A New Hope ...

In just days the new President Elect will become the next President of the United States.  Barack Obama takes over at probably one the worst times in our country’s history.  Economic recession unrivaled since the last great depression, 2 land wars in Iraq and Afghanistan (not to mention the one on “terror”), Violence in Israel (again), and probably the worst casualty of all in the last 8 years – the compromise of our values and freedoms with unjust laws like the so-called “Patriot Act”, policies on torture, and the Guantanamo prison system to name a few.

But despite times being at one of their worst, this is still a time for optimism.  There is still a way to imagine hope.  With a new President, comes a new way of looking at things, a new way of handling things, and hopefully … new = better.  The best rational for hope is the current state of how horrible things have become.  While they could and perhaps will get a bit worse, it is harder and harder to imagine how, and easier and easier to imagine them improving.  Imagination then is the launching point, the beginning of hope.

And if hope can take hold despite the obvious, what else is possible?  There are those who believe that power of your imagination is more real than you give it credit.  Imagining your own success, becomes the first step in achieving your own success.  Science and the Bible seem united on this point, for the scripture says … “as a man thinks so is he”.  How you think of yourself, what you believe about yourself, becomes who you are. 

The reason why Hope is so important, is that constant dwelling on negativity can lead you only downwards, not upwards.  Depression feeds on itself.  The more down-hearted and sad you become by focusing on the negative facts of life, the more the cycle repeats and intensifies.  There is no question about the preponderance of negative facts we are surrounded by, the question is only what we choose to focus upon.  The first bit of the good news of the gospel is HOPE!  The first thing the gospel message brings to the human heart, is relief, is joy, is hope.  It is the beginning of the end of negative spirals that grow out of control.

Even the most devout Christian with an unshakeable faith, can find themselves wallowing in negativity.  Their prayers become ones of constant appeals for forgiveness and deliverance; with joy and appreciation wholly absent from their minds.  The small victories that come from God are overlooked in lieu of the large looming negative facts of life that call our attention in bold letters and loud tones.  Evil demands attention.  Think about that.  Why?  Why is attention so important to the success of the evil agenda in our lives?  Is it because as we believe about ourselves so are we?  Is it because even Science and the Bible are in sync on this topic? 

“As a man thinks.”  What do you spend your day thinking about?  There is no need to read scripture 24 hours a day, or spend 24 hours in fervent prayer, or deep in nature to answer this question appropriately.  The folks who would tell you to read your Bible more, or to pray more, are never happy with how often you do read your Bible or how much time you do spend in prayer.  They have the “never enough” disease.  “Never enough’s” cannot be happy with how much effort you put forth on anything because … it is never enough.  Nothing you do ever matters, because again … it is never enough.  This disease is an insidious type of negativity that belittles important things and leaves you completely without any satisfaction (a hallmark of evil plans and designs).

But back to my question, what do you think about?  My guess would be, put simply whatever it is you see.  Your work, your family, the TV, the Internet, whatever it is you watch or spend a good deal of time seeing, is what you think about.  Sometimes the imagery even slips into your subconscious and comes out in your dreams.  And if you think about it long enough, it becomes a part of who you are.  Therefore, evil demands constant attention in order to put within you seeds of negativity that can grow and grow until they reach maturity in your actions.

Bad news usually dominates the news shows … but why?  It gets the ratings.  Ratings rule what you see.  Evil demands attention.  People are not as riveted by good news as they are by catastrophe, so the cameras are always looking for what is next.  It is endemic in every society, in every culture on earth … again why?  If an evil consciousness did not exist it would not be so universally found in our world.  But all mankind suffers from this phenomenon.  And God knew what we needed above all things … Hope.

What if you spent some time actively putting all the negative facts of life on a shelf for a while, and allowed yourself to think on other things.  What if you focused on hope for a few minutes, and began to imagine what hope could do to change your life, your surroundings, your family, you.  If things could be better for you, what would they look like?  What would just a small step towards making your life better look like?  How could it come about?  Could you influence it coming about?  Can you imagine it, clearly?

