Learning grace requires unlearning too.
Most of us would agree that faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we cannot see. The flip side of this, which we don’t always acknowledge, is that doubt is being sure of what we dread and certain of what we cannot see.
Faith and doubt both align themselves around surety and certainty.
The unlearning part of learning grace doesn’t require us to trade our faith for doubt in the things that we have hoped for. No. Learning grace is an invitation to loosen our grip on truth to make space for experiencing grace—first for ourselves, and then for others.

Opportunities continue to expand like the edges of the universe, but there keep just being 24 hours in a day. While the internet amplifies published creativity at a rate never seen, life expectancy is still relatively flat.

Time is a strange constant in a life of infinite variables.

In my attempt to learn grace, my first impulse is to find the shortcuts and the lifehacks that will teach me to live full grace the quickest.

But there is no shortcut to learning grace.

Learning grace takes time, which means that learning grace also means learning to take time.

Heading out on a journey to learn grace carries with it an admission of a lack of grace. Our need to learn grace is not because we are experts in grace or drowning in it. We actually need to learn grace.

Jesus was well aware of the heaviness which comes from doubling down on a dogmatic view of truth. Being right becomes more of an identity than being with God or the people of God. So our journey toward learning grace continues with a confession of our current overactive truth system.

We’re hyper-truth and hypo-grace. We can’t find our way to the hopeful shores of grace without lamenting the walls that truth has built around our hearts.

“Yeah. Ok. Maybe. But what about truth?” When it comes to grace, my internal dialogue is ridiculously obsessed with truth.

Every church I’ve been a part of or visited or thought of visiting is very adamant about teaching Truth–big T Truth–Bible studies and classes and sermon series and cohorts and seminars and conferences and the list goes on and on.

Everyone seems obsessed with teaching truth.

And I get it. Truth is important.

But it feels like it’s only half of the picture.