Definitions: Some Thoughts on Forgiveness

One of the bright spots that has emerged through the darkness of Sunday's tragic shootings has been the declarations of forgiveness from the family and friends of the victims. Christians have taken notice and, quite significantly, so has the press.* As more than one person has said to me, we ought to be grateful for the positive example of people living out their faith in a forgiving God.

Others, however, have not been quite so sure. In a recent conversation, someone had the courage to suggest what many of us may have thought--that perhaps it was too soon to offer forgiveness, that maybe doing so trivialized what was, by all accounts, a very terrible wrong, or that doing so may have rushed a grief process in which anger would have played an important role.

These are all legitimate concerns--but I think they may stem from a misunderstanding of forgiveness. So a few thoughts today on what forgiveness does--and does not--involve.**

• Forgiveness is not a one time event. The individuals affected by Sunday's shootings declared their forgiveness almost immediately. However, it will take time for them to grow into this declaration. As I mentioned in a sermon on this topic last month, they will have to forgive--to make moves against their anger--again, and again, and again (seventy times seven!). I suspect that for some of these people (perhaps all of them) it will take years for forgiveness to be complete. As Smedes says, "Forgiving is a journey; the deeper the wound, the longer the journey."
• Forgiveness does not mean condoning or excusing a wrong. In fact, forgiveness means the opposite. To forgive someone of a wrong, you must acknowledge that there is actually a wrong to be forgiving. To forgive, you must assign blame. When we forgive, we are not saying that the intolerable has suddenly become tolerable. Rather, we are saying that the only way we can deal with an intolerable wrong is through the miracle of forgiveness.
• Forgiveness does not mean minimizing a wrong. Saying "I forgive you" is not the same thing as saying, "That's okay--it was no big deal." If it's not a big deal, it doesn't need to be forgiven. As Lewis Smedes has written somewhere, "We need to sort out our hurts and learn the difference between those that call for the miracle of forgiveness and those that can be borne with a sense of humor. If we lump all our hurts together and prescribe forgiveness for all of them, we turn the art of forgiving into something cheap and commonplace. Like good wine, forgiving must be preserved for the right occasion.”
• Forgiveness is not the same thing as reconciliation. Reconciliation may be seen as the ultimate (though not always attainable) goal of forgiveness. However, forgiveness is only one step in achieving this goal. For full reconciliation to occur, the person who committed the wrong must also make a move--must "repent" in the biblical sense of the word (express both sorrow AND a commitment to change). If the person who committed the wrong has not changed, it would be unwise--even foolish--to enter back into relationship with them. In short, it takes one person to forgive but two to achieve full reconciliation.
• Forgiveness does not mean there are no consequences. God (and good parents, I think) may forgive the sins of His children but deem it important for them to live with the consequences of their poor choices. Sometimes when we forgive people, it is also necessary that they live with painful consequences. This can be an important a way of protecting ourselves from future hurts.
• Forgiveness does not mean forgetting: Forgiveness has more to do with the way we remember than with removing our memories. When we forgive, we learn to remember without anger or a desire for revenge. Furthermore, in a sin filled world, remembering the wrong we've forgiven can be important because of the need to protect ourselves from future hurts.
• Forgiveness is not something we only do for other people: Scripture makes clear that forgiveness is one of the ways we show Christ-like love for other people. However, it's also a way we love ourselves. When we refuse to forgive, we are held captive by our own anger and bitterness--it eats away at us and threatens to consume us. As Smedes writes: "When we forgive, we set a prisoner free and discover that the prisoner we set free is us."

*It says something about the nature of forgiveness that it is considered newsworthy event. **Many of these come from Lewis Smedes' excellent book, The Art of Forgiving.

Endings and Beginnings

This week I'll be talking about our longing for our "home" in the New Creation (Isaiah 11)--a home that will be "set in order" for us when Jesus comes again. One of the thoughts I had kicking around in the back of my mind while I wrote the sermon came from something Eugene Peterson once wrote about atheists (and I may have commented on here before).

