WEEKLY COMMENTARY: To Forgive, or Not?

For the past week, a big news story has been the cold-blooded murder of 9 people at a black A.M.E. church in Charleston, South Carolina.  A lone, 21 year old white man entered the church at an evening Bible study, and after listening for about an hour, stood up, pulled out a .45 caliber handgun and killed 9 of the class members, as he mouthed racist, hateful words about black people.

Several days later after the arrest of the killer, at his bail hearing, victim statements were allowed to be spoken to the accused.  A relative of one of the victims said to the accused killer, about the loss of her sister: "I will never be able to hold her again.  But, I forgive you."

I have been thinking about the words: "I forgive you."  Those words can be such hard words for anyone to say.  What message does that word FORGIVE, convey?  Webster's tells us it means "to cease to feel resentment against an offender."

There is a lot to be said for not forgiving people who have done us wrong.  Why should people who have upset our lives, leaving us bleeding in their wake, expect us to forgive everything and act as if nothing went wrong?  We are not talking about the petty slights that we all inevitably suffer.  We are talking about forgiving people who have wronged us deeply and unfairly.  If forgiving leaves the victim exposed and encourages the wrongdoer to hurt again, why forgive?!

An alternative would have been vengeance ---- a passion to get even.  It is a hot desire to give back as much pain as someone gave you.  An eye for an eye!  But, the problem with revenge is that it never gets what it wants ---- it never evens the score.  Vengeance always takes both the injured and the injurer on an escalator of pain.  The escalator never stops, never lets anyone off as long as parity is demanded.

Why do family feuds go on and on until everyone is dead ---- or gets too old and too tired to fight?  Perhaps because no two people, no two families, ever weigh pain on the same scale.  The pain a person causes me always feels heavier to me than it feels to the person who caused it.  The pain I inflict on you always feels worse to you than it does to me.

If you hurt me and I retaliate in kind, I may think that I have given you only what you deserve, no more.  (Actually, now I am no better than you!)  But you will feel it as a hurt that is too great for you to accept.  Your passion for fairness will force you to retaliate against me, harder this time.  Then it will be my turn.  And will it ever stop?

Forgiveness is not the alternative to revenge, just because forgiveness is soft and gentle.  It is the best alternative because it is the only creative route to less unfairness.  Hard as forgiveness seems at the time, forgiveness has creative power to move us away from a past moment of pain, block us from an endless chain of pain-giving reactions, and to create a new situation in which both the wrongdoer and the wronged can begin in a new way.  There is no guarantee, but forgiving is the only door open to possibility.

Forgiveness, of course, is not an easy practice to master.  Sometimes hurts seem too great, betrayals to treacherous, to be forgiven.  Sometimes forgiveness can be mistaken for weakness and vulnerability, even by those who would forgive.

So, how do we forgive?  What does it mean to reconcile with our "enemy"?  Can we learn to forgive those who have hurt us so deeply that the pain does not seem to go away?

Forgiveness is about being able to accept our human situation with all the ambiguity and messiness it entails.  It's about accepting the fact that inevitably people do disappoint one another.  Because we are limited in time, in talent and in ability to truly understand everything about one another, we often miss the mark.  Forgiveness means accepting others ---- and ourselves ---- as human and not divine.  Forgiveness means resisting a defensive response when we are hurt ---- a response that would mean cutting off the other person.  Forgiveness means risking the pain of living, and holding to a hope that disappointments and hurt do not have to be the final word.

Forgiveness is a process ---- a journey.  As much as we might like forgiveness to be a "forgive and forget" moment, lives do not work that way.  Old hurts have a way of resurfacing so we are led to examine a new facet of a wound we had hoped had healed.  Forgiveness is a commitment to face life with a posture that risks rather than protects, while struggling with the fact that there are times when protection is the wise choice.

Forgiveness is not passivity.  It is an active response to brokenness.  While refusing to return evil for evil, forgiveness can also be an act of resistance, refusing to let evil continue.  Martin Luther King, Jr.'s tactic of nonviolent resistance is an example of forgiveness that refuses to let evil continue.  By resisting segregation, civil rights workers were saying no to racism, but by being nonviolent they were inviting the enemy to join the community.  Forgiveness loves the sinner while saying clearly that the sin is unacceptable.

