“It is a primary truth of Christianity that God reaches us directly. No person is insulated. As ocean floods the inlets, as sunlight environs the plant, so God enfolds and enwreathes the finite spirit. There is this difference, however, inlet and plant are penetrated whether they will or not. Sea and sunshine crowd themselves in a tergo. Not so with God. He can be received only through appreciation and conscious appropriation. He comes only through doors that are purposefully opened for him. A person may live as near Goad as the bubble is to the ocean and yet not find him. He may be ‘closer than breathing, nearer than hands or feet,’ and still be missed.”

Rufus Jones, from “The Double Search” as quoted in “A Guide to Prayer for Ministers and Other Servants” by Reuben Job & Normal Shawchuck

In our study of “All the Good: A Wesleyan Way of Christmas,” during the first week of Advent, one of the authors of the study, Laceye Warner, shared a personal story of playing hide and seek with children in the middle of a worship service. She was comparing the game of hide and seek to Christ approaching in Advent. In Advent, ready or not, here Christ comes.

This week I was looking through the readings for reflection from “A Guide to Prayer for Ministers and Others Servants” when Rufus Jones’s words showed up in a quote from “The Double Search.” Recently I have been spending time in Rufus Jones’ 1916 work “The Inner Life,” so I paid attention to what Jones wrote while wondering how Rufus Jones ended up in the readings for the second week of Advent.

What an interesting tension between these two readings. Rev. Warner wrote about how Jesus is coming into the world whether it is ready or not. Rufus Jones wrote about how God is by nature a God who believes in consent. For Jones, God is as close as a bubble may be to the ocean, but consent is required before God will enter into a life. For Warner, God is right there on the verge of entering into the world whether or not it is ready.

Now the interesting thing about these two from my perspective is the potential clash of theology. Rev. Warner is deeply and steeply within the Methodist tradition. As an elder, I can say that I would not question her theology for one moment if I were on a Board of Ordained Ministry. Her position is solidly supported by Wesleyan research, writings, and traditions. Should she one day google this blog article, I hope she sees that I give her and her theology a thumbs up! Nothing personal here, Rev. Warner.

There is grace in the world for us and that grace is prevenient, justifying, and sanctifying. These graces exist in that particular order. God works within us even before we consciously choose to accept God. Unmerited favor pours down and into a life that comes to a point of acceptance and justification. Students of Methodist theology call that type of loving kindness and mercy prevenient grace.

Quaker theologian Rufus Jones states that God is right in the world around us, but that there must be an acceptance of God’s love before God truly enters into a person. I’m not enough of a Quaker scholar to state whether or not Jones would say that the presence of God in that proximity would qualify as a form of prevenient grace, but I wonder. God is there surrounding a person like the sunshine surrounds a tree or like the water fills an inlet, but Jones states there’s a difference: the sun may fill a plant with light that leads to a reaction with chlorophyll, but the plant has no say in the presence of the light. The water may pour into the inlet, but the inlet has no say in the matter. Tides, gravity, and water levels conspire to fill an inlet whether or not it desires to be wet.

For Rufus Jones, there must be consent before God enters into a life. For people like John Wesley, acceptance definitively matters as a prerequisite before prevenient grace leads a person to a salvific experience with the justifying grace offered by Christ. There’s a similar view on consent for both Jones and Wesley when it comes to salvation. The question I have is whether or not prevenient grace is a consensual grace.

As a minister, I have heard many times from a beloved child of God about the life of a loved one who is in their prayers. Sometimes the loved one is not willing to come to church or to accept the presence of God in their life. There have been prayers for the beloved person who may be angry, hurt, frustrated, or just done with the church. Sometimes the prayer is that the beloved person will find faith, accept an invitation to church, or even walk away from a dangerous situation. The hopes and the prayers they inspire are almost always well-intentioned and loving.