Peterson observes that many atheists are what he refers to as "Atheists of Compassion." They look around the world, see all the war and cancer and genocide and hypocrisy and other monstrosities that human beings are capable of, and conclude that there is no god worth believing in who would allow so much evil.* So their atheism, their refusal to believe in god/God, stems from their compassion for this world.

Peterson notes that in some ways, these atheists are our allies. As Christians, we too ought to be appalled by the brokenness of the creation. Our hearts ought to be just as broken (or more so) than that of a good atheists. So we agree there. We can call ourselves allies in our compassion for those who suffer in this world.

Of course, there are differences too. Namely, hope. We believe that there is a way "out" of this madness--a solution that will not come from the perfect political system or better policies or improved technology or a little more information or right thinking. We believe that one day, God himself will come again in the person of Jesus Christ and he will set all this right again. We believe that, because of his love for this world, God will not toss it in his divine dumpster, but instead will lovingly restore it to (and even beyond) it's prefallen glory. That's one of the reasons we long for his coming--because we love this world enough to want him to redeem it.

Here is how Lewis Smedes describes what will happen when Jesus comes again:

"C.S. Lewis said somewhere that when God comes back to earth it will be like having the author of a play called on stage after the final performance; the play is over, he takes his bow, the players leave, and the theater is swallowed in darkness. I do not much care for the metaphor. I believe that the Author of the play will appear on stage not after the final performance, but before the first curtain rises. The players have been turning rehearsals into nasty fights about who gets the best lines and the prime spot on the billboard; [they've been wrecking the set]; the play has become a disaster, doomed before it gets off the ground. it is then that the Author shows up, his original script in hand and with the power to change self-seeking egos into self-giving artists. The theater is bathed in gentle light, the curtain rises, and the play begins a triumphant and endless run. Not the ending, but the new beginning--this is what I hope for." (172).

What we long for when Christ comes again is not the day he will whisk us away from this mess, then destroy the world and toss it on the cosmic scrap heat. No, we long for the time when he will renew all things. We long for God's restoration of the world he loves (and we ought to love). We long for the time when we can experience the joys and comforts of home.

It's something to think about in the midst of our advent longing. Does our longing for his coming stem out of a disregard--even a disdain--for this world that God made? Or does it grow out of our love and compassion for it? Do we look at all the brokenness around us and just want to "fly away" and "be done with it all"? Or do we look at all the brokenness around us and hope that Jesus will come again and finally fix it--make it the way it's supposed to be? Do we sit around with our heads in the sand and wait for the sweet by-and-by? Or do we join Him in his big redemption project, even while we wait?

*This is the "problem of evil" argument. It's compelling, but it raises its own questions. For example: How do you measure evil, and at what point do you say there's "too much" evil. Or more significantly, what do you do with all the good in the world? (I call this the "problem of good"). Who gets the credit for that?

More on Matthew 18

"Forgive us our debts, as we've forgiven our debtors." Most of us have probably squirmed at that little phrase in the Lord's prayer. We squirm because we all struggle to forgive from time to time--and a simple reading of that phrase makes it sound like God's forgiveness is contingent upon our own; it sounds as though we can somehow loose our place in his household if we fail to do what we're told.

The Lord's Prayer isn't the only nugget of scripture that might give you that impression. You might think that after reading the parable that we studied together on Sunday morning, too (Matt 18:21-35). This poor schmuck is forgiven a huge debt, fails to pass it on, and apparently loses his forgiven status. You might read this parable and conclude that God's forgiveness is fickle.

It's troubling and we ought not try to explain it all away too quickly. But some comments I read this weekend in NT Wright's book, Evil and the Justice of God, helped me make sense of it (without making Jesus' teaching easier than it really is). Here's what he says about Jesus' command to forgive in this passage:

"Jesus is not giving a kind of arbitrary, abstract commandment and then saying that if you fail to meet the test God will not forgive you. He isn’t setting the moral bar at an impossible height and then warning that God will be everlastingly cross if we don’t manage to jump it. He is drawing attention to a fact about the moral universe and human nature. He is telling us, in effect, that the faculty we have for receiving forgiveness and the faculty we have for granting forgiveness are one and the same thing. If we open the one we shall open the other. If we slam the door on the one, we slam the door on the other. God is not being arbitrary. If you are the sort of person who will accuse a neighbor over every small thing and keep him or her under your anger until each item has been dealt with (perhaps by your gaining revenge), then you are also the sort of person who will be incapable of opening your heart to receive God’s generous forgiveness. Indeed, you will probably not admit that you need it in the first place.” (158)

More on Judgment

Just to prove that I wasn't making up what I said in my last post about judgment, here's a snippet from N.T. Wrights book, Evil and the Justice of God, which I finished up this weekend.

