But I say to you who hear, Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you. …. Be merciful, even as your Father is merciful. [Luke 6:27-28,36 (ESV)]
When writing about forgiveness these last few days, I wondered why we find it so difficult to forgive. Perhaps it’s because, in our troubled hearts, we want to even the score before doing so. Wanting to retaliate in some way, bitterness and resentment grow and eat at us until we can extract our pound of flesh.
For one woman, the opportunity for retaliation didn’t arise until her father died and she wrote his blistering obituary. Contemptuous of the man, she said he lived “29 years longer than expected and much longer than he deserved!” and called him a “horse’s ass!” After naming his “relieved children,” she said he left behind ”countless other victims including an ex-wife, relatives, friends, neighbors, doctors, nurses and random strangers.” Calling the man, “a model example of bad parenting combined with…a complete commitment to drinking, drugs, womanizing and being generally offensive,” she added that he joined the Navy as part of a plea deal to avoid criminal charges. Along with being described as reckless, wasteful, and having no redeeming qualities, he was accused of abusing his family, squandering their money, and being cruel to animals.
Explaining “there will be no prayers for eternal peace and no apologizes to the family he tortured,” she added that the man’s cremains would be kept in the barn until the “donkey’s wood shavings run out.” The obituary closed with the words that his passing “proves that evil does in fact die and hopefully marks a time of healing and safety for all.” The angry words in this scathing obituary were the family’s way of extracting their pound of flesh from the man.
Reading those words saddened me when I read them in 2017 and they continue to trouble me today. Perhaps the man’s family found the spiteful obituary cathartic, but publicly cataloguing the dead man’s wrongs accomplished nothing. Even though their contemptuous words remain on the funeral home’s website today, the man they hated will never read them! I suspect the sweet taste of revenge his family may have felt when the obituary was posted left them with a bitter aftertaste.
When harmed, it’s natural to want payback. Natural, however, isn’t necessarily right and justice and vengeance are God’s department and His alone. Rather than meeting evil with more evil, Jesus tells us we are to meet evil with grace and to do all we can to live in peace with everyone. As Christ’s followers, we are expected to extend grace and forgiveness.
I can only pray that this man’s passing has provided healing for those whose lives he touched. That healing, however, won’t come until they finally forgive him and let go of the past. Like their anger, forgiveness can’t change their past but, unlike anger, forgiveness can change their future! Unlike the bitter aftertaste of anger and revenge, forgiveness always tastes sweet!
To forgive is to set a prisoner free and discover that the prisoner was you. [Lewis B. Smedes]
If possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all. Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God, for it is written, “Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.” To the contrary, “if your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink; for by so doing you will heap burning coals on his head.” [Romans 12:18-20 (ESV)]
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When Moravian missionaries first arrived in the Arctic, they found no single word in the Inuktitut language for forgiveness. That doesn’t mean the Inuit people didn’t let go of past wrongs, just that they didn’t have a single world for doing so. Since forgiveness is an essential concept in Christianity, the missionaries wanted a single word that captured the kind of forgiveness found in Psalm 103. Using Inuktitut words, they came up issumagijoujungnainermik meaning “not-being-able-to-think-about-it-anymore.” This 24-letter multi-syllable word beautifully describes the God who will “cast all our sins into the depths of the sea” [Micah 7:19], who vows to “forgive their iniquity, and…remember their sin no more,” [Jeremiah 31:34], and who promises to blot out our transgressions and not remember our sins.[Isaiah 43:25]
Built by her husband’s grandfather in the 1920s, my friend’s house was filled with much of the original furniture. Many pieces (like the restored grand piano) were valuable antiques but decades of use had taken their toll on others. Although the beautiful little mahogany side chair looked solid, a note saying “Broken—do not use” rested on it. Pretty as it was, the chair was useless and an invitation to disaster. Should the warning go unnoticed, some unknowing person could end up sprawled on the floor surrounded by splintered wood.
Thousands of years ago, God told Noah to build a boat the height of a four-story house, the length of one-and-a-half football fields, and with the storage capacity of about 450 semi-trailers. Without benefit of Home Depot or power tools, he managed to do it. What would happen if God gave Noah those same instructions today?
In my last post, I pondered why Jesus chose the men he did as his apostles. As we enter Holy Week and the events leading to the Lord’s arrest and crucifixion, I wonder specifically about Judas Iscariot. We don’t know what Jesus saw in Judas when he was chosen as one of the twelve or even what was in Judas’ heart in the beginning of Jesus’ ministry. We only know that discontent, ambition, and greed had entered his treacherous heart by the end.
Jeremiah told the exiles to work and pray for their captors. He explained that it was the shalom (well-being, peace, health, success, safety, and welfare) of their captors that they would ensure Judah’s shalom. For a people who’d been torn from their homeland and Temple, I expect it was difficult to understand how seeking Babylon’s prosperity would help them; but, it did!