Are there opportunities for such reconciliation with someone who has hurt you in the past?  Trying a little forgiveness might be a wonderful gift you could give to yourself!

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These thoughts are brought to you by the Adult Spiritual Development Team at CPC, hoping to encourage your personal spiritual growth this summer.

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WEEKLY COMMENTARY: Does Personal Prayer Merely Inform God, or Change Me?

Many of us with young children or young grandchildren, have been present at a time when they were ill.  We hate to see them suffer, and sometimes we fear we could lose them.  Sometimes in such moments it occurs to us to pray for the child's recovery.

But those who pray only at such moments usually experience great difficulty figuring out what they are supposed to say, or to whom they are addressing it.

Many Americans are raised without any habits of personal prayer, and cannot conceive of a God who would listen if they did address Him in prayer.  Not really understanding personal prayer, perhaps they will intellectualize the idea of prayer to such an extent that they "bleach-out" any emotional significance.  After all, if God already knows everything, what's the value of praying to God?

Rabbi Harold Kushner, the author of the best-selling "When Bad Things Happen to Good People," says he is tired of prayers that sound like a list of grievances.  "We've confused God with Santa Claus," Kushner charges.  "Every time you have to do something difficult and you are not sure you are up to it, that's cause for prayer." Nevertheless, petitioning God for favors may be one of the oldest ---- and most human ---- forms of prayer.

In the Gospel of John, Jesus himself is said to promise his disciples that "Whatsoever you ask of the Father in my name will be given to you."  Most Americans who pray believe that at least some of their prayers have been answered, though not always in the ways in which the petitioners have sought.

Clearly. there is a difference between occasionally turning to God for help and expecting Him to meet our every want.  Jesus' own prayer to the Father was "thy will be done," meaning that God wants us to have whatever promotes our participation in His life.  Yet, it is precisely this distinction that is lost when television evangelists regularly claim miraculous healing through the power of on-air prayer.  Indeed, there is every reason to believe that prayer requests sent to such evangelists, checks enclosed, are posted to the wrong address.

Perhaps what matters most is not the frequency of personal prayer, but whether those who pray experience inner peace, a feeling of being led by God, or finding other forms of "divine intimacy."

Talking about God, which is what theologians do, is not the same as learning to talk to God.  There are many ways of talking to God.  Prayers learned in childhood or read from a book, are often used to break the "conversational ice" with God.  However, perhaps this is the best advice:  "shut up and listen."

I  have also been told that personal prayer requires making time for God on a regular basis.  Someone once said, "If you're not as close to God as you used to be, its because you moved, not God."

Since no one has seen God, people who pray inevitably draw on their own imagination and experiences when thinking about God.  However, it would seem that the internal representation of God through prayer changes throughout one's life cycle, in response to other significant people and events.  For example, finding a loving spouse or holding a newborn child. may alter an earlier, more distant representation of God.

So what's the lesson for those who want to draw closer to God through personal prayer?  Beware!  The religious purpose of prayer ---- communing with God ----can be lost when people use it only to declare their list of wants.  That is, if my conversation with God is merely a Santa Claus list of things for me.  The challenge seems to be moving from trying to control God, to letting God direct us.

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These thoughts are brought to you by CPC's Adult Spiritual Development Team, hoping to encourage some personal spiritual growth this summer.

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WEEKLY COMMENTARY: What Kind of Friends Are In Your Group?

One summer, my family and I rented a house for a month at the Jersey Shore. Several nights a week we would eat out, so during the day, on our wanderings through town, we would keep our eyes open for interesting restaurants.  One in particular was recommended to us, but it had a window sign saying "NO tank tops for ladies, NO shorts for men."

This window sign was quite clear ----- you knew where you stood.  Most of society is not that honest.  As Pastor Lillian Daniel observes, "Groups of people have those signs in their heads, but outsiders never see them.  You just perceive that there are rules and an order to things that some people seem to know and others don't."

I remember my first days at a new high school.  I entered the school cafeteria and froze. Where should I sit?   Will I be welcomed?  Will I be ignored?  I was the outsider, with no welcoming place to sit.

