Discuss the series and sermons below by leaving a comment. Post your reactions and thoughts on forgiveness.
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Comments
Discuss the series and sermons below by leaving a comment. Post your reactions and thoughts on forgiveness.
(you must click on the topic title to reach the comment page)
I am so looking forward to this series.
Gentlemen:
I saw the banner hanging outside the front of that eyesore you call a church. (We’d appreciate it if your congregation would stop using the street as overflow parking, as your SUVs have a nasty tendency to jut out into it on icy days.) If you don’t mind my asking….
Although I concur with your three premises, it seems logically impossible for anyone to forgive your child-molesting messiah. After all, if you believe such nonsense, our rulers were chosen by God, which means that your god did so with the foreknowledge that you would be wrongfully injured by them: “Submit yourselves for the Lord’s sake to every authority instituted among men: whether to the king, as the supreme authority, or to governors, who are sent by him to punish those who do wrong and to commend those who do right.” 1 Pet. 2:13-14. “Let every soul be subject unto the higher powers. For there is no power but of God: the powers that be are ordained of God.” Rom. 13:1.
And rather by definition, your god is a conspirator with equal liability in their wrongful acts: “Qui non prohibet cum potest, jubet: That man abets an evil, who prevents it not, when it is in his power. Nec caret scrupulo societatis occultæ, qui evidentèr faci nori desinit obviare: Nor can he escape the suspicion of being a secret accomplice, who evidently declines the prevention of an atrocious crime.” Sir John Hawles, The Englishman’s Right (8th ed. 1844) (1680) at 3-4; see also, Jas. 4:17.
On the face of it, it seems that it is your god who is a sinner who needs a savior, rather than the other way around. Shall we put him on trial?
Hey Ken,
Harsh response but very familiar. Over 1/3 of the psalms are official charges against God for crimes such as betrayal, abuse and abandonment. Check out Psalm 22 or 88. The Psalmist is beat-up, angry and wants explanation and vindication. If their case is on the level– they really seem to have a legitimate one. They are officially taking God to trial– a right surprisingly given to them by God Himself. These Psalms aren’t hidden, or denied, or written off. They are worship approved– implicitly of course by God Himself. Wild religion. It provides the legal language for complaints– harsh complaints against the God that it worships.
This is a difficult concept for us– for me. It begs the question, If there is a God, a moral God, why put us through all of this mess in the first place? If God is sovereign and good, why would we ever need to complain about anything? All our needs would be taken care of, right?
Of course all other religions on the planet– all other philosophies of life have the same problem. Bad things absolutely happen. Our hearts demand moral balance to the universe. We want a trial and an objective verdict and vindication of the innocent. We want the guilty punished and reparation for damages. For secular humanists, judicial systems are the only respite in this area– not all bad, very helpful– but very very flawed. But that is for humanists— in the end, all there is. Hopefully time will heal all the other wounds. If you want to yell at the universe, yell about the unresolvable injustice in the world– but what’s the point if there is no moral Judge God.
But in Biblical Christianity, there is a hope of a final trial, where consolation finally takes place for everyone. No matter who you are, what you believe, what you have one, or what was done to you; there is a promised reckoning– the metaphor is that of a celestial trial. The perpetrator could be a person, many persons, a race, an institution, organized church– or even God Himself. At that trial– says the Bible– all victims will be made whole, the rightful tears wiped away at last. By the way, honestly, we are all plaintiffs in this trial and defendants in many others.
So here’s the point– the bottom line: personally I do not have all the answers. I have far more questions than answers if the truth were known. But as far as justice, morality and judicial satisfaction issues go, the claims of Biblical Christianity under the auspices of the weeping Judge God (check out my last two messages on Jonah) are stunning, wild and humanly speaking unimaginable. No other religion or philosophy of life dares to make such vast claims. Final justice for everybody? Even non-adherents? Crazy really. But honestly, I can’t imagine anyone who wouldn’t– if they were being objective– hope that the claims are true? If there is no moral God, then the universe is not moral either, and so all claims and hopes for justification and vindication are really wrongheaded, illegitimate. Does that make sense?
