Author: Wick

As mentioned in my previous post, what Jesus was proclaiming was something radical and upsetting to those Pharisees. He was proclaiming forgiveness as being possible not only for those who are repentant and who have begun to change their ways…he was offering it to those who were still caught up in the midst of their sins and actively sinning.

Did he ask them if they wanted to be forgiven, and then wait until they turned away from their sinful way and asked for forgiveness, and once he was certain they “really really meant it” and were “sorry enough”, he knighted them “Forgiven”? Nope. Did he gracefully offer them the “credit” of forgiveness, contingent on payment conditions that they would follow after He left, and commit to coming back to check on them to see these conditions had been met? No.

He offered forgiveness. Free, and full of love and IN THE MIDST OF THEIR SINNING.

What was this forgiveness? As I mentioned briefly in my previous post, it was a transformation of what had happened. The event was not obliterated/erased/annulled, because that would undermine the need and beauty of what happens in forgiveness. The event becomes transformed/redeemed as something that is (“forget it, as if it never happened”), and at the same time (“remember it, so that it doesn’t happen again”).

How often have we heard “Oh, I want to forgive _____, if only they’d ask for it/turn from their ways.” Or even “Oh, I’ve forgiven _____, I just can’t treat them as a human being ever again or allow myself to accept that others do.”

When we do forgive someone of a “large” offense, we sometime believe it is our (right/obligation) to hold what they’ve been forgiven of in front of them. But it is not OUR duty to hold on. It is our duty to release. It is the duty of the one forgiven to hold on to the event that has been released in order to know what exactly the future can be freed from.

Which is all good and fine when we’re talking about people cutting you off in traffic. It takes on entirely new dynamics when talking of something much more substantial. But I suppose the larger the offense, the larger the opportunity to communicate the foolishness of how forgiveness works in the Kingdom of God…

(realizing that referring to certain offenses as “large” compared to others only hurts the case of viewing things in a Kingdom light)

Yesterday I was driving in the usual “to work” traffic. It was raining and cloudy, which made it just dangerous enough that we were all going a bit slower than normal. I could see behind me, there was one individual who was weaving their way from lane to lane, making small advances in the line of cars. Sure enough, he came up behind me, weaved over, sped up, and weaved back over what seemed like inches from my front bumper.

I confess my initial thoughts toward this person were not loving.

But it set the stage for an easy location for a difficult dialogue on forgiveness to take place.

Would it be possible for me to forgive this person, even without them asking for forgiveness? The nature of the word “forgive” (being a gift, unconditional, full of grace, not part of an “economy”, based in love and no other motive but itself) would lean towards it being a perfect example of where the gift of forgiveness can take place.

I can live towards this offensive driver as if they’d never offended me, but at the same time their offense has not been annulled or obliterated, but transformed by the act of forgiveness.

Some might even say, if the driver pulled over and apologized immediately after it happened, I would no longer be able to offer a truly unconditional forgiveness. I would simply be responding to an offer for reconciliation. Which is still very important, and needed in our communities. But it is not the same as forgiveness. Reconciliation takes place in the realm of economy. Of offer and acceptance. Even if sometimes the offers are lopsided, which may require an amount of forgiveness to “level the field”.

“While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” Jesus didn’t cause a stir because he came proclaiming that sinners could be forgiven. Even the most devout Jews understood/believed/hoped towards this. Jesus was unpopular among we religious for proclaiming that sinners ARE forgiven already. It is a gift of love. It doesn’t come with stipulations for how to earn such forgiveness, but at the same time offers an undeniable call when such forgiveness is realized…for how life can begin anew.

May we live as people who offer true forgiveness wherever possible in our lives. Even/especially in the areas that go much deeper than being cut off on the way to work in the morning. God help us….

There’s been a section in the book I’m reading lately (like over the past several months….silly dense books that require way too much time to read but are still ridiculously good so we continue to plow through them) about Peter Damian and some of his writings. Yes, he wrote specifically against the sin of homosexuality and it being found among the religious leaders of their day. But he also branched out from that into over-arching issues. It’s amazing to me that a thousand years ago, people were writing and posing such wonderfully complex questions, and many of them are approached by new people today as if they’ve never been thought of.

Damian did a lot of thinking/writing in the realm of forgiveness. Putting it in the realm of virginity (since most sins can be seen as a loss of “innocence” in whatever area they are in), when one is forgiven, can God go back in time and make something that has happened as if it never happened?

The response is a bit humorous.

There was a large focus in their day (and still today, even if we don’t talk about it or give name to it) on this aspect of “being” (ousia). Damian believed that God could do anything that was good (in God’s nature), not to be limited by any aspect of ousia (space/time/matter/etc.). That the goodness of God stands outside of being….not bound by it and whatever that all means.

But because “ousia” is something that is brought into existence by God, that means for something to have “being” it must be something good, for that is the nature of God. So if something has previously happened that is not good (i.e. “evil”), that thing that has happened has a sort of “non-being”, since it obviously did not come from God, source of all ousia. It doesn’t actually have “ousia”. Damian’s initial response, therefore, would be something like “why would God have to undo something that isn’t?”.

But Damian would eventually concede in a way that, although focusing on God’s superhero omnipotence, still offfers us something helpful in our thinking of God. He would say that because God could have stopped Rome from becoming Rome (before it happened), God still can today. This follows the logic of God being not bound by the realms of time. He talks a bit about the most faithful way of speaking about God is ALWAYS in the present tense. (Gotta love that. If we take away nothing else, to remind ourselves to speak of God always in present tense. Not so much “could do”, or “will do”, but “is doing”. 🙂 ) So even though something evil that has happened lacks “ousia”, and doesn’t actually “exist” as most things do, God can go back and alter that future just as much as He could have stopped it before it happened.

Which begs the question (by logic, not necessarily because I’m anxious for an answer), that I’ve not read Damian’s response to, “Why not, then?”

Guess I’ll have to keep reading….