Quotes & Sayings


We, and creation itself, actualize the possibilities of the God who sustains the world, towards becoming in the world in a fuller, more deeper way. - R.E. Slater

There is urgency in coming to see the world as a web of interrelated processes of which we are integral parts, so that all of our choices and actions have [consequential effects upon] the world around us. - Process Metaphysician Alfred North Whitehead

Kurt Gödel's Incompleteness Theorem says (i) all closed systems are unprovable within themselves and, that (ii) all open systems are rightly understood as incomplete. - R.E. Slater

The most true thing about you is what God has said to you in Christ, "You are My Beloved." - Tripp Fuller

The God among us is the God who refuses to be God without us, so great is God's Love. - Tripp Fuller

According to some Christian outlooks we were made for another world. Perhaps, rather, we were made for this world to recreate, reclaim, redeem, and renew unto God's future aspiration by the power of His Spirit. - R.E. Slater

Our eschatological ethos is to love. To stand with those who are oppressed. To stand against those who are oppressing. It is that simple. Love is our only calling and Christian Hope. - R.E. Slater

Secularization theory has been massively falsified. We don't live in an age of secularity. We live in an age of explosive, pervasive religiosity... an age of religious pluralism. - Peter L. Berger

Exploring the edge of life and faith in a post-everything world. - Todd Littleton

I don't need another reason to believe, your love is all around for me to see. – Anon

Thou art our need; and in giving us more of thyself thou givest us all. - Khalil Gibran, Prayer XXIII

Be careful what you pretend to be. You become what you pretend to be. - Kurt Vonnegut

Religious beliefs, far from being primary, are often shaped and adjusted by our social goals. - Jim Forest

We become who we are by what we believe and can justify. - R.E. Slater

People, even more than things, need to be restored, renewed, revived, reclaimed, and redeemed; never throw out anyone. – Anon

Certainly, God's love has made fools of us all. - R.E. Slater

An apocalyptic Christian faith doesn't wait for Jesus to come, but for Jesus to become in our midst. - R.E. Slater

Christian belief in God begins with the cross and resurrection of Jesus, not with rational apologetics. - Eberhard Jüngel, Jürgen Moltmann

Our knowledge of God is through the 'I-Thou' encounter, not in finding God at the end of a syllogism or argument. There is a grave danger in any Christian treatment of God as an object. The God of Jesus Christ and Scripture is irreducibly subject and never made as an object, a force, a power, or a principle that can be manipulated. - Emil Brunner

“Ehyeh Asher Ehyeh” means "I will be that who I have yet to become." - God (Ex 3.14) or, conversely, “I AM who I AM Becoming.”

Our job is to love others without stopping to inquire whether or not they are worthy. - Thomas Merton

The church is God's world-changing social experiment of bringing unlikes and differents to the Eucharist/Communion table to share life with one another as a new kind of family. When this happens, we show to the world what love, justice, peace, reconciliation, and life together is designed by God to be. The church is God's show-and-tell for the world to see how God wants us to live as a blended, global, polypluralistic family united with one will, by one Lord, and baptized by one Spirit. – Anon

The cross that is planted at the heart of the history of the world cannot be uprooted. - Jacques Ellul

The Unity in whose loving presence the universe unfolds is inside each person as a call to welcome the stranger, protect animals and the earth, respect the dignity of each person, think new thoughts, and help bring about ecological civilizations. - John Cobb & Farhan A. Shah

If you board the wrong train it is of no use running along the corridors of the train in the other direction. - Dietrich Bonhoeffer

God's justice is restorative rather than punitive; His discipline is merciful rather than punishing; His power is made perfect in weakness; and His grace is sufficient for all. – Anon

Our little [biblical] systems have their day; they have their day and cease to be. They are but broken lights of Thee, and Thou, O God art more than they. - Alfred Lord Tennyson

We can’t control God; God is uncontrollable. God can’t control us; God’s love is uncontrolling! - Thomas Jay Oord