“As a man thinks.”  The transforming power of the mind’s eye is not to be underestimated.  Some of the greatest athletes of our time could visualize themselves making the plays.  Some of the greatest mathematicians can simply see the solutions in their minds.  It is possible.  If you can begin to see yourself succeed in your mind perhaps you will begin to see yourself succeed in real life.  But no need to stop there …

What if you began to imagine what you are capable of where it comes to serving God?  What if you started imagining what Heaven might be like?  What if you started imagining what a perfect relationship with someone you love might look like?  What about perfect service.  If you began to imagine how good, good can truly be, might you start becoming what you see?  It is all about focus.  When we place it on good, on Christ, we are changed in a profound way.  When we abandon the cycle of negativity we become new creatures.

Some of the most negative people I know are the blindest to their own condition.  I know, I know, if you read my last 3 blogs you might be quick to point out I should be looking in the mirror (well at least if you only read them casually J).  When I have confronted them with the negativity they exude, they are usually surprised.  They don’t think of themselves in that way.  The truth is, negativity has so become a part of who they are they are completely immune to detecting it within themselves.  So how do you know if negativity has gotten a hold on you?

Start by taking a minute and examining what a perfect moment might look like?  Where would you like to be, what would you like to be doing, who would benefit from it?  If you have no clue – you might be infected with negativity.  Some who have little imagination or are not terribly creative use the lack of these 2 traits as reasons why they cannot imagine “good things”.  This excuse is merely a cover for negativity.  The disease has them.  Ask yourself, how many people like talking with you?  If they initiative contact often, and tend to stay for a while, they must like what they hear.  Negative people tend to repel others, not draw them closer.  But no matter what your state of infection, we all suffer from it from time-to-time, and we are all able to put it out of our lives if we choose to.

Start by refocusing on good, on Christ, and on Hope that He has brought you.  You have hope, because no matter how bad it is now, it will not always be that way.  A time is coming when peace will reign.  A time is coming when pain has no more a part in your life in any way shape or form.  A time is coming when you ask your God a question, you will be looking Him in the eyes.  A time is coming when the fulfillment you experience so overwhelms you that you have no words to describe it, bliss is inadequate, and service is treasured above all else.  A time is coming that even Obama cannot envision, past the kingdoms and administrations of this world, is a government based on love of others.  A place where self does not exist, and life is everlasting.  A time is coming, whether we have hope in it or not, it is coming.  Better for us to hold our hope and cherish it …

Life After Death ...

You would think that being born into a family that serves our Creator God would give you an advantage.  Perhaps the children of pastors, teachers, and Bible Study workers have an advantage over those who are born into a world of hate and ignorance.  Or perhaps you would think advantage comes from being a servant of the Lord for many many years.  Thinking that birthright or experience are a blessing may be correct, but in terms of advantages over the new found convert to the faith – it means almost nothing.

There is a story Christ told regarding two sons, a prodigal who takes his money early, leaves home, lives wild, loses everything and comes home expecting to be a servant.  Most believers are familiar with this story, it represents the majority of those who come to find God out of the world of hate.  But I identify more with the other brother, the other son who stayed home, did what he was told, worked hard, got no special recognition, and was a bit upset when a feast was made for the one who came back forgiven.  No, I do not resent new found converts for finding God, but I do envy them.

Why envy the new guy?  You almost never hear that one.  You see for the new guy, forgiveness is a new experience, and wiping out a past of bad deeds and seeing the wisdom of good is new.  For me it is understood.  But the other brother who stayed home had a fatal flaw in the story of Christ.  He believed he did everything he was told.  He believed he had earned His Father’s favor.  He worked for his reward.  And yet he failed.  His pride was his undoing.  The cancerous addictive nature of sin absolutely rules our carnal natures, we are slave to it.  Our ONLY out is to throw ourselves before the throne of Grace and ask for its dominion over our will and lives.

The new guy has a new experience.  He does not yet know what death really is.  There comes a time when after serving the Lord for many years, or trying to serve Him anyway, that you begin to realize how absolutely HORRIBLE sin really is.  It is as if you discovered the true nature of crack cocaine for the first time.  It is not the substance of feeling good, it is the key poison in killing everything you love, and then you.  This is what sin is.  What all sin is.  Past all the marketing campaigns that evil devises, past all the rationalizations we dream up, past the momentary ‘high’ we might feel when in the act of sin – comes the realization it is death on a stick.

