he writes:
“Guilt is more a default state of being, exerting constant pressure and wreaking havoc on mental health. In left-of-center circles, many people feel pressure to demonstrate their contrition and regret over cycles of injustice.” (83)
And later:
“Atonement may be a religious-sounding word, yet it takes many nonreligious forms. Some of these forms are constructive, and some are not. ... On the healthier end, activism can be a form of atonement... Unfortunately, this kind of perpetual atonement can become enslaving if it offers no completion, or what theologians would call satisfaction... There is always one more good deed to do, one more apology to give before the slate is wiped clean. Partial atonement wears us out.” (86)
That sounds remarkably similar to Luther’s Law.
There is always one more thing to do.
One more injustice to address.
One more apology to make.
One more thing to learn.
What Costly Grace Produces
The pastor and former white supremacist Caleb Campbell comes to mind as someone who seems to have experienced costly grace and, as a result, seeks to share that grace. He considers himself a “missionary to Christian nationalists” and urges conversion rather than confrontation. He believes hospitality and kindness, rather than arguments, can lead people away from the fusion of God and country.1
St. Patrick comes to mind too.
After experiencing the grace of God, he returned to Ireland to share that grace with the very people who had kidnapped him.
What strikes me about both Campbell and Patrick is that when they experienced costly grace, they didn’t simply feel compelled to prove themselves.
They felt compelled to share what they had received.
Theologian Willie James Jennings says it this way:
“A disciple of Jesus is someone…ready to enter the stories of those to whom she is sent by God…Evangelism, offering witness to the gospel, is quite unavoidable if one seeks to yield to the Spirit of God” (Acts, 88-89).
Because they had received grace and recognized it as such, they knew they had to share it with people who desperately needed it.
In Campbell’s case, that includes Christian nationalists, white supremacists, and skinheads.
Grace or Self-Justification?
This feels like a very different move from what often happens in white liberal Protestantism.
And before anyone misunderstands me, I’m not saying marching, protesting, voting, or advocacy are bad things. They are not.
But I do wonder how often these activities become ways of demonstrating righteousness rather than extending grace.
Can we imagine white liberal Protestants regularly entering spaces filled with MAGA activists or Christian nationalists in hopes of winning them over through hospitality, kindness, and the good news of Jesus, a la Campbell?2
Honestly, I struggle to imagine it.
And I wonder if part of the reason is that we still feel the need to justify ourselves.
As Zahl, McDavid, and Richardson write:
“We long, with every fiber of our being, to save ourselves.” (16)
Costly grace is sort of the opposite.
Costly grace is unmerited, undeserved and overflowing.
The kind of grace Patrick and Campbell received in such abundance that they knew they needed to share it with others who were also desperately in need of it.
Again from the Law and Gospel book:
“American Christianity now is in crisis in large part because people have marketed it as a religion of good people getting better, when in fact it is a religion of bad people coping with their failure to be good.” (12)
What’s wild and perhaps a bit illogical is that many pastors in white liberal Protestantism spend a great deal of time assuring people that they are good enough and beloved.
And to be clear, they are beloved.
But I wonder if that message sometimes feeds the very anxiety it seeks to relieve.
“I’ve got to prove that I’m good enough.”
“I’ve got to show that I’m one of the good people.”
And so the cycle continues.
People want law, but really they want grace.
Maybe that’s why the pastor’s observation has stayed with me.
People want law, but really they want grace.
Law gives us something to do—Grace tells us what has already been done.
Law lets us justify ourselves—Grace tells us we don’t have to.
And perhaps that’s why grace is so difficult to receive.
Not because it is cheap.
But because it is costly enough to take away our favorite project:
saving ourselves.
https://religionnews.com/2022/11/11/meeting-caleb-campell-a-missionary-to-christian-nationalist-charlie-kirk-freedom-night/
Each month I get my hair cut from a barber who is quite clearly MAGA and I’m viewing it as an opportunity for discipleship (the woman has already shared she is a Christian).
I find Matthew Bate’s emphasis on allegiance being a better translation for the Greek pistis rather than faith helpful with what you’re describing. As in, we are saved not by our faith (often understood in terms of belief) but by our allegiance to Jesus as messiah/king.
Many liberal Christians intuitively grasp that there is something lacking with the emphasis among many conservative churches that all you need to do is believe in your heart that Jesus died for your sins and that nothing else is being asked of them. By shifting the focus from justified by faith/belief to justified by our faithful *allegiance* to Christ, this allows for a way to understand the costly nature of grace. Yes the burden is light and the yoke is easy but we hold that in tension with Jesus’ teaching that unless we give up everything we cannot be his disciple.
I have never heard my congregations say they want harder sermons. That’s interesting. You know what’s hardest? In a way, Grace.