The question Jones inspires is what happens when we would like to see a flood of prevenient grace swell up to bear someone into the arms of God while the person in the water may want nothing to do with that grace or the God who is waiting. We would present the humorous simile of hide and seek with Rev. Warner and many other Methodists (including me) who want to explain the presence of God entering the world, but some people have no desire to play that game. They are not interested. The plant may rest in the sunshine regardless of intention, but if Jones is accurate in his portrayal of how God functions, the people we love may shut that door on God. What’s more, God may even honor their decisions to shut the door.

If prevenient grace must be or should be consensual, then there may be a theological hurdle for many of us as we consider how we relate to the world around us. I was sitting in a district clergy meeting this fall when an elderly fellow stated that things would be okay if we could just sit people down and explain to them where they are wrong and where we are right. I paraphrased that a bit, but I will state that’s what I heard. I hold no ill will for the person sharing that sentiment, but I wonder how well it works to force people to sit down and listen to us as the people who proclaim that we are right and they are ignorant.

In my experience, forced conversation about faith where the person is being forced into the conversation rarely leads anywhere good for either the person sharing or the person receiving that forceful sharing. Moving beyond the fact that bullying someone into faith seems the opposite of what we are called to do as Christians, there’s something deeply flawed here, The very idea that bashing someone over the head with a theological or even educational hammer is a form of grace seems a bit arrogant. The choice to act with theological, spiritual, educational, or even positional power should be rejected when we consider that honest conversation and loving actions can lead to similar conversations and results from a more respectful place of kindness, mercy, and graciousness.

Such conversations, poorly done and with carelessness, can lead to traumatic results. We know that religion having a negative impact can happen and has happened depending on how religion is used to cope with challenging situations. Other conversations, done carefully and with love, can lead to people seeing the extension of faith, hope, and love as being means of prevenient grace. When there is consent and all is well, then salvific results can ensue. When there is a lack of consent, our actions can be considered means of sorrow instead of means of grace.

It is perhaps easy to look at our actions in this light and see the value of consent and love in our approaches to evangelism and even to what Warner referred to as “works of mercy” throughout this season of Advent. Works of mercy, consensually and lovingly done, are glorifying to the name of God. Works of mercy that are not done with consent or even perspective can end as poorly as the incredibly outdated concept of the “Indian Boarding Schools” (which United Methodists are encouraged to be actively repenting of as a part of a whole church that hurt itself: racism is an act that hurts all people (Book of Resolutions, ¶3371: A Charter for Racial Justice in an Interdependent Global Community)).

You may think that I have gone far afield from my original conversation by talking about how we engage in evangelism and acts of mercy. Perhaps you wonder why it matters that won-consensual evangelism and “works of mercy” have caused harm. What does this have to do with prevenient grace and consent? Well, do we think our desire for another person to come to know God is greater than their desire to be left alone? Can we truly see a loving God pushing someone around without a sense of love and care simply because we ask for it? If God truly loves that person and loves us, can we see God working to empower us to share with love instead of forcing grace into their life through the school of hard knocks?

We know it is harmful to force other people into a place where they are deeply harmed by our good intentions. There’s a reason why the first of the three general rules is to do no harm and we even recognize those rules are purposefully in the order we have them. We seek to do no harm even before we seek to do good. As such, perhaps we need to deeply consider whether or not prevenient grace should be consensual. If it is to be, perhaps our time should be spent helping others to find that grace with love and kindness.

Consent is a powerful thing. Consent takes something beautiful and makes it extravagantly wonderful. A lack of consent takes something beautiful and turns it into something horrific. We know this is true of something as common as human sexuality. Can you imagine a world where prevenient grace is extravagantly wonderful? Put another way, can you imagine a world where prevenient grace is celebrated without the eventual need for global acts of repentance? What if we worked for a world where people sought God with joy instead of God having to play hide and seek with the unwilling as a result of our behaviors? What if our Christmas gifts to Christ were acts of consensual mercy?