There but for the grace of God go I

This phrase is generally attributed to John Bradford, from the 1500s, and the contorted nature of the phrase makes it hard to understand and appreciate this concept. But once I grasped it, I realised that it was at the heart of my faith.

It does need unpacking. The real meaning is that I can put myself in the same position as another unfortunate, and am only not there because of "the grace of God". That can mean quite a literal sense, that God has kept me from that situation, but it can also mean that there is nothing that I have done, or that I could do, to separate myself from them.

The point is that this means I am no different from them. The fact that they have suffered or encountered some misfortune is nothing to do with them, the reality is that it could have been you in that situation, but wasn't. That is not because you are any better than they are, it is good fortune, or Gods grace that meant that you avoided it.

So criticising or condemning them is criticising or condemning yourself.

When someone goes mad with a gun in a school, and we ask "surely, someone who does that must be evil/insane/divine judgement" maybe we should just say that we have no idea why it happened, but accept that it could be me, if something just triggered wrongly. That is not to condone the actions, just to accept that the people who do this are not, at heart, different to us.

When someone is convicted of pedophilia, it is easy to say "they must be twisted, broken, evil, demonic" or whatever. If we rather say that it could be us, if we had not restrained ourselves, or we had been abused as a child, or whatever. There is nothing that makes these people "different" from us. That should give us a chill, and a new perspective on them,

When we see someone who is homeless, we can easily suggest that they have almost certainly used drink or drugs. That may be true. It is very likely that they have mental health issues, because a large proportion of them do. Drink or drugs may be a part of their problem, but they are rarely the whole story. But that could be me. It has been said that we are only 3 paychecks from poverty so we are not that far apart.

When we see people we do not easily relate to, people we are liable to reject, we need to consider this perspective, we need to say "there, but for the grace of God, go I". Not that they are right - it doesn't mean that. It means that they are just like us. It means that we could be just like them.

If God hates them, then God hates us. If we hate them, then we hate ourselves. If we accept them, acknowledge them, seek to help them, then we can accept and understand ourselves better.