A "Graced" Theology

I have decided not to be a Christian, but a human. Being human is our first priority, as humans. It is about acceptance of limitations, inabilities, and potentialities, as well. Previenient grace covers all of it, for all of life is graced. That means that all knowledge, and all of life is graced. But, what about suffering? Suffering is about injustice.

We are grace bearers to another. Grace is gifting another's life where it is limited, disabled or hindered. It is a life of humanism.

Just recently, while attending the American History museum in D.C., my husband and I listened to a young African American talk about the Greensboro incidence. The Greensboro incidence was a sit in for civil rights in the 60's and it was done at a Woolworth counter in the name of justice. Justice had not been served to these four African Americans, as they had not been served lunch. This was a lunch counter and the function of a lunch counter was to serve lunch to humans! But, these African Americans had grown up without having the equality of sitting at the lunch counter. Why? Because, they were less than human, as the color of their skin disenfranchised them from the "white elite". As he talked and acted out the injustice, I cried. as I lived through this period in history in the South, as a white American. White Americans were the priviledged class who could choose where they wanted to sit, where they wanted to see a movie, and how they would live their lives, in general. It was freedom to be white, but "our" freedom limited African Americans in their freedom. So, we, Southerners, did not experience "freedom and justice for all"!

I was priviledged on both accounts of being a white in the South, but also, having the priviledge of having an African American "maid" raise me in my younger years. This African American's name was Elizabeth, and I played with her daughter, Geraldine. She was my friend. I didn't see color, although I lived in a "colorful' world. I only knew these African Americans as my friends. I once asked my mother, when I was inquiring about a mole on my body, if Geraldine was "one big mole all over"! Children do not make the distinctions that adults learn to do, and such is the "kingdom of God"....

I think the "kingdom of God" is more about being "human" than about any form of religion, and the ideological "commitments that go along with "religion"!