Life in perspective but always in process... as we are relational beings in process to one another, so life events are in process in relation to each event... as God is to Self, is to world, is to us... like Father, like sons and daughters, like events... life in process yet always in perspective. - R.E. Slater

To promote societal transition to sustainable ways of living and a global society founded on a shared ethical framework which includes respect and care for the community of life, ecological integrity, universal human rights, respect for diversity, economic justice, democracy, and a culture of peace. - The Earth Charter Mission Statement

Christian humanism is the belief that human freedom, individual conscience, and unencumbered rational inquiry are compatible with the practice of Christianity or even intrinsic in its doctrine. It represents a philosophical union of Christian faith and classical humanist principles. - Scott Postma

It is never wise to have a self-appointed religious institution determine a nation's moral code. The opportunities for moral compromise and failure are high; the moral codes and creeds assuredly racist, discriminatory, or subjectively and religiously defined; and the pronouncement of inhumanitarian political objectives quite predictable. - R.E. Slater

God's love must both center and define the Christian faith and all religious or human faiths seeking human and ecological balance in worlds of subtraction, harm, tragedy, and evil. - R.E. Slater

In Whitehead’s process ontology, we can think of the experiential ground of reality as an eternal pulse whereby what is objectively public in one moment becomes subjectively prehended in the next, and whereby the subject that emerges from its feelings then perishes into public expression as an object (or “superject”) aiming for novelty. There is a rhythm of Being between object and subject, not an ontological division. This rhythm powers the creative growth of the universe from one occasion of experience to the next. This is the Whiteheadian mantra: “The many become one and are increased by one.” - Matthew Segall

Without Love there is no Truth. And True Truth is always Loving. There is no dichotomy between these terms but only seamless integration. This is the premier centering focus of a Processual Theology of Love. - R.E. Slater

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Note: Generally I do not respond to commentary. I may read the comments but wish to reserve my time to write (or write off the comments I read). Instead, I'd like to see our community help one another and in the helping encourage and exhort each of us towards Christian love in Christ Jesus our Lord and Savior. - re slater

Showing posts with label Forgiveness and Love. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Forgiveness and Love. Show all posts

Wednesday, April 14, 2021

Redemptive Restoration of Civil Societies in an Age of Mistrust



 
Redemptive Restoration of Civil Societies
in an Age of Mistrust

What has the global pandemic brought to us? Firstly, if not significantly, there is a large societal breakdown in trust with each other and with institutions in general. As we continue to vaccinate it seems more and more unlikely that herd immunity can be reached due to a significant grouping of non-vaccinators. This means that a recovery back to a sense of "normalcy" most likely will be diminished for many years.

Similar to a PTSD psychiatric injury, social wellness will require rebuilding trust. For those who seek to help during this period of pronounced uncertainty one might imagine wading through wave after wave of misinformation, refusal to comply to help one another, and skepticism about the SARS-CoVid-19 vaccines themselves.

Both the good and the bad of information will require greater discernment with the distinct ability to find and develop determined sources of integrity including thosee good-willed promise keepers attempting to reconcile communities back to one another.

Personally, as a forward-looking entrepreneurial spirit, I sense this period of mistrust and unknowing can be importantly helpful in re-establishing better ontologic and epistemologic societal foundations than the ones we had relied on over the past centuries. Those which can no longer serve today's contemporary societies in the face of global knowledge, resourcing, and dialogue.



Foundationally restructuring our social mores will require:
(i) Properly expanding America's civil democracies to be persistently driven by equality and justice for all.
Other forms of structural redress might include:
(ii) Letting go of unhealthy eco-blinded industrialization, commercialism, and consumption.

(iii) Learning to work, listen, and build cooperative socio-economic partnerships across localities, regions, nations, and internationally while learning to let go of our trigger finger aimed at resource stealing, post-colonial expansionism, national sovereignty popularism, and ethnic cultural warfares.

