Forgiveness @ MindSay

           

            The Westboro Baptist Church.  I don’t know what motivates these people.  It seems the too-simple answer would be “hate.”  Would hate alone cause them to purposefully put themselves out in the public square to be ridiculed over such an anti-Christian position?  Being hated, ridiculed, demeaned or persecuted because one holds to the truth about Jesus is one thing.  But for hate?  Even those who don’t care about God know this is wrong. 

 

            The Christian message—the message of Jesus—is love for everyone, regardless of their condition, no matter how heinous the sin.  Christians aren’t loved more by God than those who aren’t Christians.  The only difference between a follower of Jesus and one who isn’t, is that the follower of Jesus has received forgiveness from God and, because of that forgiveness, has given his or her life to Him, this wonderful Being who loves unconditionally.  It is an amazing relief to be forgiven.  It’s an amazing thing, because of that forgiveness, to be able to know Him.  There is no greater knowledge, no greater privilege, on this earth.      

 

Cutting is a frequent subject in my community college English classes. In one class of fifteen, six students, two of them young men, wrote about their cutting and depression. When one permitted me to copy and distribute her paper and read it aloud in her class, five others followed suit. We discussed depression, unhappiness, self-medication, alcohol and drugs, wanting to die. All six used or had used marijuana to treat depression and unhappiness. They smoked every day. In pencil I make copious marks on student papers, correcting spelling, punctuation, and format, suggesting changes in syntax and diction, asking questions, and offering comments. There is no penalty for so-called errors in usage or mechanics; students merely have to integrate improvements and resubmit. All my corrections are done silently and privately between the student and me through my marks and comments on their papers; there is no “picking apart” of their essays, no public criticism in class of their writing. Class discussion is about the issues or the themes of their writing only. The greater and deeper the intellectual inquiry and engagement, the more everything else in their writing improves along with it. Students respond wonderfully to this approach. They yearn to be heard, to share, to find solidarity with others; they love to tell their stories, express their pain, loneliness, unhappiness, and struggle. They love the openness, honesty, of these classes. Though not explicit, the process is generally Buddhist (the Four Truths and the Eightfold Path) and AA (the Twelve Steps)—give up, be honest and brave, tell the truth, forgive, make art. No student is compelled to disclose; confidentiality is respected if requested. But honesty and courage are contagious. It all gets very deep, very real, in a hurry. I have to be vigilant, caring, alert always. Over forty years there have so far been no student tragedies among my students as a result. Not all of us have relinquished our loneliness, courage, honesty, conversation, and compassionate listening to licensed experts and institutional review boards. We warily trust each other, confess, apologize, forgive, and only rarely consult the therapists, deans, counselors of special needs, the doctors, or the lawyers. We allow ourselves to use colloquial English, “bad” grammar, and to be sloppy, trite, and self-indulgent. We cry and laugh and love and loaf and live and ask no one’s permission. Then we work in concert to try to shape this raw material into literature and art. We try to identify the truths of our own life experience, to explore the meanings of these truths, and to express these truths in writing so others understand.

Last month a woman by the name of Eva Mozes Kor came and spoke at a school.
I attended out of curiosity because she was a Holocaust survivor.
Turns out she was one of the survivors of Doctor Josef Mengele's experiments on twins in World War Two. (For those of you who have absolutely NO concept of history, the Holocaust happened during World War Two (WWII). If you don't know what the holocaust was go read your history books and look for the 1940s. Wikipedia is not a resource. Go get off your chair and get an encyclopedia if you don't have a history book. Failing that go to the Online Encyclopedia Britannica.)
She forgave the Nazis even though they did all sorts of nasty things to her.
She is Jewish and has been rejected by some of her own people for forgiving the Nazis.
I think if this woman could bring herself to forgive her worst enemy, shouldn't the rest of us be able to at least forgive the most petty of things?

To get more of her story go to her museum website here. 

            I said good-bye on the phone to April on Sunday morning.  It wasn’t all sad—she said she’ll be returning in a couple of months.  She mentioned that she might even be able to fly up and visit us then.

 

            We had a good, long talk, and in the conversation, I told her briefly what I was going to share at our little meeting that morning.  It was about the first covenant that God made with Abraham and its relationship to what Jesus did at the Last Supper.

 

            It’s a bit of a weird story there in Genesis 15.  But it helps to know that the Lord used a formula for covenants that was in practice at that time, in that culture, when He made His promise to Abraham.  The Lord had told Abraham that he would possess the land in which he was standing.  When he asked, “How am I to know that I’ll possess it?” the Lord had an interesting answer, as He so often does.

 

            Actually, He didn’t answer, really, at all—at least it wasn’t an reply in any conventional sense.  Instead of a direct answer, He told Abraham to set out a sacrifice.  Cut some animals in pieces and make two rows.  This is what men did in that time to make a covenant with each other.  They would then walk between the pieces, as if to say, “This is serious.  May this happen to me if I don’t keep my end of this covenant.”

 

            What kind of answer was this?  We’ll find out in a minute.

 

            Abraham did what God told him to do.  However, as we read how the covenant was enacted, we discover a very significant fact: only God walked between the pieces of the sacrifice—Abraham was simply an observer.  By walking through the sacrifice alone, the Lord was telling Abraham, “You and your offspring will not be able to keep your side of this agreement—only I am able.”

 

            God’s answer to Abraham’s question, “How am I to know that I’ll possess this land?” was, “I will keep My promise.”  That was Abraham’s answer.  Abraham wouldn’t be able to keep his side of the covenant and neither were his offspring—except one, centuries later: Jesus.

 

            What lesson did we take from this on Sunday morning?  Well, since this was our time to celebrate communion, we learned that the same truth still holds.  We are not—will never be—able to keep our side of this new covenant that God has made with us.  We will fail.  But God will not fail.  He has kept His promise to Abraham for millennia and will keep His promises to us.  Because we are broken, we find that we are unable to keep our end of this covenant relationship—only He can.  And that is how we, who are unholy, are made holy and righteous—through Jesus’ wonderful sacrifice and promise to always forgive us and never let us go.  

 

            I was a good Sunday.

 

           

Most of us have seen that bumper sticker.  It isn't that the saying isn't true.  It is, as far as it goes.  But if the Bible's N.T. says anything, it surely says that we should be like Christ. Walk as He walked; meaning live as He lived.  Does the sentiment stated above just serve the purpose of letting us off the hook?  Or should we be learning to be Christlike?  And if so, what's the plan for doing it?

Tell me what you think, if you will.