Forgiveness: Closing Thoughts
Thanks for your thoughts about forgiveness last post. Here are a few additional ideas that impress me:
Martin Luther’s Attitude Adjustment
Forgiveness is not an occasional art, it is a permanent attitude.
I found this online attributed to ML. It calls to mind the Buddhist concept of compassion and the Christian concept of agape or universal love. It also places forgiveness in the larger context of overall spiritual development.
St. Paul and the Beatles: “All You Need Is Love”
Love… does not take offense. –from I Corinthians 13
There would be nothing to forgive if we didn’t react to others with bitterness and resentment when personally wronged. “But how could a person not react that way?” anyone might ask. That’s because living from beyond our egoism is often an unfamiliar idea. Although I think that every one of us has at least had intimations of it, “picking up our cross and following” – or walking the walk – is often emphasized much less than worshipping the person of Jesus Christ for having walked the walk. But the New Testament doesn’t present “Love one another and love God” as things that Jesus alone must do.
Forgiving Debt – and Letting your Accountant Go…
Forgive us our debts as we also forgive our debtors comes from the prayer, so familiar to Christians, that Jesus teaches his disciples in the New Testament.
I like the debt analogy for the impact on our inner lives of another’s wrongdoing. When a monetary debt is forgiven, it’s really forgiven – gone. If the creditor decides to let it go, then there’s nothing left. Not a cent.
One way that a creditor might forgive a debt would be to notice that the other person never owed him anything to begin with.
Certainly if people are owed anything by other people, it’s hard to tell. Children, the elderly and the disabled are routinely neglected and abused. Warfare creates mass refugees living and often dying in miserable conditions. Every day large numbers of people die from preventable illnesses and starvation. Innocent people languish in secret detention centers for years, sometimes committing suicide.
Where are the debtors of all these folks? What is the meaning of a “debt” that can’t be collected – of being “owed” when there’s no enforceable law requiring payment of debt?
Maybe you and I aren’t exceptions. Maybe we’re not “owed” anything any more than the millions of folks around the world who don’t get what they deserve. Maybe our indignation and resentment when it’s us who happen to be wronged are profoundly unrealistic.
Maybe we’re just lucky to be alive.
Martin Luther’s Attitude Adjustment
Forgiveness is not an occasional art, it is a permanent attitude.
I found this online attributed to ML. It calls to mind the Buddhist concept of compassion and the Christian concept of agape or universal love. It also places forgiveness in the larger context of overall spiritual development.
St. Paul and the Beatles: “All You Need Is Love”
Love… does not take offense. –from I Corinthians 13
There would be nothing to forgive if we didn’t react to others with bitterness and resentment when personally wronged. “But how could a person not react that way?” anyone might ask. That’s because living from beyond our egoism is often an unfamiliar idea. Although I think that every one of us has at least had intimations of it, “picking up our cross and following” – or walking the walk – is often emphasized much less than worshipping the person of Jesus Christ for having walked the walk. But the New Testament doesn’t present “Love one another and love God” as things that Jesus alone must do.
Forgiving Debt – and Letting your Accountant Go…
Forgive us our debts as we also forgive our debtors comes from the prayer, so familiar to Christians, that Jesus teaches his disciples in the New Testament.
I like the debt analogy for the impact on our inner lives of another’s wrongdoing. When a monetary debt is forgiven, it’s really forgiven – gone. If the creditor decides to let it go, then there’s nothing left. Not a cent.
One way that a creditor might forgive a debt would be to notice that the other person never owed him anything to begin with.
Certainly if people are owed anything by other people, it’s hard to tell. Children, the elderly and the disabled are routinely neglected and abused. Warfare creates mass refugees living and often dying in miserable conditions. Every day large numbers of people die from preventable illnesses and starvation. Innocent people languish in secret detention centers for years, sometimes committing suicide.
Where are the debtors of all these folks? What is the meaning of a “debt” that can’t be collected – of being “owed” when there’s no enforceable law requiring payment of debt?
Maybe you and I aren’t exceptions. Maybe we’re not “owed” anything any more than the millions of folks around the world who don’t get what they deserve. Maybe our indignation and resentment when it’s us who happen to be wronged are profoundly unrealistic.
Maybe we’re just lucky to be alive.
Posted by Paul at 11:24 PM Permalink
16 Comments:
So it has been often the preachers of the Christian doctrine of forgiveness who have been the hardest to forgive, and the stain has not been wiped clean till today.
So forgiveness has two sides. The forgiver may not yet be forgiven.