Perhaps the desire to eat at a table with others has been hardwired into human beings. But there is a social status element to all of this as well.  It is not just that we do not want to eat alone.  We do not want to be seen as eating alone.  From our earliest nursery school memories of snack time to the seating chart at the retirement dinner, we know that these eating arrangements, formal and informal, mean something about whom we are and where we are placed socially.  

If Jesus had been a student at my high school, he probably would have been actively discouraged from eating with the tax collectors and sinners.  But Jesus did eat with tax collectors and sinners, breaking rules that were more rigid than those at my high school.

In Jesus' day, whom you ate with mattered.  Where you sat was not a casual affair. You were associated with the people you ate with.  If they were good, upstanding people and they invited you to eat at their table, you were, by association, good and upstanding, too.

But, if people were sinners, known to the community as such, you definitely didn't want to eat with them.  The only people who ate with sinners were the other sinners, the people who had to share a table because no other table would have them.

At first, when I would sit down at any of those cafeteria social enclaves, I was stared at as if I had made a mistake,  But gradually, I got to know different people, make different friends, and realized that the cliques were not nearly as homogeneous as I had led myself to believe.

There were smart students at the "pretty table", and jocks at the orchestra table, and interesting stories everywhere.

The Pharisees, who were good and observant Jews, the ones who were most careful about the rules, were watching this and must have said to Jesus and his disciples: "Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?  Why isn't he sitting at his assigned table?"  They were honestly baffled at this rule-breaking.  They were genuinely worried that Jesus was making himself "unclean."  And he was, without apology!

"NO tank tops for ladies, NO shorts for men."

Most of the world just isn't that direct.  But the unspoken and unwritten rules are often the ones that cause the most pain.

Jesus turned the tables on that by sitting at the wrong table.  What makes it the wrong table?  The wrong people were sitting at it?  Who are the wrong people?  The ones who are not like us.

At Central Church, we house the homeless for four weeks of the year.  We will host as few as 6 or 7 and as many as 12 or 15 persons (adults and kids).  Many Central Church volunteers come together to make this work, and even will spend the night with them.  Briefly, we have a "community."

Meanwhile, there are grumblings about a homeless man who has been encamped outside for many months at the edge of the church parking lot, with all his possessions gathered in plastic bags.  Sometimes, he has homeless visitors.  By camping so permanently where he does, one could say this long-term camper "does not respect the assigned seating arrangements" in our affluent town of Summit.

It is as if, in affluent Summit, there is an unspoken sign that says that if you pay enough money for your home, you should not have to walk next to a homeless person ------ you should not even see one!

And this attitude is not unique to Summit, but pervades much of our privileged culture.

To which Jesus would have had a very clear answer, that would not satisfy some people.  The answer is this: "In the world, there may be assigned seating, but in the Kingdom of Heaven there is not."  If we believe this, we ought to act like it, and live it out here on earth.   For Jesus and the disciples, there were no assigned seats at his table.  All were welcome, particularly in their brokenness.  Indeed the church was born on the damaged consciences and rotten reputations of tax collectors, sinners and people in need.

We will always be told that the social barriers are there for a reason ----- that the rules are there to keep order, and that if we will keep to our own lunch tables, we will all be better off.

And the myth of that story is to think you can keep all the sinners at their own table. Of course, this is wrong and profoundly self-deceiving.  Because, there are sinners at every table. There is definitely a sinner at every table I sit down at, because it's me.

Perhaps we should try reading this story as if we were the tax collector.  We are looking over the tables, wondering where to sit down, and who will have us.  We want a way out of our past mistakes and sins.  We want to live better.  

Perhaps this is too big a job for us to tackle by ourselves, but if we sit down at a table with an unfamiliar group, try trusting that the Holy Spirit will work through all of us, and that we are going to grow. Isn't this how a true community begins?  Isn't our church a fertile garden for planting and nourishing "community"?  Everyone is welcome because church is actually a school for sinners, not a club for saints.

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These thoughts are brought to you by the CPC Adult Spiritual Development Team, seeking some spiritual growth for you this summer.