“God’s justice is not simply a blind dispensing of rewards for the virtuous and punishments for the wicked, though plenty of those are to be found on the way. God’s justice is saving, healing, restorative justice, because the God to whom justice belongs is the Creator God who has yet to complete his original plan for creation and whose justice is designed not simply to restore balance to a world out of kilter but to bring to glorious completion and fruition the creation, teeming with life and possibility, that he made in the first place.” (64)

I told you so :-).

Jumpstarting Judgment

A Christian summer camp counselor I knew once reported having one of the most successful weeks ever. He proclaimed, with understandable delight, that each of the twelve boys in his cabin had given their lives to Jesus. They wanted to be Christians. They wanted to live for and with Jesus from that point on and into all eternity.

The rest of the camp staff was ecstatic--at first. But that didn't last long. Because the next week, camp supervisors were inundated with phone calls from concerned parents. Apparently, many of the young boys who had been in that converted cabin were having nightmares that were directly related to their week at camp. They would toss and turn as they dreamt--not about the boogie man or some other camp fire legend they had learned while chomping on s'mores--but about the torments of hell and the torture that would be inflicted upon them for all eternity if they didn't get their acts together and give their lives to Jesus.

As the phone calls rolled in and the story was pieced together, the mass conversion of Cabin 14 suddenly was a lot less exciting and a lot more disturbing.

I doubt that any of us would feel comfortable using the evangelism tactic of that camp counselor--scaring people out of hell and into heaven. But what's troubling about the text we looked at last week (Matt 5:21ff) is that Jesus appears to do that very thing. He lets his listeners know--in no uncertain terms--that if they don't clean up their lives, their future is not very bright. So what are we to make of this?

Well, there are several thoughts we ought to keep in mind. First: there is the obvious difference between the speaker: between Jesus (perfect) and us (not-so-much). Second, there is a distinction that must be made between the audiences: Jesus speaks to people (adults) who are presumed to be a part of the community of faith while in evangelism we (or at least that camp counselor) are talking to those who are presumed to be outside of the community of faith. That distinction is not insignificant.

That being said, something else that those of us in the community of faith might consider is the nature of judgement. We tend to think of judgment (I think) largely in negative terms. We think about a finger wagging God ready to give us what we deserve and eager to crush us with his almighty thumb. But that's not quite the full picture of biblical judgment.

When God "judges" his people in scripture, it is not merely retributive. It is also restorative. God not only punishes, he also disciplines. Consider, for example, the exile of the people Israel. The point is not merely to send them away from the promise land to suffer in the labor camps of the Babylonians. The point is to purify them--to burn away all the garbage that stands in between them, God, and their neighbors. The point is to help them live the kind of "shalom-filled" lives of wholeness for which they were created. Or as Thomas Long puts it in his commentary on Matthew. 5:

"In the biblical sense, judgment is God’s exercise of good judgment, repairing all that is harmful to humanity. Judgment is God’s repairing of the broken creation. Judgement is God’s scalpel carefully removing the malignant tissue that threatens life. Judgment is God’s burning away of all that is cruel and spirit killing in order that we may breath the air of compassion. Judgment is good news; it is God setting things right.”

From this perspective, we can think of Christ's call to be reconciled with our neighbors as a way to "jump start judgment." Because when we're seeking to be reconciled with a brother or sister--when we confess to the ways we've hurt people, when we try to restore our relationship with them, when we do our best to remove the garbage that separates us from God and each other--we're not waiting for Jesus to return to set things right and cut away the "malignant tissue that threatens life", but we're trying to do it ourselves. And in that way, we're "jump starting judgment."