(iv) And, on the religious side of things, to discern just how bad some Christian teachings have been when promoting fear, distrust, uncertainty (FUD), warfare, self-rights, and self-preservation. Mixing unhealthy beliefs with unhealthy politicking is just bad business for any community or nation.

That discriminatory and inhumane religious beliefs must be dropped by Christians from their Christian faith so that better religious teachings emphasizing an attitude of servanthood, personal sacrifice, service to others, and unbiased stewardship in all things such as non-profits, social aide, education, basic humanitarianism, love, peace and goodwill have much more to offer.

Yes, these present times of upheaval are the very best times to enact a better, more cohesive course for humanity and ecological restoration of the earth. Call it solidarity with one another, social justice, a healthy revisioning of humanity's future. Whatever. But deem this time and all our present efforts as a form of deeply personal and societal uplift. As forms of redemptive restoration of the human spirit re-learning to walk softly with our fellow neighbors throughout the cosmo-spheres of our existential and phenomenological existence.

R.E. Slater
April 13, 2021
* * * * * * * * *


Photo illustration by Slate. Photo by AntonioGuillem/iStock/Getty Images Plus,Prostock-Studio/iStock/Getty Images Plus and Thinkstock.




Workers are really, really not ready for
offices to reopen.

by Alison GreenAPRIL 12, 2021

“I Do Not Trust People in the Same Way and I Don’t Think I Ever Will Again”


Few people are as knee-deep in our work-related anxieties and sticky office politics as Alison Green, who has been fielding workplace questions for a decade now on her website Ask a Manager. In Direct Report, she spotlights themes from her inbox that help explain the modern workplace and how we could be navigating it better.

As COVID-19 vaccinations continue to run ahead of schedule, many workplaces that went fully remote last year are starting to set timelines for bringing people back to the office—and their employees are not happy.

As reopening initiatives gather steam, I’ve been flooded with letters from people viewing these plans with deep suspicion. Many of them are wondering whether they should even tell their employers once they’re vaccinated, since they fear that knowledge will be used to compel their return to work.

This person and her co-workers got vaccinated back in January but still fears returning:

My grandboss mentioned us going back a few weeks ago and I could almost immediately feel my panic response. I realized I haven’t been around anyone for more than two hours at a time in a year (except for three short occasions), I’m dreading having to wear a mask for multiple hours at work, I’m nervous to be back in spaces with lots of other people (even though I know our spaces are immaculately clean, we’ve still had a few positive cases). I don’t feel like me being there will do any good vs keeping my germs at home and away from people who are immunocompromised. It’s all so fraught and anxiety-inducing.

But bringing people back once they’re vaccinated has been the plan all along, as this manager points out:

I have felt like I am the one taking crazy pills the way some of our staff has reacted to my three-month warning that we will be reopening the office at the start of June. I am impressed we have held it together this long, but it has been a LOT of work and we just can’t afford to keep paying fees for missing things and losing time for development/training.

Part of the problem is one of timing. It’s one thing to plan on reopening in the late summer—Labor Day has been a popular target—but employers talking about bringing everyone back in May or June are ignoring that it’s unlikely we’ll have reached herd immunity by then (and kids definitely won’t be vaccinated yet, which is a concern for many parents).

Workers have also seen over the past year that even when employers claim they’ll implement safety measures, the reality is often very different. Social distancing requirements often go unenforced, and many people report colleagues going unmasked without any consequences. So employees are primed to be incredulous.

Plus, some people just prefer working from home and would rather not give it up. They’re quite happy to have no commute, a more flexible schedule, pets lounging nearby, more casual dress, and easy access to their own kitchen. A lot of us have even found we’re more productive at home, without the interruptions of chatty colleagues.