So to your final point. Hypothetically speaking, if the Judge is indeed as you have charged a ‘sinner who needs a savior’ — a ‘child-abuser messiah’– then celestial justice will require a trial, justice and if found guilty– a savior for Him as well. Prepare your case. Check out Job, Habakkuk, the Psalms et al., for trial due diligence, precedent cases. Justice is after all justice. The morality of the universe is a perfect reflection of the Creator Judge (Biblically speaking) and so all things must be dealt with to the satisfaction of God and His justice. So your wish for a trial for God is bold, perhaps angry, but within your rights as a created being in His image. As you say, it is logically impossible for anyone to forgive such crimes– a trial is required before there is any consolation.
If there is no universal morality or justice, on what legal basis are you complaining against God, or His people?
Pastor Bill
Well said!
Jim-I hope you will come and listen to the message.
We’ll also be trying to post the sermon audio and text, and possibly even the video, on the site this week.
Here is a great song by Josh Wilson on the healing.
All the pain will fade. The Pain you have been feeling won’t compare to the Joy that is coming!
Have a Beautiful Day!
Kathy, thank you so much for posting this link. His words are so true, especially now!
You are so welcome!
On the other side of this journey we will be more like The Master and Live fully in His joy. Personally, I can hardly wait but the process is necessary to get to the full joy. Moving Forward~
Wonderful series, but generating a lot of questions! For instance, if we acknowledge that most of the people who have hurt us in the past probably weren’t deliberately trying to make our lives miserable (they, themselves, have also been hurt and are just trying to survive in the best way they know how), that means there is no one to blame but God, who could have protected us, or in some other way prevented the terrible things from happening. So, maybe the person we need to forgive most is God. But how? That seems so impossible and impractical. And how does one reconcile the vision of a loving God with the obvious discrepancy in our lives?
Second, the video clip from last week left us with such a hopeless feeling. The message of the clip is true—–the past cannot be re-lived, and the consequences of evil can never be undone. The poor guy in the video will probably never get another chance to stand before the judge and make his case for visitation rights, so he’ll never see his kids again. The Bible says that the end of Job was better than the beginning, that he ended up with more cattle, and more servants and more kids. But getting “more kids” doesn’t take the place of the ones that are gone forever. How does one make peace with the fact that some things will never, never get better?
Difficult stuff to deal with briefly– but here goes. First, the Bible recognizes crimes that were not done intentionally. They are still crimes (in that they harmed victims, they took something from victims). They are handled differently than intentional (high-handed) crimes. But our God is always concerned with the restoration of the victim to wholeness, and the restoration of community to pre-crime unity. We have to reprogram our thinking. In our modern justice system, we really focus on punishment of the perp. But God sees not only that, but the rip in the soul of the vic and the soul of the community. God is big enough to heal both– and promises to.
So, whether the perp meant it or not– a crime was committed, the Holy judge weeps.
Now to the other point. Can we take God to trial? Absolutely!!!! Read Psalm 22, 118, 88. Read Job. Read Lamentations. Is God innocent? If by ‘innocent’ you mean that He never ever ordains harm to people? No. If you mean that He never ever does anything unjustifiable? Yes. It is hard to imagine on a case by case basis, but God is so huge, so ‘other’ that he can even use harmful things for our absolute good. Biblically Satan uses harmful things, but ultimately not for our good or well-being. God on the other hand freely uses chaos, corruption, death, disease, destruction, for ultimate higher good– a good that must ultimately outweigh the bad– or else God would be no better than Satan. In the end, God will prove to all victims that their pain, losses, agony, injustices were meaningful and purposeful– to their satisfaction– to the satisfaction of the moral universe. Hard to imagine in the middle of the mess.
