Steve's Letter: There's a Supernatural Power and Joy In Forgiveness!
A friend of mine sent me the following this morning:
You have to work hard to offend Christians. By nature Christians are the most forgiving, understanding and thoughtful group of people I've ever dealt with. They never assume the worst. They appreciate the importance of having different perspectives. They're slow to anger, quick to forgive, and almost never make rash judgments or act in anything less than a spirit of love...no, wait! I was thinking of golden retrievers!
That's funny because everybody who has been around Christians in general and me in particular for very long knows that Christians aren't like golden retrievers. We're more like bulldogs.
I just stopped working on a new book to write to you. I'm writing a chapter on forgiveness (
Why Can't We Just All Get Along?) and since I'm thinking about the subject anyway, let's talk about forgiveness.
If you let your dog do his business in your neighbor's lawn, cheat on your spouse or on tests, destroy reputations by spreading terrible rumors about your friends, hurt people with your anger, or make an obscene gesture at drivers who cut you off in traffic and you feel guilty about it, I'm here to help.
Go to www.thepublicapology.com.
That's a website (really) where you can apologize, ask forgiveness and as they say, "feel less bad about your own misdeeds, past or recent" when you read other people's apologies. Confession, I suppose, is good for the soul and if the Jesus thing doesn't work for you, that might.
My favorite apology on that website is this:
I apologize, Henry, for calling you a hypochondriac. You really were sick after all. Lorena.
Wonder what happened? It could be that Henry has cancer or he's in the hospital after surgery. It could be that Lorena caught whatever he had and is now suffering the way he was. Then again, perhaps the doctor told Henry he's terminal and that was reported back to Lorena. Maybe he died and they put on his gravestone, "I told you I was sick!"
Whatever it was, I do hope Lorena feels better.
But you know something? I would like to talk to Henry. I could really help him.
You will remember when Peter (the disciple of Jesus) was frustrated. Evidently he had a friend who needed quite often to be forgiven. Peter wanted to have some boundaries and asked Jesus how often he had to forgive this man. Peter said that he had already forgiven him seven times and that seemed sufficient. Jesus astounded Peter by saying, "I do not say to you seven times, but seventy times seven [i.e. forgiveness without limit]" (Matthew 18:22).
Then Jesus told Peter a story that is both instructive and radical. It's about a servant who owed his master a whole lot of money. Just before the servant was sent off to jail and his family sold into slavery, the servant fell on his knees before his master and pleaded for mercy. The master forgave the debt.
Then in an astonishing display of disingenuous arrogance, the man-who had just been forgiven a major debt himself-refused to forgive a fellow servant a small debt and not only that, had him thrown in jail. When the master heard about it, he was ticked, called the unforgiving servant back and said, "You wicked servant! I forgave you all that debt because you pleaded with me. And should not you have had mercy on your fellow servant, as I had mercy on you?" (vs. 32). Then the master threw his sorry posterior into jail.
Jesus said, "So also my heavenly Father will do to every one of you, if you do not forgive your brother from your heart" (vs. 35).
Jesus was big on forgiveness. He included "forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors" in the prayer he taught his disciples (Matthew 6:12). He said that before we offer a sacrifice in worship we should leave it on the altar and do some heavy forgiving in order to restore any broken relationship (Matthew 5:23-24). He made incredible promises about the power of prayer and then added a proviso by saying, "And whenever you stand praying, forgive, if you have anything against anyone" (Mark 11:25).
I could go on and on, but just a cursory reading of the Gospels shows that forgiveness wasn't just a casual sidebar to Christ's teaching. It was central and repeated often.
Why do you suppose Jesus emphasized forgiveness? Because he wanted us to be "nice"? Because he didn't care about justice? Because he was na‹ve about human evil and what we do to one another? Because "gentle Jesus, meek and mild" simply didn't grasp the horror of injustice?
You've got to be kidding!
Forgiveness was the focal point in Christ's teaching because he knew that without genuine, profound and "to the bone" forgiveness, there is no freedom, no real joy, no peace and no release from the pain and the "root of bitterness" that destroys nations, families and individuals. He understood that the key to everything important in life is forgiveness.
A lot of Christians have the spurious belief that forgiveness is easy. One simply says, "I forgive you" and then goes on about life. Anybody who thinks that has never tried very hard to forgive someone anything bigger than burping at one's tea party. Real forgiveness is hard to do. In fact, it's almost impossible.
Okay. If it's that hard and Jesus said I should do it, how do I go about it?
I thought you would never ask.
The only way to forgive is to know how much you've been forgiven. I teach this principle in our Born Free seminar: You can't forgive until you've been forgiven and then you can only forgive to the degree to which you've been forgiven.
Paul said in Ephesians 4:31-32, "Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you, along with all malice. Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you."
"As God in Christ forgave you."
I got a call this morning passed on to me after first going through two staff people. The man who called was quite upset because he had heard a broadcast where I told the story of having two lesbians as my guests on a television show I did a number of years ago.
The man asked me if I would allow those lesbians into my church. "Well," I replied, "I think the church is a good place for sinners. They took me in."
"Don't you care about the purity of the church?" he asked.
"Of course I do. I just haven't found one yet."
"Mine is."
"Great!" I said. "I assume then you've kicked out all the fat people, the greedy people, the lustful men and those cantankerous folks. And you're the only one left."
That's when the conversation turned bad and he hung up. After I got over my anger, I felt so very sad. I wasn't sad because he was self-righteous or a Pharisee. I'm pretty good at that myself. I was sad because he can't know the supernatural power and joy of forgiving someone who needs it.
You want a cheap high? Go forgive someone who did something bad to you.
It's better than drugs.
He asked me to ask you.
In His Grip,