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WEEKLY COMMENTARY: Where Is HELL?

When I was a teenager, my parents were regular viewers of a Sunday evening Bible preacher who conjured up vivid word pictures to illustrate his talks.  One Sunday, he talked about Hell.  He said it was the subterranean realm of the Devil and the demons, in which the damned suffer everlasting punishment.  I didn't know what to make of that, except that it did not sound like much fun.

A few years later, I was a college freshman.  I was required to take a Humanities course with a challenging reading list.  One of the requirements was to read Dante's Inferno and discuss in class the symbolism and fearful consequences of possibly going to Hell when we die.  The instructor came prepared, with a selection of reproduction pictures of a flaming landscape rendered by famous Renaissance painters.  His portfolio showed in excruciating detail each of the layers of Hell, as Dante visualized them, and to this day I can recall these dreadful scenes.

Many people today seem to think that Hell works like this:  God gives us time, but if we haven't made the right choices by the end of our lives, He casts our souls into Hell for all eternity.  As the poor souls fall through space, they probably cry out for mercy, but God says "Too late!  You had your chance!  Now you will suffer!"

I have thought a lot about this ----- could our loving God actually be a judging God filled with wrath and anger?  If He is truly a loving God, shouldn't He forgive and accept everyone?  Fighting evil and injustice in the world is one thing, but sending people to Hell is quite another.  The Bible speaks of "eternal punishment," but sending people to Hell as popularly envisioned is much more extreme.

Recently, I came upon some of the writings of Rev. Timothy Keller, which have helped me put the idea of Hell into better perspective.  Rev. Keller is the pastor of the Redeemer Presbyterian Church in Manhattan, a church with 6,000 regular attendees total at their five services each Sunday.  As a minister and preacher, Keller says he often finds himself speaking on Biblical texts that teach the wrath of God, the final judgment and the doctrine of Hell.

The Biblical picture, according to Keller, is that sin is our separation from the presence of God, and God is the source of all joy and indeed of all love, wisdom, and good things of any sort.  Since we were originally created for God's immediate presence, only "before his face" will we thrive, flourish, and achieve our highest potential.  If we were to lose his presence totally, that would be Hell ----- the loss of our capability for giving or receiving love or joy.

A traditional image of Hell, Keller tells us, is that of fire.  Fire disintegrates things. Even in this life we can see the kind of soul disintegration that self-centeredness creates.  We know how selfishness and self-absorption leads to bitterness, envy, anxiety, paranoid thoughts, and the mental denials and distortions that accompany them.

Now, says Keller, ask the question:  "What if when we die our life doesn't end, but spiritually our life extends into eternity?"  Hell, then, is the trajectory of a soul, living a self-absorbed, self-centered life, going on and on for ever.

Keller concludes that Hell is simply one's freely chosen identity separated from God, on a trajectory that goes on for a billion years.  We see small parallels of this process in addictions to drugs, alcohol, gambling and pornography.  First, there is some kind of dependency (but not to God), says Keller, and as time goes on one needs more and more of the addictive substance to get an equal kick, which leads to less and less satisfaction.

Second, there is isolation increasingly, by one's blame of others and circumstances, in order to justify one's own behavior.  When we build our lives on anything other than God, says Keller, that thing ----- though perhaps a "good" thing in a sense (for example, wealth) ----- becomes an enslaving addiction, something we must have to be happy.   Keller believes that this personal dependency (which doesn't need God) can go on forever, with increasing isolation, denial, delusion and self-absorption.

People go to Heaven, Keller says, because they love God and want to submit to him.  People go to Hell because they want to be away from God, because they do not want somebody telling them how to live their lives.  They want to be their own savior, their own lord.  They want to live their lives their own way.  That's Hell.

Keller believes that Hell is eternal, but it is not inevitable.  God gives you what you want.  He says that Heaven and Hell essentially are our freely chosen identities, going on forever.  

So, Keller leaves us with this thought:  It is not a question of God "sending" us to Hell.  In each of us there is something growing, which will BE Hell unless we nip it in the bud.

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These thoughts are brought to you by CPC's Adult Spiritual Development Team, hoping to encourage you to  pursue some personal growth this year at CPC.

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