But the real problem, I suspect, is that in the past year, we’ve experienced a massive loss of trust in our institutions and in one another. After watching the government mislead and fail us on such a massive scale, with hundreds of thousands of people dying as a result of those failures, of course people are skeptical now. We’ve spent the past year not being protected by the institutions that were supposed to protect us and learning that we’d have to protect ourselves. So even at companies that have acted responsibly throughout the pandemic, employees are naturally anxious. When you’ve spent months watching businesses reopen while case numbers rose and governors giving that their blessing, as unsurprising new waves of infections followed, it’s pretty understandable to feel apprehensive of any new timelines for a return to “normalcy.”

This person who wrote me speaks for a lot of others:
I do not trust people or institutions in the same way and I don’t think I ever will again. Even as we “go back to normal” (and since much of the world is not vaccinated, it is not even close to over yet) I will not forget how our societies treated vulnerable people and essential workers as expendable, minorities as scapegoats, facts and public health as suggestions or lies.
The world, frankly, just feels different now:
Even when things are as safe as possible, there’s a sense that we’ve been torn apart.
Maybe I was naive, but I always assumed in a crisis, we’d come together as a society and have each other’s back. It’s been over a year of being proven wrong about that over and over again. Knowing that the people I serve at work and the ones I run into in my life may or may not be willing to throw me overboard for their own personal benefit and comfort makes it hard to be around people.
I feel differently about how I view the world and how much I want to interact with it. And I need to work on that, but I think the impact of this will linger.

All of this is true despite the very good news around us—like the rapidly increasing vaccine supply and new data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention showing vaccinated people are unlikely to carry or spread the virus to others. For many people, that doesn’t change the reality that the past year has been a trauma, one that’s still unfolding. You can’t just turn that off when your office says it’s time to come back. (I also want to acknowledge the millions of people who won’t be “returning” to work because they’ve been working on site all along or have lost jobs that might not be coming back. In some ways, this anxiety about returning is the province of the privileged.)

So what can employers do? First and foremost, when possible, plan your reopening for further out than May or June. Think late summer or early fall. Give people plenty of notice, so they have time to get used to the idea, line up child care, and make any other arrangements. And consider a phased-in return: Rather than expecting workers to resume full-time on-site work overnight, bring people back for one or two days a week at first and then gradually increase that if it’s necessary. (It may not be! Many people have concluded that their jobs could be done most effectively with a hybrid setup, working from home some days and in the office others.) This person describes a system that worked well for her employer:

My facility has been closed to the public for basically a year. We did WFH for a while, then a mostly-WFH hybrid for the whole workforce, and then back into the still-closed-to-the-public office since the new year. We are just now opening up for limited programming, which I’ve had some surprising anxieties about even though I just got my second shot. Being able to ease back into things, and having things like mask guidelines, plexi barriers, and sanitizers everywhere has helped.

Coming back online a little bit at a time has allowed people to readjust. And it has given people with health concerns the flexibility to continue working from home, while letting those of us who feel able take care of the physical stuff that has to get done. I can’t imagine doing a year (or months) of WFH then returning to what is basically my pre-pandemic normal, just with masks on. If there is any way to make this a gentle transition, I think that would be the right call for everyone.

But employers should also recognize the significant break in trust between individuals and institutions, and know that won’t be repaired overnight. That doesn’t mean employers can’t bring people back when it’s truly safe to do so, but there’s going to be anxiety in their ranks for a long time—and the more they can be sensitive to and patient with that, the better reopenings are likely to go.





Sunday, August 9, 2015

What Forgiveness Is Not (Part 1) & What It Is (Part 2)




What Forgiveness is Not
http://thomasjayoord.com/index.php/blog/archives/what-forgiveness-is-not

by Thomas Jay Oord
August 1, 2015

A series of painful events in my life have me pondering anew the meaning of forgiveness. Family and friends have also asked for help as they struggle to forgive those who hurt them. I want to share some ideas I’ve found helpful in my own efforts to forgive in the midst of pain.

An impressive scholarly literature is available on forgiveness. The field of positive psychology, for instance, offers some impressive research. And various religious and moral traditions offer wisdom on the matter.

