Unfortunately,
though, my initial assessment stands, and recent events bear this
out.
Right
now, the Episcopal Church is embroiled in a conflict over
homosexuality, the authority of the Bible, and the legitimacy
of the church
policy. The future of the church itself is at stake. But
what concerns me more than anything is the anger and hostility
and
intolerance I’ve witnessed as this controversy has run
its course. Oh, and I don’t mean intolerance toward gays.
I mean intolerance toward each other. The anger and hostility
and intolerance I’m talking about has been directed by
Christians against Christians. And yet, week after week, we
join hands and pray the Lord’s Prayer, failing to recognize
the disconnect between our words and our actions.
We’ve
seen parents forgive the very people who took the lives of their
children, survivors forgive murderous terrorists,
rape victims forgive their attackers. High-profile victims like
missionary Gracia Burnham openly and genuinely forgive militant
abductors and cold-blooded killers. But Christians on opposite
sides of a supercharged issue like abortion or homosexuality for
some reason find it difficult to forgive one another.
I
don’t just mean an individual, one-time expression of
forgiveness. I suspect that if two individual Christians on opposite
sides of the abortion debate, for example, felt the need to ask
each other’s forgiveness, each one would eventually extend
it. What is sorely needed, though, is for all of us to cultivate
a lifestyle of forgiveness toward entire groups of people—not
compromising on our convictions, not backing down on what we believe
to be right, but living in an attitude of ongoing forgiveness toward
each other.
But
how do we cultivate that, especially if we feel passionately
about an
injustice or sin or any one of a host of theologically
and socially controversial issues? Before we even get to the place
where we can start to figure that out, however, there’s a
more important question we each need to answer for ourselves: Why
should we live in a state of ongoing forgiveness?
The
obvious answer is that it’s one of the most basic of
Christ’s commands and a hallmark of our faith. Matthew 18:21–22
records Jesus’ conversation with Peter in which the disciple
asks just how many times he can be expected to forgive someone
who has wronged him. You get the impression that Peter is really
frustrated and has been down this road more than once. He seems
to want Jesus to say, “Seven times is more than enough! Don’t
even think of forgiving your brother an eighth time! You have a
right to hold a grudge at that point!” But no. Jesus comes
up with a number so large that he may as well have told Peter to
forgive his offender an infinite number of times, because that’s
what he meant.
A
less obvious answer to the question of why is what it does to
us when we live
with unforgiveness toward others. The disconnect
between our words and actions creates a disconnect in our spirit,
and we live a disjointed, less-than-whole existence. And it’s
not enough to point to the many times we have forgiven others,
even those who continue to hurt us. Forgiving your spouse for being
insensitive to your needs does not cancel out the necessity of
forgiving all those dastardly Democrats or Republicans, pro-abortionists
or anti-abortionists, pro-gays or anti-gays. Try as we might to
get around it, there’s simply no such thing as partial forgiveness
in the kingdom of God.
But
back to the question of how. The answer to that begins with an
understanding
that changing a heart
attitude that’s been
firmly entrenched, possibly for decades, is a process—and
not always an easy one. As always, prayer makes the process easier,
and in this case, we already know God’s will: God wants Christians
to live in love and unity, and forgiveness toward one another is
essential for that to happen. For some people, the animosity they
feel is so intense that they need to start by asking simply for
the willingness to forgive. But still, it’s a start, and
a good one.
It gets harder, of course, especially when we get to the point
of figuring out why we resist forgiving others. Any good counselor
has the answer to that: We find it hardest to forgive in others
the character flaws we see in ourselves. Your militancy exposes
my militancy; your intolerance reveals my intolerance; your judgmentalism
reflects my judgmentalism; your pride mirrors my pride. Not a pretty
picture, but an accurate one.
The
bottom line is this: Forgiveness begets forgiveness. God forgives
us.
We forgive others. They forgive us. And don’t forget
this one: We forgive ourselves. The process of getting from God’s
forgiveness, through giving and seeking forgiveness, to forgiving
ourselves may take a longer time and more steps than we want to
think about. Living in an attitude of ongoing forgiveness in the
midst of conflict may be difficult to achieve. And deciding ahead
of time to forgive our adversaries no matter how a conflict is
resolved may seem downright impossible in the heat of that conflict.
But each step of forgiveness along the way leads to a life of wholeness—and
that ever-elusive life of love and unity with our brothers and
sisters in Christ.
Copyright
©2004 Marcia Ford Marcia
Ford, a frequent contributor to explorefaith.org, is the author
of Memoir
of a Misfit, Meditations for Misfits,
and 101
Most Powerful Promises of the Bible. You may contact her at misfit@marciaford.com.
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