Forgiveness

Not sure where this one is heading.
Recently, I have been teaching a class on forgiveness. For me, teaching a specific topic seems to have more meaning than I really expect at the time. Events happen that seem to be random, but are associated with the topic. I hear things through podcasts or people’s conversations that are completely relevant to what I am teaching. I tend to plan to teach the topic in a certain direction, and then these events happen that steer me in another. It seems to always happen that way! Not really sure what that means.
Anyway, back to forgiveness. A couple of Sundays ago I talked about revenge. I’ll be honest, revenge movies are some of my favorite. As soon as I started talking about revenge, the movie Taken came into my head. When this movie came out, I took Michelle to see it. I could truly relate to the character played by Liam Neeson. There is just something about being able to relate to the characters in these movies! Problem with revenge, is that it’s a cycle. When is enough, enough? It also escalates. It is also a personal problem with me and God. It says, “God, in this instance, I will be the judge. Your justice is not good enough.” Revenge also justifies heinous acts that we would “normally” say are wrong.
This weekend I taught on Matthew 18: 21 – 35. I usually hear this story in relationship to how we have to forgive people all the time. I taught from the point that if you want to live by the book (tit for tat), then God will let you. It was a different approach to a bible story. We had some good discussion, and I think it opened a few eyes on how we handle relationships. Do we treat our relationships like a positive and negative column? Positive column would be when people say good things about us, include us conversations, invite us to dinner, etc. Negative would be excluding us from lunch, not getting us a present on our birthday, pouting when someone hurts our feelings. How we treat that person is related to the sum of the positive and negative results. God tells us, “if you want to live by the book, I will let you.” He however, threw out the book when His son died for everyone. He wants us to do the same.
We were eating lunch with some friends this weekend, and the topic of a high profile trial came up. Somebody asked me if I could vote for the death penalty, and I immediately answered, “yes”. I didn’t even think about it too much. My head was killing me, and all I wanted to do was go home and take a nap. Later that day, the thought hit me, “how come I answered so quickly”? Is it so easy for me to write off someone’s life? Just because someone did such a terrible crime does not negate the fact that they were created in the image of God. But still: I can’t disregard the acts I would go to for my wife, or my children….
Yesterday, the talk radio show I listen to, talked about capital punishment. The host had one of his buddies from college on, who happened to be a high profile radio host in another market. The point: they were friends, good friends, and they had completely polar opposite views on the death penalty.
I just finished listening to a podcast on “Blessed are the Peacemakers”, one of the Beatitudes. Some of the points are: 1) Do we project our deepest fears and place them on others (homophobia, government conspiracies, racism, etc.)? This creates a “they are evil, we are good” situation. 2) The podcast mentions the story of Joshua when he comes in contact with the leader of the Lord’s army (Joshua 5:13-15). Joshua asks him, “are you for us, or against us?”. The angel replies, “neither”. What?!? I mean, he is Joshua! He is one of the spies that says with God on our side no one can defeat us! The angel of the Lord is not on Joshua’s side? What is going on here? He then tells Joshua to take off his sandals for he is on holy ground. The story then goes into the Fall of Jericho. That’s it. Nothing else. It’s the weirdest story….. We look at life as, “you are either on my side or on their side.” God sees life as “everyone is my creation. If you come at them with hate and fear, you are not showing them My love that I have for them.”
It seems forgiveness is more than just a topical discussion to be taken up on Sunday mornings. I guess, God is trying to tell me something.