Love & Forgiveness
My husband made it back safely from his business trip to New York - yeay! I hadn't mentioned that he was gone before because I'm neurotic enough when I'm alone in the house with the kids without advertising it on the internet. This week was particularly difficult - not only is Emmelia old enough to really understand his absence and get all teary-eyed about it every evening, but I made the mistake of reading some of the news reports out of the BTK killer's sentencing going on in Wichita. Scary stuff - not recommended reading if you're going to be alone in your house at night.
One of the things that struck me in one of the articles was a quote from a woman who said something about how it was even worse because the BTK killer said he was a Christian. Well, history is full of cold-hearted people who were nominally Christian, isn't it? Take Hitler, for instance. Christ Himself said "Not every one who says to me, 'Lord, Lord,' shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven." (Matt. 7:21) American society has such a pervasive attitude of "all dogs go to heaven" - if you say you are a Christian then that must mean you are saved, have accepted Christ into your heart, will never sin again, will automatically go to heaven. I almost added in "will vote Republican". Hee.
I'm beginning to believe that the real meat of what is required of us in this life is to practice love and forgiveness. If we practice those two things then of necessity other virtues such as humility and repentance will take their place in our lives. And if we practice love and forgiveness we can see how it's possible that we will see people like BTK and Hitler in heaven without any hint of hypocrisy. We should desire their repentance and forgiveness even in light of the atrocities they committed in this world. Closer to home, there are people in our lives who we might find it equally difficult to meet in heaven, and yet we should hope to see them there if we believe in a merciful God.
Of course it's no accident that the two hardest concepts for me to get straight in my own life are the very virtues I think are so important. I find it hard to love those people involved in allowing the hurtful events of my childhood to happen. I find it hard to love myself - even God - sometimes. I find it difficult to find forgiveness for those who have hurt me, or even forgiveness for myself. Heck, I often find it hard to even understand exactly what forgiveness means! But I believe my salvation lies along this path. Thank goodness I have the rest of my life and then some to figure it all out.
Whew! That was quite a digression. Mostly, I'm glad the Deac made it home safely.
posted by Shamassy @ 8:44 AM
4 Comments:
Interesting post, Margaret. Let me share my experience (FYI, I am Catholic, not sure how our belief systems may differ). I was having a crisis of faith recently due to something I was unable to forgive myself over, even after I received absolution from a priest 5 years ago. I went back to him last winter and told him the trouble I was having including feeling as though I shunned Jesus' forgiveness by not being able to accept that it was true. Among other things, he explained that some pretty bad people were chosen by Jesus to be leaders (Saul/Paul was the example he gave), people who had commited heinous sins. He also shed some light on the idea of "perfect love". The love God has for all of his children. He told me I expected to be punished (I did) because that is US. WE punish people and require "payment" for sins commited. God just asks that we feel truly sorry in our hearts. Sincerely ask for forgiveness and move on. Move on sounds kind of flip, I just mean not live it day in and day out.
That is all well and good for me but I imagine having a violent crime commited against my child or myself might put me in a different state of mind. Then again, I can only aspire to "perfect love", I know I will never be perfect.
I don't know where that leaves people like the BTK killer and Hitler. I suppose it is possible to see them walking around heaven, but I doubt they would be the same horrible people they are now (or were). I don't know. I guess that is between God and them and I'm doing all I can to keep myself on this side of eternal damnation ;-) without worrying about them. This thing that had me so torn has taught me alot about judging others. It isn't to say you are judging, I'm just speaking for myself. During those 5 years, I would often see people who commited terrible crimes and my knee jerk reaction would be "burn in hell" then I would think "I'm no better than they are". All of a sudden, I am praying that they get forgiven so maybe I have half a chance, you know?
So there is my long winded response to your post. I should just get my own blog ;-)
Hey, thanks for your comments! You're right in that not holding on to all this stuff would be much healthier from a spiritual point of view. My father confessor has mentioned more than once (not really in relation to the events of my childhood, which he also knows about, but about things that generally bog us down spiritually) a story from the desert fathers - which I'll paraphrase here - about two monks who were walking along a road and came across a woman who was having trouble crossing a river. Without much of a thought, the elder of the monks picked up the woman (touching, even looking upon, a woman was considered a no-no among the desert fathers since it could lead to a fall), carried her across the river, and set her down on the other side and the two monks went on their way. After many hours, the younger one finally said "forgive me, father, but I am really bothered by the fact that you touched that woman and helped her across the river." The elder monk replied "Are you still carrying her? I put her down hours ago."
I know God love us and desires our repentance and that I'm not making a ton of progress that I *could* be making by carrying around all this baggage from my childhood constantly. Leaving the dead to bury the dead can be more difficult than it seems.
It's a good point you make about judging others. As Orthodox Christians, we say a prayer every time we take Communion that involves naming ourselves as "the chief of all sinners." And we can say that precisely because we know what sins we haven't repented of whereas we have to assume that everyone else has repented.
Anyway, I appreciate your thoughts. If you do start a blog, be sure to send me the link - I'd like to read it.
I've thought a lot about forgiveness in relation to the phrases "forgive and forget" and "turn the other cheek." People often say they've forgiven, but can't forget and that always strikes me as meaning they really haven't forgiven. Now, I don't think it means forget as in actually have no memory of the wrong, but I do think it means not dwelling on things. Similarly for turning the other cheek. I may be all wrong on this theologically, but I have a hard time thinking Jesus actually meant "set yourself up for more abuse." So I think of it as meaning "turn away." Don't get all caught up on your smitten cheek, but turn the part of you that doesn't hurt towards the person who wronged you, and turn away from the hurt.
Interesting idea about turning away. I do think holding onto anger and resentment at abuse or other hurt can be deadlier spiritually than the original pain. A priest told me a story once that boils down to the idea that God doesn't hold onto our wrongs. When He forgives us our sins are erased. And if we are to forgive others who trespass against us then we, too, need to erase (or at least not dwell on and allow to breed resentment) those trespasses.
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