So God can use death (Lazarus) for life (resurrection). He can use blindness (Why was this man born blind– Jesus said) for sight. He can use injustice (the cross) for justice. We do this on a very small human scale. We inject people with minute viruses to protect them against a larger illness. God is far greater, but is also free to use everything at his disposal for our ultimate good and honor and of course the honor of His name.
But, we are free to take God to court as often as we want. That is what the laments Psalms are there for. God has provided them for that faith mechanism. Go and read the Psalms aloud to the Judge. Check out Psalm 22– My God Why have you forsaken me– a legal charge of unfaithfulness. Use it– own it– cry it out to God. Give your heart voice. If you are like me, anger, rage, sadness, frustration, cynicism, will ooze out of the depths of your soul. Go for it.
The line that must not be crossed is to– at last– convict God in your heart as unjust. That is beyond our freedom. It is a wrong verdict. It is biblical foolishness. Having said that, our hearts can be very hurt, wounded, enraged, angry, blaming, etc. I have found that the close a person is to God experientially in their walk, the quicker they will charge God in His celestial court. It is a function of faith. A person with little faith in the goodness of God seems to lack the fortitude to charge God based upon that goodness.
In the end, God is sovereign and so will no doubt– to some degree or another– be charged with unfaithfulness by our hearts. That is what our hearts are designed to do. We cannot see what God sees. The Bible says that His ways are higher than our ways. In the end, He will be proven just, and good, and honoring, and loving to us. But for now it is hard to see.
If you or your heart takes God to trial, you are in good company. Abraham, David, Jeremiah, Job, and even Jesus (Psalm 22).
Job took God to trial. He wanted vindication. He wanted his day in court. He wanted God to answer for the many obvious injustices. Job was a righteous and God-fearing man. In the end, the trial got delayed as Job temporarily withdrew his case. I think that we are to identify with Job and his processing of such apparently unjust treatment. But the punchline is this; in the end, God will make His case– and it will prove to us that the path that we were on was the highest path of glory for us and for God’s purposes– but that is impossible for us to see right now. That is a faith statement.
To adress the second matter Maggie brings up. ‘Oh contrare mon frere!’ God promises that there will be total fixing of everything that is broken– everything that has been bent will be straightened, everything empty filled. This is the huge vast punchline of Christianity. Our God is so huge and vast and big that he will make all things right, every tear wiped away, every pain removed, wounds healed. This is the point. This is the ultimate good news. It may be done in some dynamic equivalence– but every victim will eventually bow their knees and say, “You are indeed God”. No one will go into the afterlife feeling forgotten or gypped. Every eye will be opened to see the good overarching plan of God. It involved chaos, injustice, death, betrayal– but it led to unbelievable life and glory. If you want to see this in action, look again at the cross. The greatest of all injustices, betrayals, apparent indifferences (My God, My God, why have you forsaken me), but it resulted in the greatest of all glories– Jesus’ resurrection and mine. Look again– deeply–at what God can do. Look into the eyes of Jesus again.
God can give back the 20 minutes and will (Changing Lanes). God can give back what was taken from Mike (and promises to surprising him with such an outpouring in His time).
Our God is vastly faithful and capable. This is at the heart of what the Bible proclaims. We must ask God for faith (a fruit of the Spirit) to see these things as really really valid.
That is an awesome response, but are you sure??
The betrayals and crimes are so big. How?? do we have faith enough to know that it will happen when all seems so far from reality and people’s hearts are so hard? How when time is gone??
Someday I hope I feel like Mary after Jesus saw her after the resurrection as He looked at her with a gentle kindness and warmth and invited her close. Someday I want to be past the weeping for the crimes committed.
I will Praise Him in This Storm by Casting Crowns is great. How can I find Him whispering through the rain.
Our God gives and takes away the pain even though I weep buckets very often because of the crimes. I will continue to Praise Him through this Storm where my raft feels like capsizing sometimes.
