Ch
44 Season Break
Don't
you hate it when your favourite TV serials stop for a break between
seasons. But of course they can't film them as fast as they are
shown, so breaks are necessary. So too with this story, there has
been a 'season break' but for a quite different reason.
In
order to make sure I have my facts straight for the next part of the
story I have to delve back into the documents I have kept filed away
all these years. I have simply found this prospect too painful to
face up till now. But it must be done, so I expect posts to resume
shortly.
In
the meantime I want to say some things I believe are really important
about forgiveness.
First:
in this world bad things do happen to good people.
This
was famously summarised in the motto : “shit happens”.
Nevertheless we want to blame someone when it does. If we fail to
find an obvious culprit we often fall to blaming ourselves or God.
Hence there is a common line in good fiction where someone is urged
to forgive themselves. This is excellent advice. It also illustrates
one of the (many) tremendous kindnesses of God. The guilt the person
is racked by is generally misplaced – that is to say if we knew all
the facts we would not judge them “guilty”. Yet self-forgiveness
here brings healing. I look on this as God rewarding the act of
forgiving even when there was actually nothing to forgive.
Of
course sometimes it is not ourselves but some other person we
mistakenly blame. Here too God seems to me to reward the act of
forgiveness of that person with healing even though there was in his
eyes either little or nothing to forgive.
Blaming
God? Getting angry with God is, I believe, often a
healthy sign. All parents know occasions when a child turns hurt or
frustration into an angry attack on a parent. The normal human
response is to see through the anger to the pain and take our child
in our arms to comfort them. How much more will our Heavenly Father
understand us, his children! However maintaining that anger and
letting it become a settled accusation we level against God is of
course quite another matter and a sin that may destroy us.
Secondly
in this world there is human evil.
This
is a more difficult, but I believe still soluble problem.
On
one hand we are
all sinners.
From
thoughtless or simply inconsiderate unkindnesses to calculated mean
or spiteful words and deeds we are all sinners. For us Christians,
we have entered a new world – a realm of the grace and favour of
God. We humbly accept that “while we were yet
sinners Christ died for us”. We have the dawning of a
bitter-sweet realisation of God's implacable hatred of sin but love
for us sinners. We have the Holy Spirit living in our innermost
being. Under the Spirit's tutelage we are learning to fight sin in
ourselves and to long for heaven where there will be no sin or any
kind of evil.
But
we are a work in progress. We understand only too well how our
continued relationship with God depends on His continual forgiveness
of our continual sins, failings and deliberate disobediences. On the
flip side we know our continued relationship with God depends on our
continual repentance of these thoughts words and deeds and our
turning back to him and his ways. But we also know that even this
repentance is a response to the firmness and discipline of God and
when we look back at times when we have stubbornly disobeyed God we
see so plainly how it was his amazing kindness patience and
perseverance that drew us back.
Once
we have experienced this new realm we can see two things: First in
any human relationships this side of heaven there are going to be
both real and imagined slights, hurts grievances and so on which will
poison that relationship unless they can be dealt with. Secondly we
not only know how God restored us to relationship with himself by
dealing with our sins, but we have experienced the liberation of his
forgiveness and the power of his love.
So
in our human relationships we have both the knowledge and
more importantly the power to deal with the things that
would poison them. We can have relationships where there is
forgiveness and redemption.
This
theme runs like a flouro thread through the scriptures and every time
we say the Lord's Prayer we pray “Forgive us
our sins as we forgive those who sin against us”.
It
remains a big problem that there are so many people who say they are
Christians and yet have their lives dominated, and often what should
be close relationships destroyed by their refusal to forgive. It is
also a problem that preachers do not give this anything like the
stress Jesus gave it. Jesus went so far as to say that such people
would not get into heaven! This makes it a very pressing problem.
But
on the other hand there is a deep end to the pool of human sin.
We
all know only too well that there is no depth of “unimaginable evil”
that somewhere sometime someone has not only imagined but done.
As
I wrote in my posts on morals, to react with anger against evil is
not only right but essential if one is not to be evil
oneself. Aristotle said it in in the fourth century BC. The Bible
said it many centuries before that. The Bible is also really strong
on the punishing of evil doers. Even to injunctions like “Do
not let your eye pity nor your hand spare (the evildoer)” to
the ancient Israelites and in Romans the observation “It
is not for nothing the one in authority bears the sword, he is God's
agent in punishing evil.”
God
has moral character. He has revealed enough of this character in the
Bible that we can be certain about many aspects of it. “I
the Lord love Justice, I hate robbery and wrong” and “But
those who do violence the Lord hates with a passion.” are
not even the tip of the iceberg. My point is just the we do
know plenty about God's moral character and his hatred of
evil. We can say for certain that there exist some
occasions where humans are required to exemplify God's hatred of evil
by punishing evil doers.
There
is a simple solution to this apparent paradox of Forgiveness Vs Punishment
Individual
humans have to forgive as Christ forgave them: but God is free to
pardon or condemn. Human authorities should see themselves as God's
agents and administer justice, punishing evil and rewarding good.
So
for individuals forgiveness in the face of evil means nothing like
denying or minimising the evil of what was done to them. It is
handing over their “right” to vengeance to the proper authority.
God
is the ultimate authority:
Revelation
says “Vengeance is mine says the Lord: I
will repay”. As Christians “ransomed, healed , restored,
forgiven” we above all must willingly hand over to God every sin
against us which cries out for vengeance. At the judgement, with our
own sins paid for, we should feel equally vindicated whether the evil
done us is forgiven by the blood of Jesus, or by the evil doer being
cast into hell.
Here
are also human authorities:
We
benefit greatly from living in a society under the rule of law. The
law does allow individuals to sue others for recompense in some
instances (“civil” cases). But in a society under the rule of
law, for everything we call “criminal” individuals must hand over
their “rights” of vengeance to the proper authorities. We don't
allow people “to take the law into their own hands”. In this
instance “forgiveness” is simply accepting that this is as it
should be and emotionally giving over the punishment of the wrongdoer
to the authorities.
As
to the authorities, one theme exploited by writers is the innate
sense of betrayal when the authorities fail to punish evil. Think
about the plot lines in popular TV cop shows! The Bible also comes
down really hard on judges who do not punish evil: “Punishing
the innocent and acquitting the guilty: the Lord hates them both”
So “forgiveness” does not apply to judges, juries, prosecutors
and police in their civic duties! They are there to administer
justice and punish crime – so help them God!
