Here is a theory of revival — a theory about what is happening when this thing we refer to as “revival” happens. I won’t describe this as “my theory” of revival because it’s not unique to me and because it’s not the only theory I have about this.
I believe that one of our deepest needs is to be fully known and fully loved. The essential part of that is being fully loved, but that can’t happen without the other part — being fully known. We can’t George Santos our way into being fully loved, creating some facade or false persona that hides the parts of ourselves we know to be unlovely. That wouldn’t work because on some level we would know it didn’t count. It wouldn’t be me that was loved, but the false version of me I’d presented, and so the need to be fully loved would remain unmet. It only counts if we are fully loved as we actually are, in our entirety — unlovely bits and all.
Christianity teaches that we are both fully known and fully loved by God. Christianity is not unique in teaching this, and different strains of Christianity express this in different ways, with some emphasizing that God fully loves us despite fully knowing us, hammering on the point that we are utterly unworthy of such love. Some traditions emphasize the enormity of God’s grace while others emphasize the enormity of our need for such grace, but either way this notion of God’s abounding grace is at the core of what we Christians believe. And part of what we mean by this word “grace” is that we can be, and are, both fully known and fully loved by God.
This is something we Christians believe and avow and recite to ourselves. We affirm the propositional truth of this belief. If someone asks us if this is true we will answer “Yes.” We are as convinced of it as we are capable of being. But God’s love and God’s grace still, usually, seem like intangible abstractions.
We believe in grace, but we don’t always feel it. We don’t usually feel it.
And what I think is happening in those moments we describe as “revival” is that Christians who have long assented to the abstract idea of the existence of divine grace stumble into the unbearable realization that it’s actually true. They are, in that moment, encountering the possibility that despite every unlovely thing they know to be true about themselves, they are still fully known and fully loved. Amazing grace, etc.
It’s possible that this overwhelming acceptance of grace — of being fully known and fully loved by God — is purely delusion. It’s entirely possible that there is no God and no grace and no one to fully know or to fully love us, and that Christians in the throes of “revival” are merely caught up in a kind of wish-fulfillment fantasy, imagining themselves to be the recipients of a boundless love that does not, in reality, exist. In that case, what I’m describing here is not what people in a “revival” are actually experiencing, but merely what they imagine they’re experiencing, but either way the experience is, for them, the same.
And but so, that’s what I think “revival” refers to, a moment in which we encounter the possibility that we are both fully known and fully loved by God.
That moment may be only a moment or it may stretch on for hours or even days. And it doesn’t abruptly end or fade away completely, even after the initial overwhelming experience passes. But the key thing, I think, is that this moment is not itself the story, only the introduction to the story. The story involves what happens next.
The experience of revival — this encounter with the overwhelming reality of grace — leaves one in something like the state of the Roman slave the parable Jesus told in Matthew 18:
A king wished to settle accounts with his slaves. When he began the reckoning, one who owed him ten thousand talents was brought to him, and, as he could not pay, the king ordered him to be sold, together with his wife and children and all his possessions and payment to be made.
So the slave fell on his knees before him, saying, “Have patience with me, and I will pay you everything.”
And out of pity for him, the king released him and forgave him the debt.
The enormity of the grace shown to this hopelessly indebted man is what we encounter in this thing we refer to as “revival.” It is the grace that loves us entirely, despite knowing us entirely, erasing the debts we could never hope to pay and granting us the freedom we never expected to see.
If that were the whole story or the end of the story, we’d call it the Parable of the Forgiven-and-Beloved Servant but, alas, this story isn’t over yet. That first part is really just the set-up, the premise, for the main part of the story that follows. And that story is usually called the “Parable of the Unmerciful Servant,” because this is what happens next:
But that same slave, as he went out, came upon one of his fellow slaves who owed him a hundred denarii, and seizing him by the throat he said, “Pay what you owe.” Then his fellow slave fell down and pleaded with him, “Have patience with me, and I will pay you.” But he refused; then he went and threw him into prison until he would pay the debt.
It doesn’t go well for our previously fortunate main character here. By cutting others off from grace he cuts himself off from it as well. He dis-graces himself.
The story didn’t have to end like that. He might have forgiven others’ debts the way he’d experienced the forgiveness of his own. He might have turned into a giddly grateful, joyful figure like Zacchaeus or Ebenezer Scrooge at the end of their stories. That was an option. Both choices were available to this man as he emerged from his encounter with grace.
Anything is possible after such an encounter. But we don’t know what the story is, or what the story means, until we see what happens next.
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