Having got those debts out into the open we may then speak of forgiving debt, that is recognizing that no one owes me anything. Well surely that is my private choice? If I have been abused all my life, cheated and thrown into the gutter, no one can tell me to forgive, because it's indeed not an occasional art, it's an art which may require a long apprenticeship or a large helping of Divine Grace?
Suddenly, I see a dark side to Christianity, which goes back all the way to Jesus---though even the most atheist of unbelievers usually take care not to criticize him personally. I refer to his preaching. He became a role-model for two thousand years of telling others how to be virtuous. Two thousand years of would-be spiritual leaders who have beheld the mote that is in their brother's eye, despite the beam that is in their own.
Perhaps I should not blame Jesus for the unintended consequences of his wandering ministry. But his followers deny they were unintended. They say his entire existence conformed to a Divine Plan.
In which case the Divine Architect has blown it again, as in the days of Noah, when he rubbed the eraser across most of the drawing-board. Floods, pestilences, rising gas prices . . .
Paul, forgive me (!) for grandstanding on your closing thoughts. You can even erase my comments. You never owed me this pulpit to begin with.
Blessings,
Lance
www.lancessoulsearching.com
A friend of mine used to complain bitterly about her coworkers, who she felt repeatedly insulted and belittled her. Listening to the stories all I could say was "it's not about you. It's the way they are accustomed to behaving."
It is far too easy to take things personally, and mostly (it seems to me) it's absolutely the wrong way to see it. And if not wrong, it is at the least, useless.
sh*t happens. get on with your life if you can.
you add the important detail I forgot/ignored. Be grateful.
Again, beautifully summed up Paul! A Sunday teaching all can appreciate.
As to holding Jesus personally responsible for the worst actions of the church over the centuries, it seems to me this would be problematic in a couple respects. First, the only account we have of Jesus’ life is theological. The narrative provided by the New Testament is a faith document, not historiography. We have no independent historical knowledge about what Jesus said, thought, taught, who he thought he was, what he was trying to do… So it’s hard to hold someone personally responsible if you don’t know what he personally thought, said or did.
Second, if we predicate our faith on accepting the New Testament’s theological understanding of Jesus’ life – so that we consider the theological and the factual/historical to largely coincide – then the idea that the Jesus depicted in the New Testament would have countenanced corruption, greed, excessive materialism and wealth, the oppression of the weak and poor, crusades and inquisitons, pedophilia – it seems to me that it doesn’t work. On the contrary, there’s plenty of New Testament material to indicate that Jesus would have opposed the church at its worst.
LANCE, thank you...
HAYDEN: But not a bad sort of redundancy… thanks!
Useless; exactly.
VISHESH: By "lucky to be alive" I meant relatively so, and was speaking to anyone with the resources and ability to read my post, engage in blogging, use a computer...
I think of realistic ideas and actions as those that work because they’re predicated on a reasonably clear apprehension of factors that lie beyond one’s own desires and fears. The whole world can see, for example, that the Bush administration’s ideas on Iraq were unrealistic.
Your feeling sometimes like a "puppet on a string" is an interesting analogy and sounds like it refers to an experience that might be hard to put into words.
Maybe the only way is absolute forgiveness and compassion. Understanding that the perpetrator did what they did because of trauma they experienced or some deficit in their own understanding. Working to repair those traumas, fill those holes with love and compassion seems more healing. For everyone.
Food for thought...
I enjoyed your comment and wrote back too!
I pray you don't blame Jesus -
He is an awesome Lord and Savior -
Here is a great book for you to read - I think it may open your eyes -
Rediscovering the Kindgom, Myles Dr. Myles Munroe
Jesus came to set up the church, not religions and demoninations -
But I think you are right
that love is the only thing you can always come back to as a universal thing that cuts through
all the other crap.
It also reminds me of the 'Alice in Wonderland' approach to life, ie the world is completely mad and there is no point in expecting it to be otherwise.
TICIA, thanks for stopping by, I'll take a look -
HAZZBUZZ: I think that we have exactly the rights and respect we give each other. While phrases like "natural right" or "God-given right" sound important and impressive, whether or not such rights are operative or in any way detectable always seems to end up depending on human behavior.
So personally, I've lost the sense that any sort of natural or divine law is violated when I'm treated unfairly, which helps.
LIARA: Me too - seems like the less that forgiveness is a case-by-case matter, the more that one has probably gotten to the heart of it.
From this and a number of other comments, it sounds like you believe that all matters of psychological and spiritual insight and development are choices that any person can make at any time. However, you'd need to explain how this broad generalization isn't an overgeneralization for this idea to connect with someone not already familiar with the details of your outlook.
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