One of the phrases I hate the most, and why
When people say or write the phrase, “There but for the grace of God go I,” I think they’re trying to be empathetic to someone else’s pain and suffering. I’ve said it in the past myself, but somewhere along the line, I began to question what it really meant.I was beginning to hear in that little phrase a sort of conceit not uncommon in modern Christianity. Used as a platitude in an effort to somehow connect oneself to another’s suffering, to say “there but for the grace of God go I” sounds to me a lot like sayiang “because I have the grace of God, I am not like that person,” therefore, “that person doesn’t have the grace of God.”
A little research tells me that the phrase probably comes from something written by 16th-century Protestant reformer, John Bradford. What he said was, “There but for the grace of God goes John Bradford.” He was likely paraphrasing from the Pauline letter to the Corinthians recorded as 1 Corinthians 15:10:
10 But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace toward me has not been in vain. On the contrary, I worked harder than any of them, though it was not I but the grace of God that is with me.*
This is pulled out of context, of course, from a letter in which Paul is proclaiming not that he has some special grace that no one else has, but that the grace given him by God has changed him, and his recognition of this gave him strength. He continues to write about the resurrection stories about Jesus and of the dead, which does not interest me in this particular conversation, as it doesn’t apply to the modern-day platitude I’m addressing.
Though I am no longer a United Methodist, or even a Christian in the current interpretation of that moniker, I follow John Wesley’s train of thought on “grace,” though perhaps not with the detailed verbiage he applied to it.
Grace, to me, is the Presence of the Divine that is always available to us. It is Energy, Breath, Life.
It is Being.
We draw on it as a matter of course. We can intentionally draw on it through prayer and meditative practices. Through ritual. Through faith. By which I mean, not belief, but the unmitigated understanding that all will be well, even when all does not seem to be well.
This grace, to me, is the grace of God/Spirit/Universe/All that Is. It is not something to be tightly grasped as something we possess and others don’t have.
“There but for the grace of God go I” is a fallacy that people tell themselves to make themselves feel better. There is no empathy in it. It’s not biblical.
The closest biblical reference I can think of comes from a parable recorded as having been told by Jesus in Luke 18:9–14:
10‘Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax-collector. 11The Pharisee, standing by himself, was praying thus, “God, I thank you that I am not like other people: thieves, rogues, adulterers, or even like this tax-collector. 12I fast twice a week; I give a tenth of all my income.” 13But the tax-collector, standing far off, would not even look up to heaven, but was beating his breast and saying, “God, be merciful to me, a sinner!” 14I tell you, this man went down to his home justified rather than the other; for all who exalt themselves will be humbled, but all who humble themselves will be exalted.’ *
In this case, the “there but for the grace of God” character does not come out looking so good.
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*Scripture from the New Revised Standard Version (NRSV)
