Forgiveness - Feel the Pain and Do It Anyway

In his article in last week’s Saturday edition of the Guardian, (Guardian April 12^th, 2014) Giles Fraser tells us that forgiveness isn’t something that you feel. It is something you do. To anyone who has had to do a significant amount of forgiving in their lives, and most of us have, this smacks of a rather stiff upper lip approach to life, pain and God. It probably derives from what has come to be known as the Pelagian heresy. Pelagius believed that human beings were perfectly capable of being good if only they would try hard enough. It was a matter of pulling yourself together and getting on with it without letting your feelings get in the way.

 The problem with this kind of thinking, in regard to forgiveness, is that it involves deception. The person trying to act in a forgiving way deceives themselves since, in many cases, they must deny their pain, and the feelings which accompany it, in order to get to a place in their own heads where they can make themselves behave in a forgiving way to the one who has wronged them. In doing this, they allow the person who has wronged them to carry on deceiving themselves.  In other words, they give the wrongdoer permission to remain in denial. When this happens the forgiveness which they so badly want to offer to the one who has wronged them gets blocked because the person who is in denial about the hurt they have caused is also denying themselves forgiveness. Forgiveness is two-way traffic or it is not forgiveness.

Jesus gave his disciples the authority to forgive sins, but he also told them that they could ‘retain’ those sins. He was not saying that they could decide whether or not the person deserved to be forgiven. He was telling them that forgiveness involves healing and that healing can only take place where all parties to the hurt engage with the pain. In his article, Giles Fraser writes that ‘the stories of the Bible .. are mostly uninterested in a person’s inner life’. He also implies that Jesus was a man of action rather than feelings. This is odd, given the number of times Jesus makes his feelings about injustice and pain (including his own) heard in the strongest of terms. Jesus is concerned with feelings because feelings dictate actions. It follows that inaction is the result of the denial of feelings which pertain to guilt or pain, or both.

Productive feelings are often painful because they necessarily involve speaking and hearing the kind of truth which requires that we own pain – our own and that which we may have caused to others.  A gesture, a moment of genuine unselfishness, or of attentiveness, will often speak this kind of truth far more effectively than words. Where truth is not spoken and heard in word or gesture forgiveness lacks substance, so it is not really forgiveness.  Similarly, where a person denies the pain they have caused to others, the forgiveness that is being offered will return to the one trying to do the forgiving. Both the pain and the forgiveness will be ‘retained’ because there is nowhere for either to go.

To prevent this, the one who has offended needs to bear the weight of the pain by owning to themselves what it feels like to be the other person, or the innocent third party who so often figures as ‘collateral damage’ in family disputes or marital breakdown. Real forgiveness, and the healing which comes with it, takes us out of ourselves. If the offender does not allow this to happen, he or she will eventually be consumed by remorse. They will be consumed by their own despair, because remorse leads to moral and spiritual despair. The person who is filled with this kind of destructive remorse will often turn to alcohol or drugs to relieve the pain, so that where addiction is a form of escape from pain, it is also a denial of who we really are. 

There is a moment during the three hours which Jesus spends on the Cross in which he asks that his tormentors be forgiven because they do not know what they are doing. They are ignorant of who Jesus is but they are also in denial about themselves. Their denial of the real significance of their words and actions is echoed in our own manifold moments of denial and self delusion. In such moments we deny what we are really feeling to ourselves, as well as the pain we may have inflicted on others. Jesus does not let us off the hook by simply absorbing our feelings and smothering them in sacrificial love. He enters into them with us, in his knowing of us as we are and in his invitation to allow him to heal us by accepting his forgiveness. The judgment and the verdict come from the Cross where healing and forgiveness begin, provided we allow them to.  

Betrayal

At what point do fiction and reality meet? When does the one become indistinguishable from the other? That is the fascination which lies in spy stories real and invented.  Fiction enthrals, fascinates, gives us a break from the everyday and, more dangerously, perhaps, a chance to make sure that fictionalised reality remains safely within the confines of the imagination. Reality TV, whether it is part drama or entirely documentary, allows us to look at reality objectively. But being an onlooker in regard to the suffering of others can also disempower the onlooker by inducing a form of sterile guilt, for which see my earlier post on the dangers of political apathy. 