No one is immune.  Least of all me.  And now days, when I screw up, really screw up, do something so incredibly stupid, predictable, and destructive – even if it is just a thought I harbor in my mind for much longer than I know better – I discover death again, up close and personal.  Me and the brother who stayed home in Christ’s parable I think share a knowledge of how deep the pain is from experiencing sin up close and personal.  We struggle with it, try to hide it when we do it, and long for the kind of celebration our wild-living brother gets when we find ourselves prostrate before our God again.

For me there is such a thing as life after death, but not the idea of my soul existing after my physical form returns to the dust.  That is not a Biblical teaching, and is counter to the logic of our God.  But my body need not decay for me to cozy up to death.  Every time I embrace evil, I literally jump right in the coffin and beg for the dirt.  I find myself looking back at my level of stupidity in dumb founded silence with no words, no excuses, no one to blame but me.  And I am amazed that I could do that yet again.  This is truly death.  Eternal sleep that follows the justice of a final fire we call hell, will be a rest, will be peace – it will be the final peace only the wicked could truly appreciate.  For to live in a state of evil is to experience a living hell, a living death, a living level of pain that is off the charts, that is the truer meaning of hell.  Eternal sleep is mercy compared to that.  This the knowledge that staying at home brings.

So where is the life I talked about?  It is found yet again at the foot of the cross.  As I find myself back there again, watching the blood of my Savior God drip down the wooden implement of torture.  I know He is there for me again.  I put Him there again.  It takes this to restore me.  It took this to bring me back to God clean again.  The cost of my evil must be paid, the mercy of my God, requires the blood of His innocence for my guilt.  My sin is not paid for cheaply.  It is not just the agony of Christ that will cover me.  It is my own realization His agony is my fault.  It is for me He does this.  It is for me, His love is this great for me – I cannot even begin to imagine why.  I cannot even begin to imagine why He looks at me this way, why He would go this far for me, again and again.

I am forgiven.  In the eyes of my Father God, I am pure, seen again through the robes of His Son’s righteousness despite my addictive stupidity.  Heaven can forgive me.  Heaven has love enough.  But me.  I am not that developed.  I am not good enough just yet.  While Heaven may see me as forgiven, all I see is the stupidity I immerse myself in.  I accept the forgiveness the He offers.  But I marvel at its depth.  I wonder at His motive and wisdom in loving such a parasite as me.  Grace is anything but cheap.

But there is again something I crave more than forgiveness, that is reform.  Past the pain of acceptance and forgiveness is the absolute craving to avoid a recurrence.  I do not want death anymore.  I do not want to indulge in my stupidity anymore.  The consequences of stupidity pale in comparison of the price it takes in my Savior’s blood, and in the ache in my heart to get past it again.  Lead us not into temptation.  A phrase that becomes the mantra of my life.  To change the core of who I am.  To change the desires of my heart.  To bring my heart into alignment with the will and wishes of a perfect God.  This is my ultimate desire, my highest ambition, my finest goal.

The thing about living at home in the family of God is that when you screw up, your siblings are usually the first to point it out.  More often than not, they take great pride in investigating what you do, and joy in their righteous ridicule of pointing out your obvious misdeeds.  They throw rocks of truth at you.  You see, you know better.  You know way better.  You understand.  Yet here you go again.  The evil one comes to you in this after action moment to try to squeeze out the last ounce of hope from you by reminding you only of everything you already know to be true.  You know better.  What on earth are you doing … again?

But you see the same Father who ran down the road to greet his wayward son in his abject failure, is right outside the door of your room.  He enters, puts His arm around your shoulders and picks you up off the floor again.  He cleans up the wounds you created, heals the pain, and makes you new again.  In His quiet unassuming manner, He is your Father, family Physician, and Savior in one complete package.  He throws no rocks.  He makes no condemning statements of obvious truth.  He meets you right there in the filth you have created, and pulls you out.  He gets your dirt on Him, your smell transfers to Him, your consequences He takes, and you get His cleanliness.  This is the Guy you chose to live with.  It was a good decision.  There is nothing out there in the world of hate waiting for you, but death on a stick.

