Proactive and reactive grace

Christians are called to forgive. I call it “reactive grace.” It’s “reactive” in the sense that we offer grace in response or reaction to someone doing something to hurt or offend us.
But grace also has a “proactive” dimension, one we may not be as aware of or concerned about.

The proactive side to grace is less about forgiveness and more about how we choose to think about. All people. All the time.

This proactive dimension to grace is connected to and helps inform grace’s reactive dimensions.

When someone does something that results in us feeling hurt or offended, the emotions we feel are the products of our interpretive narratives. As meaning making creatures we have to assign meaning to every word and action. We often do this without even realizing we’re doing it, but we’re doing it.

And the stories we tell produce very different emotional outcomes. If I tell myself my spouse forgot to wish me a happy birthday because she doesn’t care about me, that narrative will likely produce anger, sadness, or resentment. If, on the other hand, I tell myself she didn’t wish me a happy birthday because she’s just struggling to keep her head above water right now with everything going on in life that my birthday simply didn’t make it on the “emergency” list, I might still be a little sad but that sadness might also be tempered with compassion and understanding.

Proactive grace is choosing to tell yourself the most benevolent story about another person as you can. In other words, proactive grace is the choice to give the other person the benefit of the doubt regarding their motives, intentions, etc. Choosing to see another person in the best possible light is the most basic act of love. It is where love begins.
Now, there is a shadow side proactive grace, just as there is a shadow side to reactive grace. Just as you can forgive another person’s bad behavior only to suffer that same bad behavior again and again, always giving another person the benefit of the doubt can materialize as excusing bad behavior which can lead to abusive situations.

You keep telling yourself the other person probably didn’t mean, they’re just having a bad day, if the circumstances were different they probably would not have said or done what they did. But the same behaviors keep happening and you keep suffering.

Neither type of grace—reactive or proactive—ought to result in the party extending the grace feeling like they’re being walked on or taken advantage of. If that is happening, it probably isn’t grace. It’s probably avoidance.

And in my experience, that’s usually what happens. One party does the work of proactive grace by telling themselves the best possible story regarding the other person, but they don’t then take the time to address the behavior and verify the story.

Giving someone the benefit of doubt does not mean you avoid discussing the issue. It just means you chose in the moment to give the other person the benefit of the doubt.

You still need to verify if the story you told yourself was correct. I told myself my wife forgot to wish me a happy birthday because she’s stressed and busy. Is that true? What if I found out the entire day of my birthday she was relaxing by the pool? Well, I need to amend my story.

You can appreciate the importance of this step more when you look at it from the negative. Imagine I choose not to give another person the benefit of doubt and consequently I am filled with emotions like anger and bitterness. What if I’m wrong? What if the motives or intentions I assigned to the other person’s actions are not accurate? Then what I’m feeling isn’t accurate either. It’s accurate based on the story I told but if the story I told is wrong, my feelings aren’t justifiable. I’m holding another person accountable for something they never meant to do with the malice I assumed. Love obligates me to verify the story I told myself.

That is no less true when you tell a benevolent story of another person. To prevent proactive grace from becoming a mechanism whereby one person just gets abused that person must address the behavior and seek to verify if their benevolent story is correct. If they were incorrect, if the person’s motives were malicious, and especially if that behavior continues, grace does not require a harmed person to remain in an unhealthy situation.

Grace is both reactive and proactive. We are called to forgive people when they wrong us, but we are also called to think the best of people before they wrong us and even when they do. But grace does not stop there. Grace involves the search for and commitment to truth.