When it comes to distinguishing the real from the unreal, we need to be able to recognise lies and betrayal for what they are. Take, for example, the excellent BBC documentary drama about Kim Philby, the notorious double agent (Kim Philby – His Most Intimate Betrayal BBC2). Real footage set into the drama allows the viewer to look at the actor alongside the real man, and so observe, in a fairly objective way, what a liar looks like. Lies have a powerful attraction, perhaps because they are at the root of much that goes wrong in the contexts in which power is exercised and maintained. Raw power is potent and addictive, and those who depend on it will inevitably need to lie and betray others. Unfettered power is also ephemeral. There is something not quite real about it, so those who want to keep it at any price must reinforce it with something equally unreal which they must first find in themselves. At what point, then, does the real person merge with the unreal?

Lies create their own fantasy realm which is how illicit power is maintained over nations. When it comes to exercising and maintaining power in the more intimate context of family relationships, the one who is being lied to must be persuaded that he or she is in fact the liar. This is the worst form of betrayal because it makes the victim’s self understanding neither truthful or real. The real merges with the unreal and he or she experiences inner fragmentation, like a tower block which, when dynamited at the press of a button, collapses in on itself and is, in effect, obliterated. Betrayal and lies obliterate their victims from within. Christ experiences something similar when he is betrayed by one of his friends, an inner fragmentation which culminates in his forsakenness, his seeming obliteration, on the cross.

The nature of redemption is that it restores things to what they should be. Redemptive love restores those who have been forsaken in being lied to and thereby betrayed. It also restores the liars and betrayers. The cross, and what it seems to have destroyed in the betrayed and disfigured Christ, is in fact the making of a new creation. Redemptive love takes betrayal into itself and ‘re-makes’ whatever it is that has distorted a person and turned them into a liar or a betrayer. It redeems, or ‘buys back’, the goodness which they once had and, in so doing, redeems the person. 

Since time and all things are interconnected, all things, and time itself, are destined for this ultimate redemption. All betrayers, and all the victims of betrayal, are held within the embrace of the cross. They are ‘steadied’ and await justice in this moment of equilibrium. The justice will restore the victims of lies to their rightful place in God’s good purpose which is his mercy, a mercy which draws all things into himself, so making peace by the blood of his cross.

The Healing of the Nations

Good conversation brings out the best in everyone. A good conversation monitors its own temperature. There is a tacit understanding that those involved do not want the conversation to overheat and thereby degenerate into an argument, because arguments are ultimately about one person or party vanquishing the other.  We learn and grow from good conversation. Arguments diminish  and sometimes destroy whoever ‘loses’ them. Winning arguments and being ‘right’ confers power, and power, if it is to be maintained, demands more verbal or physical violence,  thereby destroying, or distorting beyond recognition, any shared objective which might have existed to begin with.  Events in the Middle East over the past 2 years speak for themselves in this respect.

Good conversation constitutes dialogue. It does not presume agreement but it is, nevertheless, a shared forward movement towards a shared objective. People who engage in good conversation stand a chance of making new and important discoveries about each other and, if they are willing, of learning from them and so arrive at a new and better shared objective. The new objective will be the result of having discovered, at some point along the conversational journey, a shared will to live and to go on creating together. To expect answers, or any kind of easy finality, is to miss the point of dialogue. Instead, dialogue aims to keep journeying, to keep the engine of hope moving all parties involved in a forward direction. Once the engine stalls, or is allowed to stop, we have a potentially static and life denying situation. In other words, we have death.

Although such a static situation may not lead to direct conflict, it creates a vacuum which is easily filled by violence. Violence is the result of not wanting to hear or understand what makes another person ‘tick’. A dialogue which aims at this deeper understanding requires a certain kind of ‘heart’ intelligence, one which is shaped by a desire for peace and for the healing which comes with it. This is what informs intelligent speech and leads to good conversation.