Ken, may I be a witness for my Father, God, the ‘accused’ in your trial? I have this to say. God gave us all a free will. We are not his ‘Stepford children’. He loved us enough to let us decide, and we can go either way. In our wishes to rid the world of all evil and wrong-doing, are we willing to sacrifice our free will? I humbly submit, do we hold Him accountable for ‘who’ people choose to be? If we collectively chose to obey the Ten Commandments, we wouldn’t need a court system here. We would be safe, carefree, loving, joyful… I come from horrible abuse, so I ‘get’ you’re saying, Ken. But God (lovingly) gave us guidelines by which to live, and we choose not.
As for suffering, loss, sorrow, death caused by “Acts of God” as they are termed, this free will extends even in nature/weather, etc. Where would you/we want God to draw the line?
Peace and grace to you, Ken.
Pastor Bill: “But in Biblical Christianity, there is a hope of a final trial, where consolation finally takes place for everyone. No matter who you are, what you believe, what you have one, or what was done to you; there is a promised reckoning– the metaphor is that of a celestial trial. The perpetrator could be a person, many persons, a race, an institution, organized church– or even God Himself. At that trial– says the Bible– all victims will be made whole, the rightful tears wiped away at last.”
That IS the problem, Pastor Bill. Christian dogma teaches forgiveness of sins, which by definition, means that there will be no justice in the next life. Simply put, if there is no punishment, how can there be a crime?
I am not following you Ken. At the very core of Christianity– though hard to see by the actions and inactions of many ‘christians’ is justice– perfect absolute justice. That is the absolute good news that sets Christianity apart from — as far as I know– all other religions. There is perfect exaction of punishment of perpetrators and repayment to victims. If this is not so, Christianity falls to pieces. I think that you and I are on the same page — at least in one sense. There must be perfect punishment for there to be celestial justice (no more and no less than perfect justice). No justice, no God.
First and foremost, Pastor Bill, I must respectfully disagree with your main premise: that Christianity and only Christianity delivers perfect justice. Quite to the contrary, the Law of Karma provides the most perfect justice imaginable — a commodity only possible in a universe that allows for reincarnation.
Rather by definition, Christianity can’t even come close. If someone wrongfully injures you, the damage is often permanent. All too often, there are no temporal remedies. And if the perpetrator is a Christian, he is by definition forgiven. No justice in this life, and no justice in the next.
Now, consider the deleterious effects that incidents like this have on rational attempts at generating faith. Quite simply, if you can’t reasonably expect to count on Jesus to do the right thing in the here and now, wouldn’t you have to be a blithering idiot to trust his ability to do the right thing in the hereafter? This is why I focus on Jas 4:17: “Qui non prohibet cum potest, jubet.” For Jesus to walk on the other side of the road like the Pharisee he obviously is carries with it a price.
There is no right without a remedy, and no crime without punishment.
And then, there is the problem of Rom. 8:28, et seq. Not only do we not have equal access to salvation, but our response itself is predetemined. Proginōskō and proorizō (in vs. 29) aren’t exactly open to a broad range of interpretation. “God has mercy on whom he wants to have mercy, and he hardens whom he wants to harden.” Rom. 9:18. In short, your god can expose me to experiences so inimical to development of faith that no reasonable person would have it. For if my heart has been “hardened,” who is guilty of applying the cement?
Finally, there is the problem of “disposable people.” Bottom line, if your god exists, he treats us like cosmic sex-toys. Consider the fate of the illegitimate son of David and Bath’sheba: Born only to die in pain, the victim of a savage and remorseless ancient tribal god. Or, the daughters of Lot, ordered to surrender their virginity to strangers by a supposedly “righteous” father. Gen. 19:4-8. Or, the unfortunate children of Jericho, whose only discernible sin was in being born in the right place to be victims of a divinely-ordered act of genocide. All your god had to do was give them all a burning desire to live in Cleveland; problem solved, without bloodshed.
Words have meaning. And as you concede, without justice, Christianity falls to pieces.
While men may be forgiven — presuming repentance and restitution — your god can have no excuse. If he injures me, it was done knowingly and by definition, out of sheer malice. After all, if the only morality is that “might makes right and the ends justify the means,” the word itself is drained of meaning.