Living under the roof or the protection of the Father, that is the right choice for me.  I do not envy my brother who experiences great evil.  I would rather share in his great forgiveness, for you see I am just as dirty as he, just as big a failure as he.  The only difference between me and my brother, is I live a little closer to the source of love, and perhaps now we will both share that too.  Life was born from the pain of the cross.  But Hope remains that one day there will be no more need to revisit that site again.  One day the God and Savior of my life, will fully and completely change the core of me, perfecting in me His own image, His own will, His own love.  My Hope clings to this as tightly as my Faith that He will yet execute it within me.

When you give your life to God, give it all.  Give to Him, your thoughts, your desires, your motives, your actions, your inner being, your personality, your hopes, your dreams, your valued things, and your most precious relationships.  When you give your life to God, give it all.  There is life after death for me.  And I pray to the only one who can affect this change within me, that in spite of me, He will make it so in me…

Retarded Imaginations ...

It occurs to me that for the last 50 years the best men seem to be able to come up with when imagining the future has been flying cars or vehicles that hover, teleportation, and traveling at light speed.  These are the common conventions of the average science fiction movie.  In the superhero realm, we still dream of flying without machine aid; being stronger, faster, impervious to harm, and better than normal; or simply ‘gifted’ with telekinesis or, telepathy.  These conventions add to our imaginative storytelling, but have become so common, hardly anything new emerges in our world to challenge us with originality.  Perhaps the wise man was right when he pronounced, “there is no new thing under the sun.”

So it begs the question have we become retarded in our imaginations.  Has all the visual eye-candy that inundates us on a regular basis so stunted our minds as to not imagine more than the same tired conventional futures?  More to the point, if the world we live in which is largely run by evil presents this consistent picture of our future (and always without religion in any meaningful way) does that mean that the Universe of God is so limited as well?  Or is this a simple matter of finite minds unable to grasp infinite concepts?  Let’s see.

To begin, close your eyes for minute, imagine the universe as if it were a simple two dimensional map of hundreds of galaxies laid out on an Atlas.  Each galaxy has thousands of stars (or suns).  Each star has several planets that orbit it (or star systems).  The math of the number of planets grows larger than most can fathom in their heads.  But stick with me for a moment.  Imagine the physical distance between just 2 simple stars.  To travel between them, even exceeding light speed, could take centuries.  Science fiction never really tells us how long it takes to accomplish this feat and virtually never attempts it outside of a given galaxy.  Why does it matter?  How does God do it?  O.K. fine, how do the angels do it?  Flapping their wings?  I don’t think so.  Yet it happens.

Plausible answer:  The perfect beings of heaven are able to travel at the speed of thought.  Transversing space in nanoseconds is something we can hardly begin to comprehend.  Why?  Is it because we have accepted the idea that we are dependent on machines to facilitate any distance we must cross?  Or could it be that because traveling even at this incredible speed still sends us to an unknown destination.  We fear the unknown more often than embracing it.

Now let’s attempt to really challenge your mind to think in a way it is not used to.  Everyone understands the concept of a ‘point’ on a piece of paper.  Mark a second point and connect them and you get a line (the beginnings of direction).  Draw an intersecting line with the first one, and you have 2 dimensions.  Now picture in your mind stacking 1000 sheets of paper on top of the first one; this gives you an object with height, width, and length (3 dimensional space as we know it).  But what if ‘mass’ were relevant?  Could the thickness or density of an area of 3 dimensional space become measurable and therefore pliable?  The concept of additional dimensions could be introduced.  What if time itself were negotiable?  Rather than thinking of time as linear, think of all of existence, everything past, everything future, all existing in the space of a nanosecond.  Sound farfetched? 

Is not time a relevant measure already.  For instance, how do you measure a second.  You examine it and it disappears almost as fast as you look at it.  In the space of just a few minutes you easily lose track of the second you were examining.  In the space of an hour, the second becomes even more miniscule.  Now think about what a non-eventful second looks like compare with a month, a year, a decade, a century, and then a millennia.  The individual second becomes smaller and more meaningless when examined against a larger and larger block of time.  At some point, seconds run together.  But this phenomenon is not limited to seconds; the same is true of days, weeks, months, and years – if you look at them through the lens of millions of years.  At some point, even a year looks just like the second did when examined over a long enough period of time.