Consider for a moment the death at work in some of the current global conflict situations, such as  Syria and its appalling humanitarian consequences about which the key players seem to care so little. Consider also the dangerous brinkmanship games being played out in the context of Russia and the Ukraine. Then there are the political parties nearer home, as they start to square up to one another in national elections or referenda which will affect the long term future of us all. Perhaps what is needed is a different perspective, one which is orientated on the love of God.

The three Abrahamic faith communities can give the lead here. But first we must learn to speak and understand each other’s truth language and to make the fruits of this understanding public, within our communities and in the context of society. What key aspects of our shared monotheistic faith, as it stems from that of Abraham, could help us define a new and better shared objective and start the engine of hope moving in a forward direction? As a Christian, I believe that all of us are entrusted by God with the responsibility for entering into his re-creative salvific purpose for the world, and for its healing.  We shall all be held to account in some measure for the part we have played, or failed to play, in the healing of the nations.

Towards the end of the book of Revelation, in the New Testament, mention is made of a tree of life whose leaves are for the healing of the nations. The imagery resonates with that of Genesis, the first book of the bible. The tree metaphor in the Garden of Eden story points, among other things, to a total breakdown of trust between the creator God and his people. The tree in the book of Revelation is a metaphor for the Cross, the tree of life given back to humanity. It is a living tree and we are part of its life. We share the responsibility with our Muslim and Jewish brothers and sisters for the fulfilment of God’s purpose for his world, for dialogue and good conversation between peoples and nations. Together, we are responsible for turning the arenas of modern conflict into places of hope where the engine of God’s saving love can begin its work in and through us all. As Christians, we have faith in the means we have been given to do this work, the grace which comes with knowing Jesus Christ as the one who transforms our lives and our world. It is work in progress . 

Loss

Lent is a time of year for personal makeovers; diets, detox programmes or exploring new spiritual pathways which might help with managing anxiety and stress. All involve a paring down of one kind or another. But such a universalist approach to the season doesn’t have to involve a person in any meaningful engagement with it. In fact, self improvement programmes, of which giving things up for Lent is only one, demand all the attention and will power of which we are capable, so not much remains for looking at the deeper things in our selves which might need to be given up, or at least looked at in a different way.

Fasting seasons, when undertaken in a way which is truly healthy, are more about getting rid of destructive mindsets than they are about losing weight. They exist to help us to change those habits of mind which get in the way of reality. For Christians, this means getting rid of character traits which disrupt our relationship with our selves, with other people and with God. When it comes to relating to our own selves, the reality consists not so much in getting rid of what we think is bad about our personality, or about our bodies, as facing the truth about our giftedness and what is beautiful in us, and with our potential for goodness. In other words, it involves coming to terms with our potential for making the lives of others good.

If we are to speak of sin, in relation to our own personal thoughts and actions, it is the denial of the beauty and goodness of which we are capable through God’s grace that invariably messes up our lives and relationships. So whatever we choose to give up in relation to how we look, or how we think of ourselves, will have to be done for the sake of coming to terms with reality, with how we look to God and what it is in us that he sees and loves, even when we are damaging ourselves. Giving things up for Lent now becomes the response of love to love’s invitation to accept the love of a gracious God. It follows that if we have damaged our bodies or our minds by destructive habits and negative thinking, the response to love’s invitation will begin with wanting to repair that damage. This requires that we first embrace loss.

Embracing loss involves memory because loss has to do with the passing of time. Over time, all losses pare a person down to the bare essentials, from the initial separations which occur in childhood to the final separation of death. It is time and the way we do our remembering which makes them so painful. Children leaving home, for example; we can brave out the loss at the time but as the years go by we feel it more acutely. They take with them a part of ourselves. They are flesh of our flesh and bone of our bone. Their history is also ours and something in us is ripped apart by their leaving.  

