Introspection: Broken Glass

I share these thoughts hoping they are of help to someone else.

Comments are always welcomed.

Broken Glass

Pray then in this way:

Our Father in heaven,

hallowed be Your name.

Your kingdom come.

Your will be done,

on earth as it is in heaven.

Give us this day our daily bread.

And forgive us our debts,

as we also have forgiven our debtors.

And do not bring us to the time of trial,

but rescue us from the evil one.

For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you; but if you do not forgive others, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.

Matthew 6:9-15 (NRSV)

When my time comes

Forget the wrong that I've done

Help me leave behind some

Reasons to be missed

And don't resent me

And when you're feeling empty

Keep me in your memories

Leave out all the rest

From "Leave Out All the Rest" by Linkin Park

Every now and then, I find myself pondering the concepts of sin and forgiveness.

Jesus once said that, if we forgive other people for the times they've wronged us, God will forgive us for our wrongdoings.  He then said that if we refuse to forgive other people, God will not forgive us.  I find many of Jesus' sayings comforting and inspirational, but this one makes me uncomfortable, to say the least.  Just this past year, I have been reminded that I sometimes have a lot of trouble forgiving people who hurt me.  In fact, I received one wound in high school and ended up nursing it for over ten years.  To be honest, I'm still not sure if I'm completely over it.  This past year, I have also been reminded that I sometimes have a lot of trouble forgiving myself.

Every week, the congregation at my church prays the Lord's Prayer, which addresses sin and forgiveness directly.  We pray, "Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us."  Another traditional version of this prayer, I think, highlights the meaning of forgiveness a little better: "Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors."

I like to think of a sin as any activity - or inactivity - that is, in some way, harmful to oneself or to another person.  Christ once said that all rules in Scripture are derived from the basic commands to love God with all one's heart, soul, and mind and to love one's neighbor as oneself.¹  If anything God commands us to do is based on goodwill toward God, other humans, and oneself, to sin would be to act in malice toward God, other humans, or oneself.²  Since one cannot harm God, disobedience to God that does not, in any way, affect other people, must somehow be harmful to oneself.  I do not believe that God makes demands on us arbitrarily.

If a sin is, by its nature, harmful, then a sin also generates a debt.  If I sinned against another person, then I would owe it to the other person to somehow undo the harm I had done.  For example, if I drove over to your house and hurled a rock through your living room window, I would owe you a new window, provided that I didn't damage anything else.  I would be obligated to replace your window or to shell out the cash to have it replaced at the very least.

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, to forgive is "to grant free pardon and to give up all claim on account of an offense or debt."³  In other words, forgiveness is the cancellation of a debt.  To say to someone, "I forgive you," is the same as saying, "You do not owe me anything."  For example, if you forgave me for throwing a rock through your window, then you would not require me to replace your window.  When Christ calls us to forgive other people for the wrongs they commit against us, He calls us to stop holding their transgressions against them.

Forgiveness is an absolute necessity in this life.  Some wrongdoers might feel completely justified in their actions and refuse to repay or even acknowledge their debts.  Furthermore, some transgressions cause a lot more damage than a broken window.  Some debts cannot be repaid, and some damage can never be undone.  Broken reputations, broken friendships, broken hearts, and broken lives cannot be replaced like broken glass.  If I said something that damaged your reputation, I could not give you a new one.  I could apologize for what I said or claim that it wasn't true, but I could never make anyone forget what I said.

Some debts cannot be repaid, and many debts will remain unpaid even if they can be repaid.  Some debts can only be forgiven.  If we refuse to forgive people, we just might find ourselves demanding repayment for the rest of our lives.  Perhaps this is what it means to be bitter or resentful.  If those who wrong us are unwilling or unable to repay their debts to us, we might even be tempted to seek out a distorted sense of justice though acts of retribution.  Violence begets violence, so acts of retribution could potentially land people in constantly escalating feuds with one another.  It has been said that "an eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind."

I think that a lot of us have trouble forgiving people because we don't truly understand what it means to be forgiven.

Jesus once told a story about a man who has racked up a debt of ten thousand talents.  In Jesus' day, a talent was the amount of money a common laborer earned in fifteen years.  The current minimum wage in the United States is $7.25 per hour.  Today, someone who works for minimum wage will earn $217,500.00 in fifteen years if he or she works fifty forty-hour workweeks per year.  By today's standards, the man in Jesus' parable owes more than two billion dollars.  The point is that the man has racked up a debt that he will never, ever be able to repay.

When the wealthy creditor demands payment, the debtor falls on his face and begs for an extension.  The creditor does not grant him an extension but rather forgives the debt completely.  Yes, you read that correctly: the creditor says goodbye to two billion dollars!

The forgiven man then goes out and demands repayment from one of his own debtors.  The latter debtor owes an amount of 100 denarii.  A denarius was what a common laborer was paid in one day.  By today's standards, he owed the former debtor just less than six thousand dollars.  The wealthy man hears about the forgiven man's unwillingness to forgive a debt that was a pittance compared to the amount forgiven, and he decides to reverse his decision.  He has the man he once forgave tortured until he can repay everything he originally owed.⁴

Why in the world would a man who has been forgiven a debt of over two billion dollars go out and shake someone down for measly six thousand dollars?  When I first heard this parable, I thought that the man was simply being an ingrate.  Dr. David A. Seamands suggests that the debtor did not truly accept his creditor's forgiveness.  The debtor, despite being forgiven, still intended to repay the two-billion-dollar debt in full.  He demanded repayment for the six-thousand-dollar debt because he needed every penny he could find.  The debtor did not truly accept his creditor's forgiveness as evidenced by the fact that he was still trying to set things right.⁵

The debtor could not forgive the debts owed to him because he would not forgive himself.

As much as I hate to admit it, I have a lot in common with the debtor in Jesus' parable.  A few months ago, I wrote that I do not want to be forgiven: I want to be in the right.⁶  Forgiveness is a bitter pill to swallow.  To accept forgiveness, one must be honest enough to admit that he did something wrong and humble enough to admit he is utterly incapable of repaying the debt he incurred.  I like to think that I am one of the most humble people I know, but, to be honest, I am probably in the running for the most arrogant and pretentious.  Truly humble people do not think about their own humility: they just have it.  It's much easier for me to make up justifications and excuses for my actions than to take such a painful blow to my precious ego.

We are all beloved children of God, so a transgression against anyone is a transgression against God.  Time and time again, God has forgiven our sins, and all God wants in return is for us to forgive each other.  To forgive, we must have a personal understanding of what it means to be forgiven.  We must know in our hearts that not all debts can be repaid and that not all wrongs can be set right; otherwise, we might spend our lives demanding restitution from other people - and from ourselves.  To truly forgive one another, we must be able to accept forgiveness.  To truly accept forgiveness, we must be able to forgive ourselves.


Notes:

1. Matthew 22:37-40
2. I include goodwill and malice toward oneself here because, if we are called to love our neighbors as ourselves, we must, by necessity, first love ourselves.
3. Wikipedia: Forgiveness
4. Matthew 18:23-35
5. David A. Seamands.  Healing for Damaged Emotions.  1981, David C. Cook.  p. 28-29
6. See my introspection "Amazing(ly) (Painful) Grace."

The photograph featured in this introspection is public domain.