Is it OK to Keep an Offensive Shot Chart?
Oops! Here it is again. Forgiveness. Or the real and potential lack of it: Unforgiveness. As I read for probably the “umpteenth time” Peter’s self-proclamation of spiritual excellence by aspiration to forgive up to seven times it occurred to me that if we are keeping a shot chart we are probably in failure mode anyway. I mean really? If I am looking at the bean jar and see that this clown only has one bean left, then he had best toe the line, for after that I am licensed to cultivate bitterness in my heart by harboring unforgiveness for repeat offenses. Now that really makes a lot of sense, doesn’t it? I trust my sarcasm is apparent.
Jesus moves beyond the ordinary sized “bean jar” and makes us calculate not by addition and subtraction of beans, but by multiplication: 7 x 70 = 490, and that means I am assured to lose count and will have likely forgotten the original offense anyway, so let’s just forget the whole blooming thing! Maybe that’s the point?
CS Lewis talks a lot of this in his life struggles and in his works: Mastery of forgiveness of the offense and of the offender is a given when once it is done, on that initial occasion that grace is discovered, but when it is convenient to dredge it up again to utilize the offense for manipulative purposes in the present, that original offense reoccurs in the mind just as real and readily as before. Lewis then accurately identifies the quality of “re-forgiveness required to be just as real as the original forgiveness because just as much grace is demanded to satisfy our sinful hearts as before. You did not think your flesh had improved in the last few weeks did you? Not hardly. Lewis was especially helpful to me to be watchful for the “replaying” of previous offenses whenever I find myself idle or it seems convenient such as when I encounter an occasional friend who challenges my grace of love and forgiveness. The tendency is to immediately run back in my mind and say to Self, “Do you remember when!?” And we justify our coolness of response for his previous offensive word, deed or attitude. There are real life struggles here for offenses are experienced every day. They are in my world anyway.
We are all debtors to grace. If we believe we are better than the caught sinner we lie to ourselves and have a “Pharisee-complex”.
The presumption in Peter’s hypothetical is that “brothers sin” against one another. Don’t be shocked, but good men have bad fights. It happens. Remember Forrest Gump as he ran? “It happens.” Yep. Got several Tees and some folks we do well to simply stay away from, even brethren. Let’s pray for them and love them from a distance. I have no doubt that Paul loved Barnabas and Barnabas loved Paul, but their ministry philosophy seemed to be at an impasse. That happens. That doesn’t mean these guys are against one another. God simply has them in different fields.
Now. How about a time-out? “Take 5” and quietly sit alone without phone or distraction and truly ask God to reveal all those you are embittered against. “Making a list, and checking it twice.” Then deal with it however He leads.
Review the “one another” commands in the New Testament, and figure out how the heck to practically implement them. Positive action of “faith working through love” has a way of removing offenses and squelching future occasions for sin. It’s hard to hate on someone you are serving with.
May the Lord help us to heed His holy, sufficient and relevant word today, and speedily at that. Don’t you sense time is short? I do.
Forgiveness sometime stinks. Upon forgiveness we lose our perceived position of power and right of retaliation upon the offending party. We must lay our club down. We become disarmed. Peace treaties are signed and enacted and if we violate these treaties, we exchange positions and are in need of forgiveness. Risk is inherent in these gnarly relational intrigues. Power over the offender by withholding forgiveness was illusionary anyway… what were we thinking? That we somehow were different or better?
Consequential loss of privilege may be required. A pastor who betrays his congregants in a gross or public way, or by serial blunders, is not worthy of his calling even when forgiven. He needs go get a real job in a real secular world as Moses in Midian, show faithfulness, (practice humility and repentance with the sheep as another dumb sheep and not as a shepherd), then wait upon the Lord with an eye out for a burning bush. Then only with a reluctant dragging should one draw near the pulpit again.
Guilt and shame in situ are non-redemptive works of the flesh or nonproductive byproducts of works the flesh. Some seek to sanctify them as enshrined works of grace, and as such they may give a sense of justified comfort to the embittered soul or solace to the perpetually hard-working pharisee.
Guilt and shame are not redemptive in their first cause as they drive one from the Light of the presence of God. Redemption is only by Light and through Light, not away from its warmth and hope and glow. Guilt must be distinguished from the nature of true conviction of sin. Conscience may scream but the Spirit alone brings sorrow as a redemptive product of the grace-process calculated to drive one to Christ, our solitary hope. Guilt and shame provide the staircase to descend into deeper darkness and despair. Though active shame may force change or departure, and even modification of behavior, it is not to be construed as Biblical sorrow leading to repentance. Such shame returns inward or other-ward to the source and not from the sin. Shame forces one into a strange relationship of satisfaction and authentication of blame and excuse.
Fortunately for we guilty shameful sinners there is a redeeming Father who tenderly delights to pardon the wayward child overtaken in a fault. Guilt and shame in the hands of this lovingly redemptive God are His tools to awaken need as He takes these products of the flesh and outfits them as vehicles to drive one toward good, redemptive purposes in glory. One may find himself overcome by despair at the strong arm of the Enemy but such is the Spirit’s pleasure to reveal Christ as the Remedy to deliver and satisfy.
Guilt and shame flee the light and presence of faith in Christ. There will be no guilty sinners in heaven, only saved ones who know no condemnation, ideally on earth as in heaven. There will be no shame in heaven, but only joy of sins covered in robes of righteousness.
One of the most mind-boggling considerations of our walk with God this day in this world is the freeness of no guilt and no shame and no condemnation He grants us to partake of before the journey is complete. He freely gives the “No Condemnation Contract” to guilty sinners today, and as such, we draw near Him to listen to Him.