Divorce, retirement, imprisonment and bereavement; all of these losses and separations also rip us apart inwardly. They create painful gaps in our own history. They are losses which need God’s love to be spoken into them, to be heard as something real, and experienced as healing. Otherwise, the love which is spoken will be no more than an echo. Losses are only made good when love is audible, when there is the opportunity for us to reconnect with where we were in our lives, or in a particular relationship, before there was a disconnection, before we ceased to hear love as it first was. This is not about returning to an idealised past. It is about reconnecting with the real person and moving on with the person we have always known into a deeper present. By this I mean the fullness of the present moment and the goodness which it brings when love is able to be spoken truthfully again and heard. It is what God does with us during Lent if we will allow him.

Paying the Price of Political Apathy

Yesterday, our village held a public meeting. There is an EU funded initiative which helps rural communities like ours start up, and later implement, a Community Action Plan. There were some highly articulate and thoughtful children present who flagged a number of important issues. Some of these were specific to their own needs, such as the lack of adequate play areas and of weekend or after school facilities for younger people. They also contributed to discussions pertaining to the needs of the wider community and of the environment. These children were politically aware. It was clear that they came from a home where people encouraged them to have views and they were still young enough, and good enough, not to have become cynical. They cared about their village with a kind of reasoned passion.

Reasoned passion is the nearest approximation I can think of for wisdom, understood in its biblical sense. We need more of this kind of wisdom in politics but we will not get it unless we engage with the political system which we have. The people of Scotland seem to have realised this. The turnout for public meetings called to debate the pros and cons of Scottish independence is unfailingly robust – larger, according to a source cited by the BBC (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-scotland-politics-26558087), than it has been for 40 years. All of a sudden, politics mean something to people. This signals something important and positive about our society, that fundamentally people care about what happens to their communities and to their country. It suggests that there is a certain goodness in them which has to do with taking responsibility for what society itself is becoming.

The idea of responsibility suggests dialogue. It is about responding. Ultimately, a person who only has their own interests at heart cannot be truly responsible. That is the kind of selfishness which fragments society and isolates the individual, and the selfish individual always ends up alone with themselves, which is a hell on earth existence. So human beings have to learn, sooner or later, that the way to happiness, and to genuine prosperity, has to do with forgetting about self and being mindful of the needs of others, because the well being of every individual ultimately depends on the well being of others. Similarly, the well being of society depends on the extent to which individuals consider themselves to be part of that society, or of the microcosm of society which is any given community.  

Engaging wisely with the politics of the day therefore requires a new way of seeing and thinking about the way society is going, as the two children present at our village meeting were able to do yesterday. They were taking responsibility for themselves, for other children (they had canvassed the opinions of children living within walking distance of where they live) and for the wider community. They gave us a glimpse of good politics.

Good politics depend on all of us because in a democratic society they are an ongoing dialogue between the electorate and those it votes for, so giving politicians a blanket mandate and then forgetting about it until the next election is simply not good enough. It is irresponsible, because political apathy destroys communities and nations. Political apathy creates a moral vacuum into which politicians, supported by the powerful and greedy, can lull us into believing that things would be much better if we trusted them to just get on with the job, or if we reverted to the kind of xenophobic mythical past dreamed of by English politicians of the extreme right. Both are dangerous but easily believed myths.  

Resisting political apathy does not require that everyone becomes an expert in the field of economics, politics and all the areas which intersect with them, but it does require what St. Paul, in his letter to the Philippian church, calls ‘politeomai’ or ‘living well for the city’. For Christians, this means engaging with the politics of the day and making the good news of the gospel a reality in one’s own political decision making. In other words, it is the kind of good citizenship which calculates its values according to the slide rule of what Jesus calls the Kingdom of heaven. In the sermon on the mount he shows us that good citizenship is not just a matter of public duty but of reasoned passion, the kind of reasoned passion which connects human beings with the wisdom and love of God. Good citizenship therefore requires that we question and take responsibility for the values of society, as those values are shaped by concern for the weakest and the most vulnerable. Protecting their  interests has traditionally been held as the mark of a civilised society.

