If Jesus is the Son of God, what does it mean when God chooses to engage suffering?

What if forgiveness is just as much for us as the other person?

Over the past year, as I’ve process some of my own life struggles, I’ve encountered so many people who are also processing some very deep wounds.  As we’ve shared our stories and listened to each others pain, I notice that some of my friends really, really want to hold onto their anger towards the other person.  I get that.  I’m totally human and have felt that experience in deep and profound ways.  I’m processing some of my own grief this year and the idea of just letting it go seems so counter intuitive.  To let it go can so easily feel like we’re validating what happened to us. So what inevitably happens is we hold onto the thing that continual the cycle of violence in our own lives.  We hold onto and revisit the very anger and pain that ends up killing us.

This morning I was reading Brian McLaren’s new book Naked Spirituality and he called out the need for forgiveness.  He quotes Fr Richard Rohr who says, “Pain that isn’t transformed is transmitted.  Pain that isn’t processed is passed on.“  As much as I practice forgiveness, those words hit me between the eyes once again.  I need to be reminded to continually let go.  Because I notice that the moments I blow up at people who are close to me have very little to do with the other person.  What it really has to do with is my inability to process what has happened to me, and so I take it out on them.

What if confession, and genuine forgiveness is the most restorative act we can do?  In the Lord’s prayer, Jesus invites us to pray some very specific things. The prayer is presented two ways, one in Matthew and one in Luke.

Matthew 6:9-13 – “This, then, is how you should pray: “‘Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us today our daily bread. Forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one.’”

Luke 11:2-4 – He said to them, “When you pray, say: “‘Father, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come. Give us each day our daily bread. Forgive us our sins, for we also forgive everyone who sins against us. And lead us not into temptation.’”

In both passage, Jesus calls out the practice of forgiving.  Of all the things Jesus could have included, he chose the practice of forgiveness.  It was important enough to become part of the basic framework for prayer.  What if Jesus understood that the practice of forgiveness is first about us? Because the pain usually resides in us.  Someone who hurts us can easily walk away blind to that reality, but we’re stewing on it for years.  “HOW COULD YOU DO THAT TO ME?”  And so the problem resides deep in our hearts, wounding us in ways we can’t imagine.  I know enough about health to know that most physical ailments have some root in emotional pain.  And when we don’t let it go, suffering and eventual physical problems are our bodies way of telling us to address it.

I don’t want to continue passing on my anger and pain.  I choose to forgive for the sake of my own life, health, restoration and well-being.

What do you need to forgive today?

And its easy to think that this releasing humanity from the law is creating a new structure.  But what if its revealing God’s original structure established in the Garden.  If we examine the story in Genesis it basically had no law.  Humanity is free to eat from anything in the Garden.  The parallels in the two stories are obvious, once we understand the problem God is solving.  In speaking to Peter to eat the story is making a direct connection back to the original command.

But the problem is this. Its very hard to imagine a world with no law.  We hold onto it because it provides a not so neat little (actually monstrous) framework for dealing with fear.  All the law is is a human agreement for action.  It gives us comfort to know someone isn’t going to kill us.  So to remove is to create the potential for chaos.  Yet we can’t ignore that this is what God is doing in the story.  God is removing the construct of law in favor of grace.  Grace is infinitely harder to dole out because it requires love.  It requires holding onto the basic dignity of each human being, even in the face of oppression or even death. (see the cross)

But today I was thinking about something in regards to freedom.  Instead of the need to deal with fear, what if we’re really afraid of what freedom represents.  What if in engaging this freedom we go too far.  Could we really go too far?  Could we do something that tested the edges of freedom, only to find there really is a limit and we’re all fooling ourselves.  I was thinking about new Narnia movie, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, and part of the story is in testing the bounds of limits.  Is there an edge of the world?

I’m just thinking out loud, but I’d love to hear what you think?

This post isn’t about Rob Bell.  Seriously.

Rob Bell has a new book coming out about heaven and hell. It’s called Love Wins. I can imagine it will sell like hotcakes because people have been wondering aloud for a long time what Rob really thinks about the nature of reconciliation, and if he a universalist.  It’s an easy trick to just come up with a simple test that makes him out to be a heretic, without listening to the underlying theology that goes behind it.  It’s easier to judge him based upon our assumptions, rather than listening to the nuances of what the nature of grace really entails.

The truth is (and I mean that in a nice way) we want to know.  We fight about it and argue because we’re talking about our very souls.  I get why people argue so vehemently and want to draw lines.  It really is that important.