Now let’s get back to our original second we looked at.  If you were able to think faster, move faster, be faster.  The time of an individual second could slow WAY down.  Ever watched a clock waiting for some future event?  Did it feel like it was taking forever, even though the time you had to wait was not that significant, perhaps only an hour or two?  Ever lost yourself in some activity that was incredibly fun and time seemed to fly by you lightning speed.  You are so absorbed in what you’re doing that you lose concept of time, it’s just gone?  It turns out time may not be relevant is the absolute measure we take it to be.  And why is our imagination so dull in this regard?

We just don’t think about heaven enough.  We get content with our dwarfed picture of the future, instead of expanding our minds with what is in fact probable.  It might not seem important, but when we pigeon hole ourselves with limited prospects we aspire to limited heights.  When we forget what is in fact in store for us, we begin to think that what we have is all there is.  When we indulge in retarding our imaginations it affects our entire lives.  We start looking at everything as routine, we stop seeing the infinite in anything, we become mundane.  It is a subtle attack on hope.  It is a way of dimming the rewards to make looking at now as if now is all there ever may be.

We serve an infinite God.  A God who is able to be everywhere at once (bending of space).  A God who has existed before and after any measure of time (bending of time).  A God who defines what love is (something we study, and have a limited knowledge of, but like our knowledge of space and time, we have lost our desire to understand it more).  The power of God cannot be measured by our minds.  Nor can His love.  Think about it for just a brief second, our God creates things, like He created us.  Things that do not yet exist He is capable of creating.  And the act of creation does neither begin or end with us.  Creation will resume when evil has been exterminated.  And God does not suffer from our limited imaginings.  Nor does He simply borrow from things that already exist and combine them in some new form, which is pretty much our version of ‘new’ ideas.

We were not meant for limitations.  We were meant to live.  To think on a plain we do not often even begin to contemplate in our routine lives.  We were meant to imagine more than we do.  We were meant to experience Joy more than we do, Love more than we do, Peace more than we do.  Discard the limitations you impose on your mind.  And begin to allow God the freedom to expand your capacity.  Allow God to remove the walls you have erected around your capacity.  Do not allow others to define you, or to limit you, allow God to show you what you were truly meant to be.  In the extraordinary words of our contemporary poets Switchfoot, “we were meant to live for something more, but we lost ourselves.”  Think about it …

My Heart Is Shattered ...

The pain that evil has brought with it into this world feels sometimes simply unbearable.  When feeling the sting of love that is NOT returned our hearts melt, our tears flow, and our understanding is often baffled.  When the object of our love is no longer on this earth and therefore unable to return our love for now, we feel a loss akin to no other.  But when we choose to love and are plainly rejected it is our thinking that takes the hit.  We wrestle with questions that have no answers.  Why would the person of our affections not want to bathe in the love we would offer?  Why are our motives questioned?  Why are our deeds ignored?  What did we do to cause this?

When I think of the sadness that has directly impacted my own life from evil, I am astounded that often I have been the center of it all.  I have been the reason for my own pain.  Bad choices.  Gratifying short term desires while truly killing long term fundamentals.  Treating others as objects of conquest rather than precious treasure of association.  My apathy and simple disinterest in the pain of others has led me to a very narrow self interested set of priorities, and my friendships with others suffer as a result.  Cherishing privacy is tantamount to avoiding the world and its need.  But see for a minute through His eyes, and the revelations about my own deficiencies spring forth off the map.

And that is when it hit me like never before … see the effects of evil for just a minute through His eyes.  Imagine the pain our Lord must feel as He watches the events of our lives unfold.  Forget for a minute that He longs to help us avoid causing ourselves such horror; He must deal with our constant rejection of His love as well.  He must ask all the same questions we ponder, and be even more mystified by the lack of real answers for our rejection.  I cannot imagine what it must be like for a parent to personally witness the murder of one of his children by another.  I cannot imagine what it must be like to see the raping and torture that one brother does to another, or one brother does to his very own sister.  Yet God can, because He sees it every day.

