Grace seems to be a scary topic for most churches and religious people. Why is it so scary? I believe it is largely due to the fact that they really do not understand God's love - and grace and love are tied together inseparably. You cannot have love without grace and you can't have grace without love - at least not God's kind of love and grace. And God's love and grace, being inseparable, are both unconditional. People have a hard time with unconditional love. I guess it would be pretty safe to say that we, as a whole, typically have a hard time with "unconditional" anything.
We tend to put the same limitations on God that we ourselves think we have. Because we may find it hard to love unconditionally - we think God is incapable of it as well. We try to make God in our own image. It's somewhat funny and also very sad that we do this. I have seen so many people try to justify themselves by saying that God thinks the same thing or acts the same way when in fact, it really shows that they do not know God as well as they think they do. They will even try to use "sacred" texts such as those found in the ever popular "Holy Bible". But what they do not realize is that when, in fact, these "sacred" texts put any kind of limit on God's love and grace - it is precisely because the writer of that text had a much too limited view of God him or herself. But that would be blasphemous, wouldn't it, to say that these "sacred" texts present us with a possibly skewed view of God? Well, just ask Jesus.
