Attitude!

Back in April, I posted observations about a meeting we had a church. The response to the discussion questions from some people in my group was very negative.

Later, a member of the group said to me that it was good for people to share their negative feelings. That while it might hurt at the outset, Pain was a good thing -- a growing reaction.

One of the things that bothered me about this incident was that in some ways I agree with him -- sometimes we need to tell the truth in order to facilitate change. While I do believe that, I still felt like the meeting was counterproductive to the meeting we were supposed to be having.

Steve is in a Wednesday morning prayer and study group that is reading "Everybody's Normal until you get to Know them." I've read the book before, and I went back and scanned the chapter that the group was scheduled to read. Take a look at this"

There is a very important theological distinction between being a prophet and being a jerk. What burns deeply in the heart of a true prophet is not just anger but love.

There is such a person who speaks "truth" recreationally, but does it without love.

That's what bothered me about that meeting. I felt attacked. I didn't feel as if the discussion was being put forth in love, or in a desire to change the church, but instead with anger, and with the desire to spout forth negativity without the aim of love or change. It wasn't done to create accountability, but instead to bring forth complaints.

Resurrection

Steve's men's group meets early Wednesday morning. They are currently reading the Ortberg book "Everybody's Normal Till you Get to Know Them. I was looking for a blog post topic for today, so I picked up this book (I've already read it once: my comments about it are here.) In fact, one of my favorite parts of the book is in Chapter Two -- their chapter for tomorrow. I really like his description of how the Trinity is an example of community (post here).

Today, as I was looking through the chapter, I noticed this sentence:

"A community is not simply a group of people who live together and love each other. It is a place of resurrection." (Jean Vanier)

That sentence stopped me. How is it that community is a place of resurrection. In Christianity, using the word resurrection MEANS something. It's a powerful word; it implies the involvement of God. So how is community a place of resurrection?

• I think that in true community, we are recreated. We have new life because we are able to serve and to love -- those are God given pursuits that we cannot accomplish on our own.
• If God experiences community through the trinity, and we are created in the image of God, then we have a need for oneness that we can only find in community. We are closer to the image of God when we are in community.
• When we are sinking into the depths of sadness, friends -- community -- can lift us up and bring us new life. That's resurrection in a way.
• Have you ever sat with friends, laughed, talked, and felt the measure of time change? It's energizing and it brings us joy. Happiness, yes, but JOY. I think joy is found in being close to God. That's a means of grace and a way to resurrection.

We are made for community. We are made to be transformed and to find resurrection. Amen.

Trinity as Community

Today is Trinity Sunday, so I thought I would take this opportunity to write a post I've been thinking about for a while. It is based totally on someone else's idea, but I really like the concept, and am going to share it here.

The book Everybody's Normal Until you Get to Know Them by John Ortberg is about community -- about our need for community, friends, each other, and how to nurture other people in community. I read the book a while back and really enjoyed it.

In the second chapter, Ortberg takes some time to talk about the Trinity and how it relates to the idea of community.

His premise is that all three "components" of the trinity are shy. They -- God, Jesus and the spirit -- are not shy in the way that we would think of it. They are shy not in a self-serving, self-absorbed way, but in a shyness of other-centeredness.

I love his description of the work of the Holy Spirit:

Imagine drawing a stick figure on the chalkboard representing Jesus. The spirit sounds behind the chalkboard, "reaches around with one hand and points with a single finger to the image of Jesus. "Look at him; listen to him; learn from him; follow him, worship him, be devoted to him, serve him, love him, be preoccupied with him."

Shyness of other-centeredness

Jesus points toward God, and tell us to follow him. He does not bask in the glory of being God's son. He prays, "No thy will but yours' be done."

Believe it or not, God demonstrates this attitude as well. The two times we hear him speaking in the New Testament, he is pointing to Jesus, and saying, "Blessed is this one. Watch and listen to this one."

Within this trinity, there is a shyness of love, each pointing to other member, and uplifting. It is a model of community. Each points to the other in a gracious circle. "The trinity is a self-sufficient community of unspeakably magnificent personal beings of boundless love, knowledge and prayer," says Dallas Willard as quoted by Ortberg.

God didn't create us out of loneliness. He created us "because he was so in love with community that he wanted a world full of people to share it with."

What is Forgiveness?