So just a reminder (or if you weren't in church Sunday morning, a challenge): Jesus calls us to do our best to set right the wrongs that linger between us. And he calls us to do it now. Don't wait for God to do it. Don't wait for Kingdom come to do it. But through the power of the Spirit, take the initiative and do it today.

Food, Farms, and Faith

My friend Becky grew up on a large farm in central Iowa but has since moved to the booming metropolis of Grand Rapids, MI. Some time ago, she was reflecting on the transition. There are things she likes about living in the city, she said. But even so, there are times she feels, well, "disoriented."

I didn't quite understand what she meant at first. But I hazarded a few guesses.

"Hmmm. Disoriented." I said, "Like when you're downtown and the streets aren't straight? Or in a suburb and keeping hitting cul-de-sacs?"

"No..."

"Okay, like when the sun doesn't shine for four months and you no longer know if its day or night?"

"No..."

Becky then went on to explain that she felt "disoriented" because she had lost her connection with the earth and therefore had no way of keeping time. Back on the farm, she and her family lived into the regular rhythms of the land. Planting. Irrigating. Harvesting. Resting. Their lives changed with the seasons.

But back in Michigan, Becky went to her office every day. She sat in a windowless, climate controlled room (sweaters in the summer, short sleeves in the winter!). It now made little difference to her and her livelihood if there were droughts or floods. She could still go to Meijers--even in February--and buy her tomatoes, asparagus, and whatever else she wanted to eat.

Becky's disorientation is something that all of us who live in the city face--even if we were never blessed to be "oriented" by farm life. Because all of us are separated from the earth. I read recently that the average meal in America travels 1,200 miles before ending up on our plates. A friend of mine (who's much better with these things than I am) once calculated that to get a single strawberry from California to the produce isle in a Northwest Iowa grocery store takes nearly 600 calories of energy (a huge net loss!). I've also been told that the tuna that is served in Manhattan's finest Sushi restaurants is caught on the Atlantic coast of the US, shipped to the fish markets in Tokyo, sold, and then shipped back to New York. In other words, that tuna goes around the world before it ends up on the plate of the American consumer (and this is not all that unusual in our food system).

There are, of course, tremendous ecological implications to all of this. Most obviously--there are all the extra costs involved (both in terms of finances and natural resources), and the generally unsustainable nature of this system. But there is a more subtle danger too. If we are separated from the means of production--separated from the land--and have no idea how our food is grown (or raised), then we will have little interest in the way the land is used (or the animals are treated). This alone should give us pause. (By the way, Wendell Berry is excellent on this point.)

But we should also consider what all these degrees of separation between us and the land do to our relationship with our Creator. If we spend our days in climate controlled offices, cooped up in our cars or even on the city bus, if depend solely on King Soopers to provide us with our food (Tomatoes in February!)--then not only will we be separated from the land, we will also be separated from the One who made and upholds the land.

This is a point that was brought home to me by Rob Bell recently. Bell argues that there are many people who struggle with needless doubts and faith crises. They complain that God seems too far away, that he is distant. But it's no wonder, says Bell. When we don't take time to notice God's handiwork, when we no longer need to pray to and depend upon him for daily bread, when he becomes a peripheral consideration in the meeting of our daily needs--then undoubtedly, he will seem a long ways away. But really, says Bell, it's not God who is a long way from us. It's we who are a long way from Him.

Where we get our food--our relationship with the land--can drastically affect our faith. If we are cut off from the creation, we will (almost) certainly face some spiritual "disorientation."

So what's the upshot of all this? Well, I'm suggesting that we all do what we can to get connected--with the Creation and the Creator. Start a garden next spring. Try to eat a locally grown meal. Walk instead of driving. Get connected with the creation. And the Creator.

If want to read more on the topic, I'd suggest the writings of Wendell Berry (particularly his "Jayber Crow" Novels, but also his essays, if you're ambitious), Kathleen Norris ("Dakota" is a great read).

Excuses

Dear Gentle Reader,
Apologies for the blogging hiatus. I anticipate that my return will coincide with that of my laptop from Dell (hopefully later this week).
Joel.