As a Christian theologian, I’m especially interested in what the Christian tradition says about forgiveness. I like to contemplate, for instance, what it means to say God forgives. I also wonder why horrible things happen if God loves everyone and can control anything, a question usually called “the problem of evil.”

In this blog, I’ll set aside the question of why God doesn’t prevent evil. I’ve addressed it elsewhere, and I have a book coming out in November that tackles the subject.[1]

For this essay, I mostly want to ponder what it means for humans to forgive.

Forgive and Forget?

I sometimes hear that those who have been harmed ought to “forgive and forget.” Most people interpret this phrase to mean that forgiving requires ignoring or overlooking the harm others have done. We must disremember, they say.

I reject the idea that forgiveness requires forgetting the harm done. I reject the idea, in part, because such forgetting may be impossible for some people. If forgiving requires forgetting, those who cannot forget will never be able to forgive.

Forgiveness does not mean burying the pain deep inside. It does not demand we ignore the damage done. Victims must acknowledge harm was done.

In fact, forgetting the harm can be extremely unhelpful to the victim and to others. Forgetting may allow perpetrators of evil to continue their dastardly deeds. Forgetting may lead to failing to change structures that permit evil. As Nazi holocaust survivors know, for instance, we must remember as a way to resist repeating past sins.

Sometimes we must remember past evil to inspire us to prevent evil in the future.

Forgiving as Warm Fuzzy Feelings?

Some people assume that those who forgive no long feel repulsed by those who have hurt them. True forgiveness, they say, means having warm fuzzy feelings toward perpetrators of evil. Positive feelings must completely replace the victim’s pain, outrage, and other negative feelings.

I disagree with this view too. Those who have been hurt may wish to feel positive feelings. But such feelings often take time or never come at all. Negative emotional histories rarely transform overnight!

If forgiveness means that victims must have warm and positive emotions toward those who harm them, forgiveness is not possible for many people — at least not possible in the short term. Fortunately, forgiveness doesn’t require that we always feel warmth toward those who have injured us.

I’ll address later how we replace negative feelings with positive ones. But for now, I simply want to deny that forgiveness requires our feeling warmth and positivity toward those who have hurt us.

Forgiveness as Gladness?

Related to the misconception that forgiveness requires warm feelings is the misconception that those who forgive completely should thereafter feel bright and breezy. Those with a particular view of God’s blueprint for life sometimes even say God wanted the harm and pain we endure. I strongly disagree!

In reality, anger toward evil is an important part of being a morally mature person. Because evil undermines wellness, we are right to oppose it. Feeling angry is appropriate when evil is done, and we can be angry while simultaneously acting for good.

These words of Scripture seem wise to me: “Be angry, but do not sin” (Eph. 4:26). I take this to mean that we are sometimes justified in being mad about what has happened to us or to others. Injustice sucks! But we must not allow our anger to become revenge, spite, resentment, or retaliation. Besides, “eye for an eye” and “tooth for a tooth” leaves us blind and edentulous!

What we ought to do when we’re “good and mad” brings me to…

Forgiveness as Complacency?

A widespread misconception says forgiveness requires the forgiver to accept passively what has happened, with no active response. Those who promote this misconception usually pair it with the correct notion that forgiveness does not retaliate. But they explicitly or implicitly add that in the face of harm, forgivers should be quiet, inactive, or compliant.

In my view, forgivers are activists. They have experienced injustice first hand and they are choosing to do something about that injustice. Instead of striking back, however, they mobilize to change some part of the world for good. Positive world changing involves numerous types of action. But it does not involve apathy.

Because forgiveness is not complacency, harmful institutions and individuals ought to brace themselves when forgivers respond to injustice. Forgivers don’t run away and hide. They act for the common good, often passionately and persistently, in response to the harm done. When victims forgive rightly, their righteous activism often pushes harmful institutions or individuals to make reforms and offer apologies.