Bob left a comment on yesterday’s post, “I've read that that true forgiveness entails treating the offense as if it had never happened. So while forgiving is not forgetting, forgetting can sure be a part of forgiveness.”

Whenever I teach a Sunday school class about forgiveness, this is the question that people ask. Is it really true that to “forgive is to forget.”?

First of all, what does it mean to forgive someone? I like, again, what Ortberg says about it:

1. When you forgive someone, you give up the right to hurt them back. You give up the sin of vengeance. We all know it, even if we only practice it in our minds. We imagine all kinds of scenarios in which the person who hurt us is hurt back. When we forgive, we let go of this kind of sin. We forget about vengeance. He goes on to say that this does not mean letting go of justice. Justice in itself is self-limiting – it is, at heart, a pursuit of fairness. Vengeance is not self-limiting. It is by nature, “insatiable.” If forgiveness always involved forgetting, then there would be no consequence to wrong-doing. The kidnapper would not go to jail, the abuser would never be stopped. We forget our desire to hurt someone else when we forgive them, but I’m pretty sure that we don’t forget the action of the person.
2. Ortberg goes on to say that the next stage of forgiveness is to develop a new way of seeing and feeling. I wrote about Philip Yancey’s view of forgiveness in his grace book (in this post). He talks about forgiveness involving a re-creation of the person we are forgiving. Can we understand that? Think about someone you are struggling to forgive. Don’t you think that when you look at that person, everything he does, everything he says, everything you say about him or think about him is influenced by the hurt he has done to you? Forgiveness means that when we look at that person, we forget our reaction to him. We allow him to be re-created in our view – we see him differently. Instead of only seeing the hurt, we see the person God has created. It’s hard. I’m struggling with that problem right now. Ortberg says, “We rediscover the humanity of the one who hurt us.”
3. Ortberg says that we have reached the third state of forgiveness when we truly wish for the best for the person who has hurt us. He says, “When you want good things for someone who has hurt you badly, you can pretty much know that the Great Forgiver has been at work in your heart.” We forget that we wished that the person would slip on a banana peel, hit his head, and all of a sudden realize the immense hurt that he has done, and spend the rest of his life regretting it. Instead, we look at the person, and see a child of God. We wish for that person to be close to God. We wish the best for him, and we will even pray for that person to receive God’s grace.

So does forgiveness involve – always – forgetting the sin? Ortberg says no. I think we would like for forgiveness to mean forgetfulness, because we would like for God to forget our sins. God does not have a memory problem. What God is able to do, has chosen to do, and what he will enable us to do through grace, is “to make our past sins irrelevant to his dealings with us.”

So I think Bob is right. Forgetting can sure be a part of forgiveness. As Ortberg says, we don’t have a memory problem. What we have is grace.

Forgiveness is not...

I'm still reading John Ortberg's book "Everybody's Normal Till You Get to Know Them." I'm in the third section called "The Secrets of Strong Relationship." The chapter I'm currently reading is about forgiveness.

Ortberg brings up some points about forgiveness that I've never really thought about before. First, he talks about what forgiveness is not:

1. Forgiveness is not the same thing as excusing. If an action is excusable, then is actually doesn't require forgiveness, does it? If, for example, someone is speeding because he is trying to get to the hospital before his child is born, then his action is excusable, but he doesn't need forgiven. If you think about that, then we shouldn't be waiting around for someone's actions to be excused before we forgive him.
2. Forgiveness is not forgetting. We talk about that one alot. Are we required to forget something that someone did to us when we forgive him? Ortberg's point is precisely that the two actions are not the same at all. He says, "Forgiveness is what's required precisely when we cannot forget."
3. Forgiveness is not the same thing as reconciling. Reconciling requires action by both people. I can't reconcile with someone who does not which to reconcile with me. I can forgive him. Also, there are times when I would forgive someone, but not reconcile with him. Think of the abused wife, who finally is able to forgive her husband, but in no way should be reconciled with him.

So if forgiveness is not excusing someone, or forgetting the hurt or reconciling, then what is it? I like Ortberg's thought that forgiveness is what is required when excusing or tolerating or accepting are not big enough to handle the job. It's hard work. It isn't easy. It's difficult -- so difficult that there are times that it is only by the grace of God that we are able to do it.

Image: Trees and sun at the VA this morning.