And who is He supposed to love?  Just the victims of evil?  The murdered, the raped, the abused?  For are we ALL not equally victims of evil, as well as the perpetrators of these crimes?  Is not our hate just as painful to Him.  Is not our rejection of His constant offers to solve our problems supremely more painful to Him, as He truly is the ONLY one with real solutions for us?  To grieve as He grieves is more than the human heart can bear.  To see the effects of evil, the insidious disease that kills good as its primary goal, to witness it spread and take root, even in the hearts of those who call themselves His servants, His followers, that take on His very name – Christ-ians.  It must be so much more sadness than we can even begin to measure.

We think we know something of rejection.  Most of us have experienced it at least romantically.  But He experiences it as way more than a mere jilted lover or spouse.  He experiences it as our Father, our Family, our Brother, our Savior, and our Friend.  We turn Him away though He gives us the life we have, the very air we breathe.  He must watch us, as we direct our will into the evil it seeks, and then suffer with us as the effects of evil wreak their toll.  To grieve as He grieves is more than humanity was meant to know.  It is what broke the very heart of Christ while on the cross of our redemption.

But it is not empathy with God for the sadness He feels that truly shatters my heart.  It is not the pain I have endured, or more often caused myself, that was capable of breaking this heart of stone.  More recently I have discovered a new phenomenon in Christianity and in myself that broke me and my heart on the rock of the Lord.  Not to grieve as He grieves, but to glimpse love as He loves.  More than all the effects of evil combined with all the sadness it brings, it was a brief glance at love through pure eyes that shattered my cemented heart.  To watch what love can do for another, is to bring my pride to tears.

I have lived my life for years following the edicts of society that men rarely if ever show great sadness.  To see a man cry is debilitating at best, to see it in the mirror is dumbfounding.  And even more astounding, is to see it in the eyes, and in the hearts, of other Christian men who appear to be discovering the same phenomenon the same way at the same time.  Not only is my own heart shattered, and now I am moved to tears when I see His love enacted or reflected in the world around me; I see the same response from those “strong” souls I am acquainted with in the church.

Men who have no reason to break.  Men who have no history of demonstrating deep emotion.  Men, and yes some women as well, are responding the impact of the love of Christ is a completely vulnerable way.  It is deeply humiliating to shed tears in front of another, let alone in front of those who you barely know.  And it is even harder to explain when the cause for tears is not based in depression, circumstances, or the infliction of pain by another – against these conditions I and those around me seem to remain as stalwart and composed as Winston Churchill.  But up against the demonstrated love of Christ at work in the life of another, there is no defense, there is no composure, there is only real naked emotional response.  Against this there is only tears.

To be so deeply moved from love I must believe is a side-effect of submitting the will to Christ.  It must be part of the process He is enacting in our lives as we allow Him – to mold our hearts, to realign our priorities, to see with His eyes rather than our own.  I did not expect this work to have the effects it has.  I did not expect to find it so difficult to maintain my own composure when sighting the examples of His great love for us.  A year ago I would have labeled this behavior as some form of mass psychosis.  I would have used logic to attribute it to real issues such as long term unemployment or under-employment; economic hardship; political turmoil.  There are a myriad of real stressors in the world that one could blame for men breaking down. 

But living inside this experience I can attest to none of these reasons.  The timing does not work, for it is not when hardship presses in that the tears begin to flow.  It is the gentleness, the beauty, the intimacy, the care, and the life altering effects of His love demonstrated in the life of another, or even in my own, that moves me beyond my composure.  I am becoming a small child once again, perhaps too small.  I thought the council Christ gave about becoming a little child to enter into Heaven meant the average mental age might be 7 or 8.  For me it appears to be more like 2 or 3.  Fully dependent, fully vulnerable, fully trusting – perhaps one must be younger in order to truly achieve these conditions.

For so many years we are taught to rely on ourselves.  We are taught to look out for number one, as nobody else will.  But these teachings run counter to the wisdom of scripture which offers us a completely different view of the world.  Don’t worry about what you wear, eat, or need - seek Christ first.  Do not carry your own burdens – give them to Christ so He can carry them FOR you.  You need merely accept the GIFT of salvation, there is nothing for you to earn or do to be saved from evil accept allowing God to save you from it.  Submission of the will, is the start of the real change in your life.  But now I realize it is not just behavior that He intends to change.  It is the vision we see life by.  It is how we see things like grief and love.  And in so doing, the unexpected becomes the norm.