Political apathy is a sign that such concerns are no longer what matter most. Instead, what matters is meeting the needs of those with the money to pay for them, as well as generating those needs in the minds of us all. As a result, the human person is being reduced to the status of client or, worse still, consumer, and the things which shape civilised life, like education, are becoming a commodity designed to shape more consumers and more providers of commodities. The notion of sociality is beginning to unravel, as we are seeing with the deterioration of public responsibility in the sphere of politics, journalism and banking. The questioning which makes for good citizenship reaches maturity as it becomes more and more a questioning of the politics which make, or might break, our society and of which the two children at our community meeting were innately aware.

The Church as Community - Re-imagining the System

Last week I attended one of those 24 hour brainstorming events in which the real work of organisations often gets done. Modern Church www.modernchurch.org.uk is a hospitable context in which the Christian faith can be discussed with intelligence, integrity and, most importantly, charity. What is most striking about Modern Church as an organisation is not so much that it is modern, but that its gatherings give shape and substance to the idea of what it means to be Church. Put theologically, this means that it serves the interests of its members, and the purpose of its founding ethos, by being clear about its liberal identity, an identity which is held within that of the wider Church.

Modern Church is also clear about its basic objectives.  It is modern and liberal , which does not prevent it being rooted in Christ, something which is clearly reflected in the regularity and depth of its worship. Ultimately, all that goes on in this organisation is held together in worship which sustains the bonds of affection (to borrow a quintessentially Anglican phrase) and holds Modern Church within the greater love of God.

God’s love also moves the organisation’s intellectual life in a continual forward direction, so there is depth and dynamic to its overall life of community. This in turn gives rise to what we call hope. In its organisational life, hope is not about hanging in and hoping for the best for Modern Church, specifically for the next generation of members who will carry its vision forward into the future. It is about having faith in that future and that the organisation is already, in some measure, living in it. Its members know this because there is a sense of the already and the ‘not yet’ in Modern Church’s intellectual life and in its internal relations. There are occasional strong disagreements but we sense that these too are ‘held’ within that same over-arching love, and ‘moved’ forward in its dynamic, so its organisational life has a certain vibrancy to it, which is what will ultimately attract new and younger members.

All of this has something to say to the wider ‘institutional’ Church, mainly because the Church is increasingly thought of as an institution in decline, perhaps because it tries too hard at being a viable organisation. In attempting to remain viable, the Church’s life is becoming systematised to the extent that it is losing sight of what it is really about which is making the love of God in Jesus Christ a reality to be experienced by people in their lives today. The Church cannot do this by remaining in the past.

 In the Church in Wales, where I come from, despite the real efforts being made to engage with all of its members in new and creative ways, the Church is still fearful of change. Fear of change is most keenly felt in its internal relations, especially with regard to women’s ministry and the proper deployment of their gifts. As a result of this fear, and the distrust which it brings, hearts are growing increasingly cold. This coldness is often reflected in the ‘thinness’ of much of the Church’s worship, teaching and sociality. There is something not quite true about it, not quite believable.

 Something is getting in the way of the Church’s relationship with God as his people. It suggests that cold hearts and systems which are geared to minimize change do not make for a vibrant Christian community. The Church is called to be the visible presence of Christ in the world as a vibrant worshipping community, but this cannot happen where there is fear and distrust, because fear and distrust legitimise cronyism which in turn restricts the dynamic and re-creative movement of the Holy Spirit within tightly controlled male clerical circles. This blocks the forward movement of the Holy Spirit towards a new life for the Church of the future, so the Church has less and less to offer in the way of hope for the world, or even for its own life. As a result, its life gets reduced to a system for getting things done or, as is often the case, not done. Perhaps the Church needs more of the slightly fuzzy edged clarity which comes when organisations manage to hold on to their vision, to their objective, in valuing those bonds of affection which enable them to be Christ in the world as well as to one another. Perhaps it is time for the system to change.