I make the argument in my book that we’re all inside the kingdom of God.  The Tree Of Knowledge is not a test of obedience but a test of reality regarding the nature of reality.  It asks only one question, “Are we good or evil?”  This question is the only question that can trip us up because it is the basis of our interaction with all of reality.  Everything is good from God’s perspective in the story.

But the very nature of sin is to construct a false reality that sees the self as outside of the kingdom.  We all have our fruit that we used to judge.  So the problem is local in the self.  All the cross does is reiterate what has always been true, that we’re in, that there is nothing we can do that can change reality (or God’s judgment of good).

Is that universalism? Some think so. ;-P Some don’t. Does it make grace cheap?  I don’t think so because the very nature of grace requires someone to pay a cost that is very deep.  Someone has to let go of the punitive element, which desires to strike back.  To forgive is to pay the cost of someone else’s sin.

Which leads me back to the final judgment.

I had a very interesting conversation regarding the final judgment with a friend.  I’ve written in depth on the topic in my book, and argue that when Jesus says, “All judgment has been given to the son…” he’s revealing that is is we who judge, not God. It has always been about us coming to terms with grace, not God.  But my friend spoke about what happens in the final judgment in a way that was so fresh, I had to stand back and say, “Oh my God. That is so brilliant.”

He was sharing that the final judgment isn’t God judging us, but our live played back in its fullness and it is we who are judging it.  But then he said, “Because we are in the presence of God, we will be able to see life from the perspective of love.  We’re going to be able to see how we missed out on love in each moment, how God was there, and how we just couldn’t see it.  And this awareness will still require a judgment.  But our judgment will include reality.”

What do you think?

Amnesty International from Digital District™ VFX Post-Pro on Vimeo.

This was exceptionally creative. How do you feel about the death penalty?

This is one of the more powerful short stories I’ve seen in a long time.(ht)  I dare you to watch it. It’s on forgiveness.

Lately I’ve been contemplating a lot on the nature of justice.  What is true justice in humanity, justice that stands the test of time?  What is the nature of it that we would subject ourselves to it, freely.  And this video I think really reveals it in such a simple but succinct way.

True justice is the act of both truth AND grace. It’s getting to the truth and reality of our own brokenness.  But it is also embracing grace as the defining response to that brokenness.  Both are necessary for true justice to emerge in our lives.

This is why I have such a hard time with much of the dialog around judgment and hell.  It doesn’t sufficiently convey the true nature of justice.  We hold onto our desires for punitive justice for the sake of revenge.  We want God to get back at the people who hurt us.  But in holding onto a punitive idea of justice we validate that response to be used on ourselves.  We create the trap that snares US.

Historically the nature of justice has been explored in two ways: punitive and amnesty.  Punitive is best embodied in the Nuremberg trials.  It’s the idea that we go after the those who harmed others with aggressive tactics.  We mercilessly hunt them down and put them on trial with no hope for grace.  Punitive justice seeks out truth but virtually ignores the dignity of the person and refuses to embody grace.  It says that those who harm are evil and need to be punished.  But in taking on this stance we embody the same merciless death that we are convicting.  In order to punish the criminal we must become like them.  This is the fundamental problem with punitive justice.  It’s a downward spiral that no one recovers from.

The flip side response is amnesty. Amnesty ignores truth. It’s the idea of a free pass.  We simply ignore the reality of what happens and move on.  Amnesty ignores truth to the detriment of both the victim and the oppressor.  It ignores the cost and the consequence, allowing the event to remain unrecognized so we can let it go. Amnesty embodies death in the same way by ignoring the problem and assuming it will just go away with time.  But it won’t.

The cross is the third option and the most restorative justice possible.  It’s both truth and grace put on full display.  The cross reveals the extent to which we are broken.  It reveals the moment we would actually embody death to the point that we would actually kill God.  It is truth personified.  We look at the cross and see truth in its hideous glory.  And yet at the same time we see the full embodiment of grace.  We see a God saying, “See, I still love you.”

True justice always saw the person as more important than the event.  It assumed that our humanity was best exemplified not in the capacity to harm but to forgive, to transcend what happened.  Its why the act of forgiveness, as represented in the video is so resonating.  It’s true.  The son spoke the truth but he responded in grace.  The father accepted the truth and received grace.  That is salvation.

[See Embedded Video]

It’s nice to be reminded.  Take 11 minutes out of your day and revel in His love for you.