We do not know, what we do not know, but our gentle Lord does.  As He continues to mold our hearts, I pray for the humility to accept the changes He proposes and enacts.  I pray for the humility to see myself as a mere toddler in His world, and extend my arms outstretched to Him in response.  For I can think of no better place than to be carried in the arms of our Savior; and I can think of no better way to see purest love than through the eyes of its originator …

The Stunning Healing of Forgiveness ...

When trying to understand the nature of our God, and thinking about how this seemingly impossible gift of Salvation can be free; yet another free gift appears on the horizon – forgiveness.  So perhaps if we can understand what impact forgiveness has in our lives, we might better understand the Salvation we have been given.

The first thing to examine regarding forgiveness is the act that requires it.  There are times, circumstances, and periodic direct actions of others that lead to us being hurt.  Someone does something that injures us.  There is no dispute that we have been wounded by this act.  In our minds at least, we have suffered ‘unjustly’, there is no reason for this injury – at least no good or acceptable reason.  The perpetrator is clearly in the wrong.  And we have the ‘right’ to be unhappy about this incident.  We now have a candidate for forgiveness.

Then there is the perceived motive of the perpetrator that seems to factor into our forgiveness.  For example, a 2yr old child runs over your foot with their Big-Wheel tricycle by accident.  They immediately apologize.  Do you accept this, or decide to hold it against them for the remainder of their lives?  Sound silly doesn’t it, the 2yr old is less likely to have laid out an elaborate plan to run over your foot, their motives are in fact pure, this was merely an accident.  The fault is still theirs, but the motive lacks malice.  But unfortunately most acts done against us are not accidents; they are calculated and implemented in the best interest of someone else, and to our detriment.  The perpetrator may later regret this decision, even without being confronted with it, but not always.  Sometimes we just seem to have enemies (a person or group of people seemingly devoted to our constant pain, subjugation, and failure).

Then comes the acknowledgement of the offense, that factors into the common version of forgiveness.  At some point the perpetrator realizes they have committed an offense against us, and becomes regretful of this choice and action.  When this occurs, they tend to seek us out and offer an apology.  Human nature tends to be bold when committing an offense (i.e. not so shy to do it in public), but timid when it comes to seeking an apology (i.e. usually sought in private, away from public eyes, as this process is considered humiliating).  This offer of an apology is a recognition they have committed a wrong action against us, or it is not real.  Forcing someone to apologize teaches little, helping them understand the impact of their actions is probably more effective.

All these preliminaries go in to the setting the stage for forgiveness.  But what does forgiveness really mean?  It actually means that once the act against us has been felt, we realize we have been hurt, we have a choice about how we respond to it.  We can either let it go (offering forgiveness), or hold on to it looking for justice.  Self-interest would demand justice.  Wanting to ‘get-even’ is a very common emotional response.  This is after all, only fair.  Clearly we have been wronged.  And people so often misquote scripture by using the text “an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, a life for a life” this is merely a definition of justice, not a prescription for recommended outcomes.  Forgiveness then, is aware that justice has NOT been served.  If we are to forgive this action against us, we are not still seeking to get-even.  In fact we are effectively dismissing the act without seeking a punitive response.  In this sense, forgiveness overrides justice.  It is grace without merit.

People who seek justice for being wronged seldom find satisfaction.  The reasons are complex but most often is that they judge the perpetrator’s motives sometimes more harshly than what is real.  Then the punishment never seems to be enough to fit the crime.  Consider for a minute that you have suffered the worst of crimes; someone has just killed a close loved-one to you.  Do you decide different punishments based on different motives?  If the killer shot your loved one, while trying to kill another, do you lessen the punishment?  What if the ‘killer’ was actually a police officer trying to stop a serial killer and simply missed hitting your loved one.  Does your demand for justice now require the life of this police officer who has made the worst of all mistakes? 