I just learned last week that radio evangelist Bob Larson closed out his “ministry” and stiffed his creditors for over $1.3 million dollars, after looting it to put the money in his own pockets. I did work exposing him fifteen years ago (http://home.earthlink.net/~19ranger57/blies1.htm). Mail fraud, tax fraud, adultery, ghostwritten books, faked exorcisms … your god was too impotent to do anything about it. That is the lesson your god teaches: if you can have wild sex with that thirteen-year-old girl, then by all means, do; if you are powerful enough, you will never get caught. But if you stand on Christian principles, you will get run over. Though it applies to the law, Justice Brandeis minced no words:
“Decency, security and liberty alike demand that government officials be subjected to the same rules of conduct that are commands to the citizen. In a government of laws, existence of the government will be imperiled if it fails to observe the law scrupulously. Our government is the potent, the omnipresent teacher. For good or ill, it teaches the whole people by its example. Crime is contagious. If the government becomes a lawbreaker, it breeds contempt for law; it invites every man to become a law unto himself.”
Olmstead v. United States, 277 U.S. 438, 485 (1928) (Brandeis, J., dissenting).
Your god teaches by example, and if there is any being more venal, or imbued with a more execrable character, it is difficult to even imagine one. Ming the Merciless is a veritable humanitarian, by comparison.
How can anyone forgive a god whose character reeks with such a stench of cruelty and irrepressible selfishness?
Without going into the religion of it all, I want to understand why Americans fin it so difficult to forgive. The premise that there can be no real forgiveness without real justice is a faulty one. With justice comes revenge not forgiveness. If somebody does something wrong to you and that person suffers, either through law, or god or society, than you feel vindicated. You have had your revenge. And there can be no forgiveness where there is revenge. True forgiveness is to be able to look at the man who murdered your child in the eye and say “I forgive you”. But I don’t think Americans know how to do that. Because you guys believe in the concept of “an eye for an eye” (btw, the bible does not say “a life for a life” so why do so many Americans still favor capital punishment is beyond me).
If you truly want to forgive, you have to find that forgiveness inside you and not in how the perpetrator is judged by others. And that kind of forgiveness is the real forgiveness. You will finally have a peace you have never imagined. Your soul will return to the innocence of a child and you will be able to sleep peacefully again. And that kind of forgiveness has to come from inside you. From your heart. And here is how you reach it.
1. Accept the wrong in its entirety.
2. Learn to differentiate between the sin and the sinner.
3. Remember, the sinner is also a child of God.
4. Understand that you were wronged by the sin not the sinner.
5. Hate the sin, not the sinner.
6. Forgive the sinner.
It is very important to differentiate between the sin and the sinner because the it does not matter who the perpetrator was. You are hurting because you lost something. But you could have lost that something any number of ways. But having the perpetrator in front of you gives you a target towards whom you can direct all your anger. As long as you have a target to direct your anger, you will be angry. Even after you get “justice”, you will not feel peace because that anger will still be there. So in order to find peace, you must first get rid of the anger and that cannot happen as long as there is somebody towards whom you can channel your anger. Once you focus your hate and anger towards a concept (sin) rather than a person (sinner), your anger quickly loses steam because it no longer has a person to feed off from. And very soon you will find yourself forgiving and even forgetting the wrong done to you.
Shubhra,
I would recommend the entire Forgiveness series to you. Most of the issues that you raise are addressed. I am working on a book that will clearly discuss the Biblical concept of forgiveness in greater detail.
But in a nutshell, let me say this. If there was no compassionate overseeing God, or if the Deity chose to not participate in the affairs of mankind at all, then I would be generally in agreement with you and your assessment regarding forgiveness. The human heart is indeed unwilling to differentiate between justice and vengeance. History is all the proof one needs.