Russia and Ukraine - The Dynamics of Grace

A few days ago politicians were gathered to listen to what Angela Merkel had to say concerning Britain’s relationship with the European Union, along with a number of other things most of which were said in German. Although well translated, I imagine that whatever she said would have had greater impact had everyone in the room been German speakers. It is not just literal meaning which gets lost in translation but nuance, the kind of nuanced meaning which, accompanied by a smile or gesture of trust, enlivens and enhances verbal exchange between two or more people. As Angela Merkel was speaking, the camera focused for a second or two on the audience. It picked up, perhaps unintentionally, the prime minister and leader of the opposition in a brief and relaxed verbal exchange of their own, so affording us with a rare glimpse of their unaffected humanity. For a moment the masque which normally ‘presents’ the political persona, and gives license to the endless bickering and political posturing which we see in the day to day life of governance, was absent.

Many of us are weary of the bickering and political point scoring. We would like to see the masque removed, which would allow us to see the face of the person. It is the person who reveals what we all hope for in our politicians, which is integrity. We need persons, and not personas, in positions of leadership, because it is persons who bring good sense and compassion to governance. When leaders work together as persons, rather than as charismatic individuals striving to maintain a power base, they will be in a position to focus on what is essential for the flourishing of a nation, and of the human persons who make up that nation.

All of this sets me wondering what might come out of the current European crisis, described by the Foreign Secretary as the most serious of the 21^st century, if leaders were to see themselves as persons who are responsible to nations comprised of persons, and so arrive at political solutions which will, in the longer term, be conducive to good governance. We can assume, for the time being at least, that nobody caught up in the current European crisis wants a war. There are numerous economic and political reasons for this, not the least of which is that of global security.

 Not wanting a war is a good place from which to establish the conditions needed for good governance. These conditions depend on trust. Trust requires that leaders see nations as comprised of persons and, in their own diplomatic exchanges and planning, allow themselves to be seen as persons and not as autocratic wielders of power. Putin claims that he is defending the rights and security of the Russian people. The rhetoric suggests that by this he means the persons who think of themselves as Russian, but history has shown that autocratic power disconnects rulers from the persons for whom they are accountable. In the historical context of Crimea and Russia, the disconnection which exists between populations as persons, and the way these populations have been forced into exile and manipulated by autocratic leaders in the past, will inevitably be embedded in the current situation. (In 1944 Stalin broke up the Crimea, forcing 300,000 people into neighbouring countries in retaliation for its supposed sympathy with Hitler. Ten years later Crimea was handed to the Ukraine by Kruschev, who was himself half Ukrainian, as a gift.) Added to this are all the existing layers of economic and political factors which feed into the current intractable situation.

Christians are now entering the season of Lent, a time of renewal and of preparation for the great new beginning which is the Resurrection of Jesus Christ. Many, perhaps most, of the people caught up in this conflict are Christians. Lent is a time for letting go of whatever it is which prevents us from being fully the persons we are meant to be, or of seeing and behaving towards others as persons in the eyes of God. Lent is a time of return to that conceptual space in which are humanity is rooted.

The idea of return is at the heart of the Judeo-Christian understanding of repentance. God, speaking through the prophets of the Old Testament, is constantly inviting his people to ‘return’ to him. The returning is worked out practically through righteous dealing with one’s neighbour and, in the context of politics and international relations, through wise and righteous governance. In biblical terms, as it applies to governance, wisdom and righteousness pertain to what makes someone a person as opposed to an atomised self-orientated individual on the one hand, or, on the other, as a mere statistic. Persons reduced to the state of individuals, or of faceless numbers to be manipulated to suit a given agenda, are being denied their personhood.

During Lent we are asked to become the persons we were created to be and to enable others to become so as well. This requires that all persons, whether or not they are directly caught up in the current European conflict become inwardly receptive to the possibility of God’s grace being at work in all of us and in the world we inhabit. It is grace, worked into the world by the dynamic, or continual movement, of the Holy Spirit, which transforms persons and brings about peace between nations.