The thin veneer of easy-grace-nicey-Americana assumes grace and generosity are natural, easy, and flow abundantly from our hearts with the tiniest prick of dainty admonition. It is the surfacy, plastic, unreal people that we imagine ourselves to be in our collective consciousness for which this is true. Real people are frightened, insecure, and touchy a lot of the time exerting real effort in public trying to both simultaneously “be nice” and “authentic”. Posting comments online, especially anonymously too often reveals both the truth about fearful ourselves and our plastic selves.
Extending grace to the ungracious, loving your enemy, speaking the truth, are all things that require deep maturity, strength and an existential foundation that is uncommon and costly.
We have blithely confused love with “wanting to be loved”. Paul’s 1 Corinthians 13 is a crippling manifesto that exposes the fraud of the church and the rebellion of the world. The church is always both ground zero for grace and the scandal that it is.
Leadingchurch.com 
Thanks for sharing my thoughts and adding your own excellent insights, Paul.
Great article, KSP. The comments section (once again) left me sad and sighing. So. Much. Grace. Is. Needed. thank you Paul for posting the link and your comments.
Thank you! Ah, commenters …. Next post: Love the commenters. They need grace, too. (Hahaha!)