But if the shooter who killed your loved one was ‘Ted Bundy’, it seems much more likely to demand he be executed for killing your loved one, even if he shot them by accident, since he was convicted of killing many others on purpose.  Herein the text we quote is seldom used “a life for a life” – we seldom demand the life of a police officer who makes a mistake – but usually seek the life of an accused murderer as our form of ‘justice’.  Both their actions were the same, why does our sense of justice vary?  Then too, as horrific as it sounds, we have as a society tried, convicted, and then executed men for crimes of murder that later evidence ‘proved’ they were innocent of.  In effect we have killed an innocent person, blaming them for a crime they did NOT commit.  As it turns out now, we become the murderers.  His family could rightly demand our blood, our lives. 

Even if the murderer who killed our loved one was guilty, and we have them executed, once they are dead – is our loved one back in our lives again, no.  This kind of wrong action robs us forever of something we valued, something we loved.  The life of the perpetrator does not replace our loss.  We will feel it as long as we live in this world.  This is the reason people seldom find any satisfaction in seeking justice when they are wronged.  People are rarely satisfied that the punishment of the guilty is sufficient to cover the injury they sustained.

Forgiveness is a form of giving to others, and like when we give our money back to God, the process of giving changes the core of who we are.  The process is life-altering.  The same is true of forgiveness.  Consider that in spite of our knowledge that the perpetrator does not deserve our forgiveness, we offer it anyway.  What does this do to us?  It relieves us from seeking punishment that will never be enough.  It allows us to resume a relationship with the offender and maintain love between us. 

The 2yr old with the Big-Wheel may well be your own child.  Will you withhold your love based on an accidental injury?  You find it easy to forgive those you love, and your love then is able to grow further.  Learning to forgive your enemies changes you.  You become more able to love, not just your enemies, but your friends and family.  Experiencing forgiveness frees you from the negative emotional spiral you can fall into when seeking to ‘right the wrongs’.  It allows you to even move your focus to the person who hurt you, in the context of trying to reach out to help them.  Concern for others can top your thinking when based in forgiveness, rather than focus on self, and the injury self sustained.

What is the affect of forgiveness on the one that hurt you?  It is heartbreaking.  It can reduce a hardened criminal to tears to experience true forgiveness, unwarranted love and concern, by the very victim of his crimes.  Think closely, this is what God is doing for you, for every wrong choice you make, for every wrong action you do, whether you do it with intent or not.  When you realize that God takes your horrific crime, and grants your simple petition for forgiveness, He lets you off the hook and continues to reach out to you in love.  To you, the criminal responsible for the heinous torture and death of His Son upon a cross of shame, this is the crime your evil choices have resulted in.  You are responsible, yet you are not only forgiven, you are loved.  God is reaching to you, His enemy by your choice, and trying to get you to become His friend, by your choice.  Do you think it easy to forgive the murderer of your only son?  Yet He goes well beyond forgiveness and offers us such endless love, can we do any less for each other?

Some say the ‘turning the other cheek’ after being slapped is a sign of cowardice.  Rather it is a sign of someone who knows the value of others.  In the great strength of self-restraint, we look past our self-interest, and righteous demands for justice, and simply offer the other cheek.  It is not a form of masochism.  It is a statement that says I do not want to fight with you, I want to know you, I want to love you, and you have not done so terrible a thing that I could not find a way to love you like my God loves me.  Rather than be ardent champions of justice, Christians should be unyielding suppliers of grace.  Rather than buying guns to protect ourselves and our interests, we should be reaching out to those in need, and leaving our protection in God’s hands.  Forgiveness may never be easy, but its power is beyond dispute, and it works as an agent of love to ALL it encounters.

People here in the US were so surprised at the reaction of the Amish parents of a 5yr old little girl who was brutally murdered by a child-abusing-lowlife-criminal.  Within a day, they had forgiven the man.  Her blood still fresh on his hands, and forgiveness had already been offered (note; it was not asked for by the criminal, it was offered by the parents without condition).  This is an excellent example of someone who understands what forgiveness can do in their own lives.  It can and did free those parents to remember their little girl in joy, happiness, and the hope of reuniting with her in Heaven.  Rather than be caught in a self-interested, self-motivated negative cycle of emotion, they are free to love – even to love the one who took their only child from them.  This is TRUE freedom.  This is true power.  This is true love.  Perhaps you should embrace forgiveness right away …