Forgiveness Urgency

Part 4, When the Ego Gets in the Way

We get ourselves into difficult straights when we are determined to be right, and everyone else wrong, despite every shred of evidence to the contrary! When you presume to always be right, as humans love to do, you usually damage relationships and sabotage any chance of trusting intimacy. It’s the fallacy of pride, which tends to lead to bad places (see Proverbs 16:18 for that one), with so little to show for your effort except to be along, but “right!”

Pride and humility can be defined simply as:

• Pride: when it’s about you
• Humility: When it’s not
• Pride: I’m righteous all on my own => “it’s their fault!”

We deceive ourselves by our own selfish steps toward our own manufactured sense of righteousness. How can God forgive what you refuse to acknowledge?

Matthew 6:23–24

Community Relationships Out of Order

23 Therefore, if you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother or sister has something against you,

24 leave your gift there in front of the altar. First go and be reconciled to them; then come and offer your gift.

Jesus poses an irony. If you are about to offer your gift to God is referring to your efforts at a healthy relationship with God. You are offering your gift in hope of building your peace with God.

But then, you recall that a brother/sister has a grief with you; that you have unfinished business with your human community. Then you must tend to that first. In Jesus mind, you have just stepped into an ironic hypocrisy. You want peace with God, but that won’t happen until you have peace within your community.

Then Jesus moves his story into a comical pause. He actually counsels you to put God on hold while you take care of this other business. Imagine standing before God, the creator of the universe, and then telling him, “Would you mind waiting for just one moment while I take care of this other business?”

Imagine if you did that to the President of the United States, or the Pope in the Vatican. They’ve made themselves available and you put them on hold. Who would do something so disrespectful? But that what makes Jesus’s stories so fascinating. Pay attention, these are rip-roaring funny scenarios he is presenting for our attention and learning.

Jesus can tell us to go ahead and put God on hold. He teaches this because he knows things about God we don’t understand, yet. After all, he is talking about his father. He may have added this comment at the original telling, “Go ahead and do that, my Dad won’t mind.” Who knows God the Father better than his own son?

But are you catching the urgency of this lesson? Putting God on hold so you can repair a breach in the Fellowship of believers is just that important. Jesus presents it with a comical twist to show us how crucial and urgent community goodness must be. God himself doesn’t mind being put on hold while you tend to the matter.

There’s another lesson about damaged fellowship. Your earnest effort at fellowship with God is quote futile until you take care of priorities. An even greater irony is that proceeding with a callous spirit will actually find you yourself on hold instead of God, because he’s not answering your worship full act until you do actually take care of your priorities.

Colossians 3:13

Bear with each other and forgive one another if any of you has a grievance against someone. Forgive as the Lord forgave you.

χαριζόμενοι ἑαυτοῖς

Goodness, that phrase is a mouth full dentals and labiles. It means to forgive one another, but Paul invents a new sense by literally stating:

“Gracify each other”

χαρίζομαι (karizomai) literally means, “to exercise grace, freely show favor.” Derived from the noun “grace” (χάρις), it aggressively puts χάρις into a verb form, Grace action. Yeah, Paul takes the liberty to create new words (Merriam-Webster might object)

Paul creatively redefines radical forgiving, with the picture of “gracifying” one another. The emphasis falls on the generosity of the giver, not the worthiness of the recipient.

1. Freely cast favor and kindness

2. Cancel out offenses and debts

3. Be kind to people before they are kind to you

Jesus has a similar teaching in the “Golden Rule” (Matthew 7:12),

“So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you,

for this sums up the Law and the Prophets.”

Jesus directs us to stop counting the good acts we do trying to faithfully fulfill the Law, or as some cultures perceive as the Tao. You focus on radical kindness, caring for people despite their lack of lovability, and things will fall very naturally in place. No log book needed. Don’t bother trying to impress people because God does not even count the displays of drama.

Matthew 6:2–4

2 So when you give to the needy, do not announce it with trumpets, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and on the streets, to be honored by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full. 3 But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, 4 so that your giving may be in secret. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.”

Sigmund Freud would balk at all this. If he were alive today, I’d be receiving quite a load of “helpful comments.” Freud disputed the whole idea of altruism, kindness as independent action. He would argue that humans must have a certain motive in their kind acts. Even a missionary back home meeting with a church women’s group who sponsor his work. He can talk all he wants about dramatic, sacrificial serving with so little reward. Ah, but there is his big payoff. It may not be financial, but it’s in all the sympathy and emotional stroking he receives.

Freud has contributed many good things to the study of Psychology, which means the “study of the soul,” but he is still the fallible human proposing his understanding (AKA, “bias”). Freud limits his thinking to a very horizontal perspective, seeing only the external behavior, avoiding the deeper longings of the human heart. It’s ironic that someone so devoted to the study of the soul was only seeing the responses of the soul.

I would agree with Freud, that many people absolutely carry hidden agendas in their activities. Personal drama will play out quite a narrative. But that’s not the case with every human. He steps into the Dichotomy Fallacy, assuming people are totally either/or. If he can one case of something, he can propose evidence of the whole. He blames the many for the sins of the few.

Jesus presents a whole new dimension to the task of forgiving and “gracifying” one another. It’s found in ἀγάπη (agapē), aggressive “love” which does not require reciprocal responses. ἀγάπη means to love for the sake of love itself.

Many religious congregations have a moment in their services for passing the peace. Basically, take a few moments to appreciate and acknowledge each other. I would propose taking that to a higher level of ἀγάπη care. It would work like this,

“I love you, and there’s nothing you can do about it!”

Yikes! How about that for unnerving your fellow worshipper? But seriously, isn’t that what ἀγάπη is really all about? Protest all you want, but I still care about you as a divinely created child of God, with value beyond your immediate comprehension. You’re valuable because God says so, and he has been seeking out us rebellious humans ever since we left the Garden of Eden. The whole story of the Bible from Genesis 3 through Revelation 22 is about God chasing after his people.

Forgiveness by grace, sidestepping your Ego, is summarized in this way,

Justice: “Treating people as they deserve”

Mercy: “Not treating people as they deserve”

Forgiveness: “Forfeiting your right to revenge”

Reality, everyone behaves like a jerk from time to time. Some much more than their allotted human quota. Most of us, occasionally, but just admit it, we all have good and bad days, and we’re just glad to have survived on some of those miserable days. That’s the way it goes with life among the human species on this planet. We humans have plenty of clumsy moments. Don’t get so worked about it. That’s why we need to live by the Rule of Grace, to give each other, including ourselves, to simply be human.

“There are only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God, ‘Thy will be done,’ and those to whom God says, in the end, “Thy will be done.”

— C. S. Lewis, The Great Divorce, chap. 9

BTW, it takes honest, objective discernment to expose your blatant Pride from honest victimhood. Sometimes, you are innocent. Offense fell upon you for not valid reason. Or a devious person is scapegoating you, displacing their guilt and consequent anger upon you instead of themselves clearing their conscience before they come before God at the altar.

But that’s God’s business to sift the phonies from the earnest seekers of God’s peace. But make no mistake, be very sure of your innocence. Your pride will fool you. Can you honestly confess your humble admission of your efforts to not seek revenge, nor spoken poorly in return for the offense.

Next:

Forgiveness: Revenge Forfeited, Part 5) Letting God do His Job

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