However, if there is a just God, in fact the just God portrayed in the Old and New Testaments of the Bible, another option opens up for us. Now there exists a justice that is actually just, that rightly adjudicates all crimes (and all aspects of all crimes), rightly condemns the perpetrator and then restores victims to wholeness. Imagine how easy it would be for victims to forgive if their had been a just and fair trial before a compassionate just Judge, a fair verdict, and a fair restitution. If you were to listen to the Forgiveness series, you would hear a reference to JRR Tolkien’s concept of ‘consolation.’ Consolation is what happens in all good and lasting fairy tales so that the story teller in the end can say “And they all lived happily ever after…”.
The Bible speaks about such a justice that is twofold—a justice that rightly adjudicates all crimes, demands a just verdict and punishment, and secondly, the victim is fully restored to wholeness. This is core of the good news of the Cross. Pure justice without vengeance. Heaven requires such a consolation. In Heaven former defendants and plaintiffs in perfect harmony, no unresolved justice issues. Every resident totally made whole for all crimes, wounds, hurts, etc. This is what Biblical ‘forgiveness’ really looks like and feels like. At its core is real justice—a higher justice than you have imagined. It is a crime to require victims to forsake justice—a secondary re-victimization.
Let me put it another way. Biblically speaking, God Himself never forgives a single crime until His Son justly paid for them all. God never forgave until there was justice. Why then would it be a godly thing for victims here to forsake justice and forgive anyway—to require them to be more magnanimous than God? What then can we say about God’s mercy? My suggestion to you is this. It was God’s justice that required all crimes, all sins to be judicially considered to the full extent of the Law. It was God’s justice that demanded death as a legitimate payment for all sins. It was God’s mercy that led Him to send His Son to pay death for crimes that His Son did not commit. It is indeed by His stripes, we are healed.
So then, what can be said about a Christian victim’s present forgiveness for crimes? 2000 years ago, Jesus died for all of the crimes of all of God’s people. So by faith then, Christians can access completed justice (a real experience) for all crimes committed against us by any of God’s people. They are paid for in reality—by faith Christians can experience them as real now. The Apostle Paul in Ephesians 3 teaches that Christians can by faith, experience the fullness of God (a restitution in some wonderful dynamic equivalence) in place of the loss caused by the crime. By faith, Christians can begin to experience a powerful , yet imperfect consolation for crimes committed against them. A consolation based upon an external trial and an external healing. Such a forgiveness then is stunningly easy.
So What you are saying is that Christians should be able to forgive because they have faith and their faith tells them that they will get justice at the hands of God who will eventually make them whole. Frankly, it does not matter what reason you need to forgive. It is important that you forgive. What you are talking about is the Final Judgement when God will judge everyone for their crimes and hurt and make them whole. If that thought helps you forgive those who have wronged you than I am all for it.
As for being more magnanimous than God, forgiveness is not about being magnanimous. Forgiveness is about finding inner peace. When you hate someone, you carry a fire within you that burns you day and night while the person you hate does not even know about it. And if you need some kind of earthly justice that will hurt the perpetrator in order for you to be “whole” again, than we are not talking about forgiveness, we are taking about revenge. And revenge does not bring that inner peace. Seeing the person who had hurt you get hurt will not bring you peace. It will only dull the hurt you feel.
Besides, what right do you and me, mere humans, have to seek revenge on another human. And what right does any one of us have to judge another human. The Bible says he who has never sinned shall throw the first stone. Our sin may not be as big as that of another person, but we are all sinners. And by holding grudge in our hearts, we become even bigger sinner.
Forgive not because it will affect the person who has hurt you. Forgive because it will help make you whole. If you are saying that on the Judgement Day God will make us all whole, so we need not forgive until we have received “real” justice, than you are condemning us to to the fire of hurt and revenge while we are still alive and that is worse than the fires of hell that we may experience after death.
Nobody knows what will happen after we die. Nobody has seen hell or heaven. Judgement Day is still nothing more than a promise. Our life is what we make of it in this world while we are still alive. And if we spend these years burning in the fire of revenge and hatred than this revenge and hatred will end up defining us. Avoid it and learn to forgive, by whatever means necessary.