Friday's Recap (120609)

Dear Cell, last Friday we shared about forgiveness. Our new cell member and guest, Geraldine, wasted no time to get the cell discussion going by putting our biblical knowledge to the furnace test. She highlighted the paradox contained in Matthew 6:15. Matthew 6:9 starts off jubilantly enough with the all-defining, all encompassing “the Lord’s Prayer.” This prayer of prayers covers every nook and crevices of our daily living and Christian victory. What is relevant in this mother of all prayers is the pristine and non-negotiable call for all Christians, young and old, to forgive the debts of others.

Well, all is well until we reach verse 15. It reads in the amplified Bible, “But if you do not forgive others their trespasses (their reckless and willful sins, leaving them, letting them go, and giving up resentment), neither will your Father forgive you your trespasses.” (Read also Mark 11:25) The paradox becomes clearer when we read the underscored sentence literally. On one hand, there are floodgates of verses that call us to forgive. Jesus even enumerated the number of times we should forgive others – 77 times. Of course, Jesus is not telling us to keep scores and start taking revenge on the 78th transgression. The number of times is not the message; the message is to make a habit out of forgiving until it becomes second-nature. I guess once we make forgiving others a habitual discipline, we stop keeping scores and start to trust that God will ultimately dispense with merciful justice in good time.

At the same time, God forgives us unconditionally. Whether we forgive others or not, God’s love is not dependent on our actions or decision. Imagine this, if God would to wait for the whole of humanity to match up to his moral standards before he send His son to the Cross, we would have to wait forever. The truism is that we fall short. We do not measure up. But this does not prevent the Word from becoming flesh and to live among us and to die and be raised up in victory. Jesus still came despite our sins. And didn’t Jesus pray before his death, “Father forgive them for they know not what they are doing?” I thank God that Jesus did not pray otherwise, “Forgive them only if they repent from their evil deeds and forgive others!”

So, how do we reconcile Matthew 6:15 which makes receiving God’s forgiving conditional to our forgiving others, and the rest of the heavyweight of Biblical teachings on God’s unconditional forgiveness of humanity?

Before we try our level best to answer this, which we did at the cell, let’s get one issue over and done with first. God’s forgiveness of our sins is not completely unconditional. It is always a two-way street. God’s redemption plan is not offered to animals because, as varied, diverse and beautiful as they are, they lack one essential element: the freedom to respond in a way we humans can. It is not so much our vast ability to rationalize, create and invent that distinguish us from our domesticated pets. Although this is surely our crowning glory as our modern, high tech civilization has shown beyond doubt our unmatchable intellectual superiority from that of animals. But it is our capacity to love and to make sacrifice for that love, even to the death, that confirms our place on the highest pedestal of creation. More relevantly, it is our capacity to feel remorse and to repent from our wrongdoings that single us out for an enduring and rewarding relationship with God.

But the response has to come from us. We have to make the conscious choice. So, receiving God’s forgiveness and becoming His heir require that we make a choice or choices. And this choice, if it is to be genuine, has to come from a contrite heart, a broken heart. 1 John 1:9 echoes the same sentiment more directly, “IF we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.” So, if there is an “IF”, there is a condition.

But, to say that as Matthew 6:15 did, we must forgive others before God can forgive us is a stretch of the condition a tat too much, don’t you think? It seems to make Christianity more karmic than gracious. Let me explain. In Hinduism, it is all about earning enough good karma points to ensure a better rebirth the next time round. And to achieve good karma status, the devout are expected to perform unselfish good deeds. Helping an old lady to cross the street or getting a precarious cat out of a tree would, I think, count as positively karma-guaranteed behavior.

So, if receiving God’s forgiveness depends on our forgiving others first, which to many is a tall-order since some of us have more enemies than friends, what difference is there between Christianity and Hinduism? Both would require some performance or good deed before divine rewards, in whatever forms, are dispensed; more like a quid pro quo transaction rather than a religion based on unmerited favor showered on the most undeserving, unworthy, unqualified – the essence of what we call grace. Ephesians 2:8-9 couldn’t have put this point sharper, “It is by grace you have been saved, through faith – and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God – not by works, so that no one can boast.”

So, after setting the above premise, the cell last Friday, in their most sincere effort, which I think should be applauded, tried to answer Geraldine’s question.
The question begs a question: Should we take it literally? If so, it would not be too presumptuous to say that a lot of Christians will fall short of God’s east-to-west forgiveness radius. In Psalms 103:12, it reads, “As far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our transgressions from us.” I think most of us would not even come close to the east-to-west radius.

