Everyone needs grace. Republicans, Democrats and independents need grace. Undocumented immigrants and Christian nationalists need grace. People of color and people of privilege need grace. Young and old, rich and poor, gendered and non-gendered, more or less educated, born in America or somewhere else — all need grace. Even presidents and their administrations need grace.
We all need grace because we all carry a boatload of hurt.
J. Claude Huguley
Some of our hurts we can name and tie to specific individuals, actions and events in our own lives. Other hurts find their origin in harms inflicted by larger cultural, political and economic systems that demean, exploit or devalue our personhood relative to others. Grief, shame, guilt and resentments generated by centuries-old experiences of war, violence and exploitation can be passed down to the present generation, creating new sources of hurt.
Hurt hurts. And every large and small hurt threatens us deep within our soul. Each injury shames and diminishes our selfhood a little more, telling us we don’t really matter and are less worthy of love or value. The destructive power within this primal threat triggers our fear, hijacking logical processes and urging us back into the survival state of “fight, flight or freeze.”
“Every large and small hurt threatens us deep within our soul.”
Our initial survivalist reaction to hurt often is filled with anger, grief and more fear. The more our sense of vulnerability has been exposed, the more damaging our wound and the greater depth and energy of our response. We react — taking whatever action we can to protect ourselves.
We may strike back, projecting toughness and strength. We may deny our hurt, hide our wounds or take the blame for our own hurt. Every reaction tries to restore some sense of control while diminishing awareness of our true vulnerability.
Anger, narcissism, greed, self-righteousness, judgmentalism and a prideful sense of entitlement/superiority become ready tools for building up the self at the expense of others. “Building up me by tearing down thee” may give a short-lived boost to a fragile ego — but no lasting security. Each hurtful action/attitude sows consequences, wounding the spirit of both recipient(s) and perpetrator.
While this tearing down of others to build up self is harmful on the individual level, its damage multiplies exponentially when applied systematically on the local, national and international stage. When an element of difference (nationality, race, sexual orientation or political views) gets tied to some perceived societal problem, members of that group can be singled out for targeting by the larger society.
Opportunistic leaders exploit difference and the hurt, fear and prejudices of their followers to create divisions they manipulate into an “us versus them” framing. Giving voice to grievance and unresolved hurt, these leaders build and sustain their own power by inviting the aggrieved to participate in the tearing down of “them.” Using name-calling, distortions and outright lies, the target group(s) can be transformed into scapegoats and “enemies of the people.”
“Once the targeted groups(s) are viewed as ‘enemies’ and are sufficiently dehumanized, the scope of injustice, cruelty and evil has no limit.”
Once the targeted groups(s) are viewed as “enemies” and are sufficiently dehumanized, the scope of injustice, cruelty and evil has no limit. Ordinarily good and decent people can be turned into willing participants in the most inhumane acts imaginable. History teaches this demonic process metastasized in the Holocaust in Nazi Germany in the 1940s and the Rwandan genocide in the 1990s.
In the last year, we have witnessed horrifying cruelty directed toward Palestinians in Gaza and undocumented immigrants in America. Over and over again, the pattern persists. Those who have been hurt become the perpetrators of more and more hurt and we all — every single one of us — are left with an ever-growing boatload of hurt.
We need grace — embodied love — a grace that sees, empathizes, confronts, heals and empowers. We need a grace sufficient enough to absorb and transform all the hurt, woundedness and ungrace we humans can inflict and experience in this world.
Many Christians would affirm that this needed grace is proclaimed by and embodied in Jesus, expressing the love of the Creator God toward the whole of creation and all humanity. The Gospel of John asserts Jesus is “full of grace and truth” and “from his fulness we have all received, grace upon grace.”
This grace sees all who are hurt — every single individual — seeing each and every one as beloved, extending empathy and compassion to all. Grace sees, understanding every injury that triggers the reactive hurtful actions by those who have been hurt. It graces both the ones hurt and the ones who are hurtful, fully and unconditionally.
No hurt or hurtful act can separate us from the love revealed toward all of us through this grace.
This grace willingly empathizes with us, coming alongside us, suffering with us. It acknowledges our perceived injuries in all their fulness, helping us name and grieve the losses we have experienced through them. Grace understands the depth of our woundedness even more than we do, believing in us, advocating for us and continuing to love us in the midst of our pain.
“No hurt or hurtful act can separate us from the love revealed toward all of us through this grace.”
Anchored in truth, grace confronts hurtfulness and ungrace in all its forms. This confrontation may include social pressures or legal remedies (like incarceration) — not to punish but to protect and create space for eventual restoration. Grace shines light, inviting the hurtful to recognize, take responsibility and work toward repair, restitution and lasting change. Persistent, yet non-coercive, it illuminates the destructive consequences sown through any hurtful attitudes, behaviors and actions while continuing to love the very ones that do them.
Even as grace is calling out hurtfulness and ungrace, it does not control their capacity to harm. Grace may appear foolish and impotent when circumstances or results do not reflect its values and desires. Indeed, we might sometimes long for a “grace” that fights back, weaponizing destructive fear and power to punish the hurtful or prevent hurtfulness from happening.
Entering the world as a baby and willingly dying on the Cross, Jesus embodied vulnerable grace that continuously extends to all — even at the risk of being misunderstood, exploited and openly defied. Fully knowing humanity’s capacity for evil, grace willingly enters into human vulnerability, communicating we all do matter, we all have inherent worth, we all are loved — always.
This eternal, unconditional love, expressed through grace, offers the deepest healing for our deepest hurts for all who are willing to trust in its vulnerable power.
As we start trusting this grace and the love that sustains it, we start changing. Healing begins and empowering grace flows through us. The sting from each hurt diminishes. Future hurts become less threatening. Present hurts are more readily endured. Grace changes us and our relationship with the world around us.
Being graced, we are empowered to start being grace ourselves, embodying grace in our own attitudes, actions and behaviors. We start seeing those who are hurt (including ourselves) with more empathy and compassion. We start recognizing that hurtful acts (large and small) are perpetrated by hurt people who need grace for the healing of their own hurt.
Courageously, persistently and imperfectly, but always nonviolently, we call out and confront personal and systemic hurtfulness while maintaining gracing love toward the hurtful.
Everybody hurts. Everybody needs grace. Grace is available for all. What if we started trusting grace, being grace and embodying grace to a world that surely needs it?
J. Claude Huguley has served as a hospital chaplain for more than 37 years in Nashville. He is the author of the new book Trusting Grace: The Journey from Fear to Love. He and his family are members of Immanuel Baptist Church in Nashville.