Forgiveness

It was just four years ago, this week, October 2, 2006, and in the flurry of news flashes each day, horror stories from every direction, it is hard for any of us to remember anything. In an Amish community in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania called “Nickel Mines”, a one-roomed Amish school, the horror story of a man named Carl Roberts, who killed 10 Amish girls (ages 6 – 13), most of us just remember the funerals. I could not see the activity, but could hear the horses feet as they moved the carriages along the street to the graveyards.

Thankfully, the news media and inquiring public was kept away from the funeral of these private, grief-stricken, deeply religious people. The news media would like the glitter of a Princess Diana, or Michael Jackson's funeral, they will never understand Amish people, their religious customs, their Christian faithfulness, nor their Christian forgiveness, extended to the family of the killer who committed suicide and even to the killer himself.

The talk is cheap, but the walk is difficult. Only when we see forgiveness such as with this Amish community can we understand forgiveness. only when we recognize our own forgiveness from the supreme God of the universe, can we realize the necessity of forgiving those around us, why should we not forgive when so much has been forgiven? We have all heard, to err is human, to forgive is divine. Forgiveness is absolutely the most difficult act of human thought, it much easier to hold grudges, to seek revenge.

Usually, it is a waste of time to even talk to the offended or offender about forgiveness. Unless of the same mindset, unless some level of mutual understanding, unless God is in the action, there is not a conscious, inner soul involved, it must be left up to God to do the work. With an enabling media, an egocentric academic school system, we have become desensitized to murder, rape, robbery, and even warfare in which millions of innocent people are killed. We carefully select our altruistic thought process, which does not usually include forgiveness.

The Koran says nothing of original sin, its Shira law fastidious towards punishment, we find little mercy in Islamic fundamentalism, rather harsh punishments, killings. Can one even comprehend the cutting off of a hand for robbery, stoning for infidelity? From Abraham, two sons; it is from Isaac, Judaism, that we find forgiveness, it is from Ishmael, Islam, that we find vengeance. The Jewish male was circumcised as a sign that he was elected of God, the male was baptized, giving an ark of salvation to his entire family...a cloak of forgiveness. It was not until after Christ, that women were baptized into the church...the church follows Christ's resurrection, and the Christian redemption experience through the Holy Spirit.

Paul, both to the Jews and Gentiles, preached forgiveness, forgiveness is not a selective process, as hard as it is to understand the idea, the Bavarian Paperhanger. A Corporal in WWI, Adolf Hitler, who put millions of people to death, would and could be forgiven, he knew about Christ, he was a Catholic alter boy. Joseph Stalin, a 5 foot 4 inch dictator who put a reported 56 million Russian peasants to death in his communist revolution, who, according to his daughter was shaking his fist at God as he died, was, in his youth, a seminary student. He knew about forgiveness and could have been forgiven.

“If gold rusts, what do you expect iron to do?” 50% of Protestant ministers are divorced, there are groups in almost every church of divorced people, groups of single mothers in every church, who were never married to their child's father. The phoney bologna, air conditioned, carpeted and cushioned, bells and smells, protestant church of Jimmy Carter, Rick Warren, Bill Clinton, Brian McLaren, even some seminaries and Bible colleges, are just playing around with the sanctity of forgiveness. Do we have any idea of the forgiveness of God? God, before the very foundation of the world, placing on his only son, every sin, every sickness, every evil act of mankind, all ask of us, faith in the atonement of Christ. Like giving, the supreme act of worship, becoming a Christian has become so easy, smiling as we walk the aisle to sign a card, no confession of belief to anyone, no repentance. When we as Christians realize the cost of our forgiveness, we are more willing to forgive others.

I have relatives, neighbors, former close friends with whom I have little or no contact, I sometimes realize from one reason or another, that they are upset about something.

Something I do not even remember, even important things, even if I were real nasty or offensive about something, please give a reason and right to ask for forgiveness. The unforgiving spirit, the spirit of not asking forgiveness, is the spirit which will keep many people from a good life here on earth, as well as eternal life. Earthly prisons are filled with human beings, who, in every thought, desire forgiveness. I have often thought how many visitors I would have if I were in prison: family, friends, neighbors, Christians, certainly was on the mind of Christ. It did not take long for his followers to desert him.

Then shall the King say unto them on his right hand, Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world: For I was an hungred, and ye gave me meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me in: Naked, and ye clothed me: I was sick, and ye visited me: I was in prison, and ye came unto me. Then shall the righteous answer him, saying, Lord, when saw we thee an hungred, and fed thee? or thirsty, and gave thee drink? When saw we thee a stranger, and took thee in? or naked, and clothed thee? Or when saw we thee sick, or in prison, and came unto thee? And the King shall answer and say unto them, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me. (Matthew 25:34-40)