Whilst it is easy to receive forgiveness, it is sometimes very painful and difficult to offer forgiveness. Ask a wife who was betrayed by her adulterous husband. Ask a daughter who had been sexually abused by her father. Ask a parent whose son had been cruelly murdered by gangsters. Ask a lady who was forced to become a comfort woman during the Japanese occupation. Ask an African American who was beaten to near death by white supremacists during the racial riots in America. Ask a young altar boy who was repeatedly molested by his trusted and venerated bishop. I think you get the point.

Becoming a Christian doesn’t make forgiveness easier. It is said that “when someone does us wrong, we feel as though they have taken away something that belonged to us – our peace, our joy, our happiness – and that they now owe it to us. When we forgive them, we simply release them from their debt.” To the wife, her unfaithful husband has taken many things away from her; most importantly, her security, trust and youth. To a daughter, her sexually abusive father has taken her sanity and innocence away from her. To parents, the murderer has taken a precious life away from them. It is therefore decisionally and emotionally difficult to release the offenders from their debt. You can say that it takes more than humanistic magnanimity to forgive those unspeakable transgressions.

So, the next question to ask is: Are all those people listed above condemned to never receive God’s forgiveness courtesy of Matthew 6:15?

At this juncture, Jasmine offered her two-cents worth. She said that we should read the passage (that God will not forgive us) in the context of an admonishment or a serious warning. God is telling us that unforgiveness is poison. It has a life of its own because unforgiveness is high maintenance. To bear a grudge, and to bear it long enough, requires us to extract from our memory of that transgression the venom of bitterness. And bitterness is infectious. It not only infects us, it infects all those around us. Just as forgiving others is a process and it takes time, unforgiveness is also a process. Our decision to refuse to extend the hand of forgiveness comes in stages – more like a vicious cycle.

Dr Everett L Worthington Jr, author of Forgiving and Reconciling, writes that unforgiveness rears its ugly head only at the last stage. We do not bear a grudge against someone for his wrongdoings immediately. At the first stage, the transgression is done to us. It can be a betrayal. A stab on the back, figuratively speaking. An abuse committed. Or an unjust treatment.

The second stage is all about perception. We perceive the hurt and offence as it was meant to be. Then, the third stage is hot, fiery emotion. Once we perceive it as a hurt or offence done to us personally and directly, we become angry, at times, even, vindictive. Then, the germinating stage is rumination. This is usually the birth of the vicious cycle of unforgiveness.

Sometimes, we resolve the transgression done to us by getting angry and cooling off later. Once the anger is thawed, we gain control of our feelings and we rein them in. We start to empathize with the offender and quickly forgive him or her. But if the offence is too hurtful, the scars too deep and the pain too pronounced, we allow our mind to ruminate on it until bitterness soon saturates our spirit. When this happens, our rumination or reflection on the hurt only generates more anger, more pain and more unresolved emotions.

With enough rumination, we soon grow to deeply hate the offender and forgiving him or her becomes almost impossible. That is why unforgiveness only rears its ugly head at the last stage. Dr Worthington puts it poetically by saying, “Unforgiveness is ignited by the spark of perceived hurt or offense, fanned by the hot emotions of anger and fear, damped to a slow burn by time, and scuffed into a stack of dangerous coals by rumination.”

So, God is admonishing us to be alert and on guard against unforgiveness for it poisons the spirit, rots the soul and nourishes the flesh. Without forgiveness, we can never experience true liberty in Christ. We will always be a prisoner of our own emotions. What is even scarier about harboring unforgiveness in our hearts is that we forfeit ourselves of receiving and experiencing God’s full blessing and redemption in our lives. And if we were to take to our grave this unrepentant heart, how can we then say that we have truly experienced the fullness of Christ’s love and forgiveness in our living years?

Dag Hammarskjold, who was a diplomat, an author and a secretary general of United Nations, once said, “Like a bee, we distill poison from honey for our self-defence – what happens to the bee if it uses its sting is well known.” I equate using the sting with bearing a heart of unforgiveness. This analogy is appropriate because all those who have unforgiveness in their hearts have only one consuming thought in their mind: vengeance. And vengeance comes in many forms. But the common denominator is to wish one’s offender the worst of fate. That which really kills a person who is seething with unforgiveness is the prosperity of his enemy. Only when his enemy receives his or her just deserts or comeuppance that his retributive spirit could find rest. So, in the same way that a bee dies when he uses his sting, the person who nurses unforgiveness suffers a spiritual fate no different from a bee: he dies a spiritual death.

