Minutes of Meetings with God
and with Myself

<Click here for another "Minute">

Hellish Encounters ...

Several clergy colleagues and I were doing our best to avoid an evening business session of the Detroit Annual Conference. We sat around a table, under a tree, in front of the auditorium at Adrian College, and we talked. The conversation around the table took a surprising turn. We discovered that we all had particularly hurtful, distressing and hellish encounters with the same person. The encounters were all very different in their partic-ulars, but they all resulted in vocational crises, major personal reassessments, and disruptive life readjustments for each one of us.

The conversation then turned to "life after the upheaval" caused by the encounter. In particular, the subject came around to forgiving that person and getting on with our lives.

I voiced my serious difficulty with forgiving what the person had done, not only to me, but to others that I cared about. Generally, I think I can fairly easily forgive someone who I feel has wronged me. It is more difficult for me to forgive someone who has hurt those I love and respect. Thankfully, there have been a only a few people that it has been just plain hard for me to forgive. And, that person was one of them.

One of the wise and very experienced of my clergy colleagues around the table (one who had been very badly used by the person who was the topic of discussion) observed: "Mike, you really don't want this person to have that much control of your life! This person doesn't deserve to have that much influence on you!" My colleague knew that as long as I was angry and unforgiving toward that person, they (not me and not God) controlled the quality of my life. That colleague's observation has been the occasion for quite a bit of thought on my part over that last few days.

Love, mercy and forgiveness are the core qualities of Christian life. Jesus taught forgiveness is vital to the relationship between God and human-kind, as well as to the relationships between us, human beings. Jesus clearly believed that God would not forgive us if we could not forgive each other. Jesus said, "And when you stand praying, if you hold anything against anyone, forgive him, so that your Father in heaven may forgive you your sins." (Mark 11:25) The prayer Jesus taught us to pray includes the petition: "Forgive us our sins, for we also forgive everyone who sins against us." (Luke 11:4)

Sadly, especially we moderns have a particularly shallow and unrealistic view of what it means to forgive. We tend to reduce "forgiveness" to "making nice," to "getting along," to "understanding the situation" or to denying that any real hurt or wrong occurred. We pretend that "it's all right." And it isn't. Forgiving then becomes an exercise in either neuroses or dishonesty or both.

Real forgiveness (the kind that God does and wants us to do) has nothing neurotic or dishonest about it. Forgiveness recognizes sin for what it is: it is the failure to "hit the target" of the high calling of God in the whole of how we live. When we miss the target, most often we hit something or someone else. We damage and, sometimes, destroy things, creatures, or people and their health, hopes, dreams and lives.

Forgiveness recognizes the damage and says "we will clean up this mess from the past and not allow it to taint either the present or the future." The Greek word translated "forgive" literally means "to send away or to cancel."

Jesus said, "So watch yourselves. "If your brother sins, rebuke him [in the sense of telling him "this is the way it is and this is the way you are"], and if he repents, forgive him. If he sins against you seven times in a day, and seven times comes back to you and says, 'I repent,' forgive him." (Luke 17:3-4)

It is important to note that this is to be done with the utmost humility. Jesus also said, "Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother's eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? How can you say to your brother, 'Brother, let me take the speck out of your eye,' when you yourself fail to see the plank in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother's eye. (Luke 6:41-42)

Forgiveness goes to the very core of relation-ships. It is, for Jesus, the only way for human beings to be free in relationship to God and in relationship to each other. It is only when we have "sent away" or "cancelled" the past by forgiving and being forgiven, that we are totally liberated to be in a completely unobstructed relationship with God, with others, and with our very selves in the present.

Jesus spoke of being "born again," which means we start all over, totally new and without any old baggage. And we can always start over again. No matter how many times it takes. Jesus knew that "Things that cause people to sin are bound to come … "(Luke 17:1), and he gave those closest to him a stern warning that they should avoid being the source of sin, especially in children. Yet, Jesus knew that no matter how great the sin, forgiveness is always greater. The only unforgivable sin is the sin of believing we cannot be forgiven or that we do not need forgiveness.

When we fail to seek forgiveness from God, or fail to forgive either ourselves or others, we not only carry that person or whatever happened around with us everywhere we go, we become a slave to that person or that circumstance.

When we fail to forgive or to seek forgiveness, we lose control of our own lives. The locus of control (the center of our being from which we operate) gets put into the hands of other people or other things. Our thoughts and feelings and even our bodies (we can make ourselves physically ill by not forgiving or seeking forgiveness) are at their beck and call. And they ride, rough-shod over us. We are no longer masters of ourselves. That person or that circumstance seizes the power that ultimately determines and directs our life, not only on this side of death but on the far side, too.

That person or that circumstance even over-shadows and taints our ultimate meeting with God. Jesus put it bluntly: "For if you forgive men when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive men their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins." (Matt 6:14-15) If our relationship with ourselves and with other people has been poisoned with failures of forgiveness, our relationship with God will be poisoned as well. We set the gauge for the Final Judgment.

Jesus, himself, taught: "Do not judge, and you will not be judged. Do not condemn, and you will not be condemned. Forgive, and you will be forgiven. Give, and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over, will be poured into your lap. For with the measure you use, it will be measured to you." (Luke 6:37-38)