In the cell last Friday, I listed 14 reasons why we must, for our own sake, forgive as the Bible has mandated us to do. Most of these points are taken from the book, Total Forgiveness, by RT Kendall.

1) It shows an indifference to the greatest thing God did.
2) We interrupt God’s purpose in the world (ministry of reconciliation).
3) God hates ingratitude (Matthew 18:23)
4) Holy Spirit is grieved (Eph 4:31-32)
5) You’re left to yourself.
6) You make yourself enemy of God (James 4:1-4)
7) You lose your anointing potential.
8) You lose your fellowship with God.
9) You become a living hypocrite.
10) You lose the peace of God.
11) You infect yourself with bitterness.
12) You forfeit the joy of the Lord.
13) Unforgiveness is high maintenance.
14) You forfeit the benefit of mental and physical health that comes with forgiveness.

This list makes it painfully plain that unforgiveness is a form of rebellion against God and no one who is a partaker of it can share in the promises of eternal life and blessings that God has bestowed to his true believers. So, when we refuse to let go of the hate or release the hurt to God, we make a mockery of Jesus’ death at the cross. Seen in this light, it becomes comprehensively easier to digest Matthew 6:15 because in the end, as Dr David Stoop and Dr James Masteller put it, “the number of times someone has hurt us is not the issue. Whether the other person deserves forgiveness is not the issue. How we respond to God’s grace is the issue.”

We are all accountable in thoughts and actions to God and God alone. It is only on this personal level that we will come to realize, stripped of all arrogance and pride, the irrecoverable depth of our sins and the incomparable grace of our Lord.

Mark, one of our cell members, cited the parable of the unforgiving servant to illustrate this point. We all know the end. The servant who owed 10,000 talents (or probably 10 million dollars!) begged his master to forgive his debt and his master, moved by compassion, forgave all his debts. Now the same servant, after experiencing such abundant grace, refused to forgive the debt of another servant who owed him 100 denarii, which, in today’s value, is only a pittance of 20 dollars! The ungrateful servant then locked the debtor up and threw away the keys. When his masters knew about it, he got a thrashing of his life, “You wicked servant! I forgave you all that debt because you begged me. Should you not also have had compassion on your fellow servant, just as I had pity on you?” The next paragraph is instructive, “And his master was angry and delivered him to the torturers until he should pay all that was due to him. So my Heavenly Father also will do to you if each of you, from his heart, does not forgive his brother his trespasses.” The problem here is that the ungrateful servant will never be able to pay up his debt of 10 million dollars just like we will never be able to pay up ours to God.

So forgiveness is a must, but God doesn’t expect us to rush. It takes time. It takes courage. It takes new perspective. Knowing how much we have been forgiven usually takes the sting out of forgiving others. And this apply to the betrayed wife, the aggrieved parents, the victims of rape and abuse, and those emotionally wounded by being target of hate and racial crimes. As CS Lewis once said, “we can forgive the inexcusable in others, because God has forgiven the inexcusable in us.”

Anna said in the cell that God gives us time, sometimes, a lifetime, to work through our emotions and grief. But forgiveness must come from the heart; it must also come from an act of the will. When we commit to decisional forgiveness (by confessing it and submitting to God all our hurts and pain), we will experience emotional forgiveness (peace and assurance of God). As Dr David Stoop and Dr James Masteller wrote, “Forgiveness – true forgiveness – takes time. It is a process you must not short-circuit. When you forgive too quickly, without adequately working through what has happened and how you feel about it, your forgiveness is incomplete”

So, beloved, travel light this week, remove the burden of unforgiveness, if any, and let God bear it for you. Give it to him little by little. Soon, your walk will be unhampered, your gait swift, your mind at peace, and your journey purposeful.

Ps : Last Friday, I did not have the time to list down the 8 qualities of what total forgiveness really is, as taught by RT Kendall. Here is the list:-
What total forgiveness is –

1) Being aware of what someone has done and still forgive them.
2) A choice to keep no records of wrong.
3) Refusing to punish (release it to God or the justice system).
4) Refusing to air the dirty linen in public after the decision to forgive is made.
5) Being merciful and gracious.
6) An inner condition. Do not wait for an offender to repent before you forgive. Resolve it within yourself and wish him or her the best and mean it.
7) The absence of bitterness.
8) Forgiving ourselves. When we forgive, we may come to realize that we were previously too harsh with the offender. We may have said or done things we have now come to regret. So, we need to put self-blame to rest and move on with our life.