The particular acts that accompany forgiveness depend on what well-being requires in each case. It may mean acting to prevent perpetrators from doing more harm. It may mean raising awareness of injustice. It may mean acting to transform institutional practices or social customs. It may mean seeking counseling for oneself and others. The ways of forgiving love are almost endless!

Activist forgivers pursue various activities to bring health and wholeness in the face of evil.

Forgiveness as Reconciliation?

Many use “forgiveness” and “reconciliation” interchangeably. But I think we would be wise to separate these two words.

Forgiveness is something one person or a group can do in response to an evil act or hurtful relationship. Forgivers act irrespective of what perpetrators may do. Those harmed need not wait for confession from those who harm them. Instead, they act to forgive despite what others may do.

Reconciliation, by contrast, requires all the estranged parties to act positively toward one another. Reconciliation requires all involved to choose positive unity and healed relationship. Reconciliation takes a least two.

Let’s be honest: Sometimes those who harm seek forgiveness and reconciliation mainly to avoid public scorn. They say they want reconciliation, but they really want something else. Their motives are not primarily to restore or help those they have injured. They mostly want to avoid some negative consequences without actually doing the work of repentance (being transformed).

Because it can be difficult to judge rightly the motives of those who harm us, bringing in third parties (e.g., counselors) is often necessary for genuine reconciliation.

Forgiving Waits for Others to Ask to be Forgiven?

The final issue I want to address here is the idea that forgiveness requires that those who harm first admit their wrong and ask forgiveness. Fortunately, victims need not wait before they can act to forgive.

If forgiveness requires waiting until evil doers confess and repent, perpetrators of injustice would maintain a kind of control over their victims. But a major reason forgiveness is so powerfully good is that it can set victims free from such control. Forgiveness does not require that those who have hurt admit their guilt.

We who have been harmed can forgive even if those who harmed us don’t care that they have injured. We can forgive even if those who harmed us are unaware of their injuring. We can forgive even when those who harm feel justified in their harmful acts!

I can’t help but insert my own situation as an example. As far as I know, no individual, group, board, or team has apologized for harming my colleagues, my family, or me. Perhaps none feels responsible and therefore thinks an apology would be inappropriate. Perhaps some worry about the legal implications if they were to admit guilt. Perhaps some feel their actions were justified, because they think NNU would be better without me. Perhaps some rationalize what they have done by saying, “Tom will end up just fine,” meaning I will find another job. I honestly don’t know all the reasons.

Whatever their reasons for not apologizing, I don’t need to wait for them to ask for forgiveness. After all, an apology may never come. But I can choose to forgive them now.

What is forgiveness, then?

I’ve spent most of this essay talking about what forgiveness is not. I thought I’d clear away some of the misconceptions before offering what I think are helpful conceptions.

I’ll explain what forgiveness is and a little about how we can forgive in my next essay, which I will soon post.


* * * * * * * * * *




What Forgiveness Is
http://thomasjayoord.com/index.php/blog/archives/what-forgiveness-is

by Thomas Jay Oord
August 4th, 2015

In my previous essay, I talked about what forgiveness is not. Now let me talk about what it is.

As I write this, I’m aware that I can’t cover all topics related to forgiveness. And I’m aware that I speak primarily from my own experience, aided by my interpretation of the wisdom found in Scripture, religious and moral traditions, and scientific research, especially in psychology. I definitely have much to learn. But I want to share what I have found helpful.

What Forgiveness Is Not

Let me begin by recapping some ideas from my previous essay, “What Forgiveness is Not.”

In that essay, I said that forgiveness does not require that we forget the harm done. I reject the idea that we must forgive and forget.

Forgiveness does not mean that we must feel warm fuzzy feelings toward those who have hurt us. Forgiveness does not mean excusing the wrongdoing. We who have been hurt also do not need to believe our pain is part of God’s plan.

I also said that forgiveness does not mean complacency or passivity. Instead, forgivers are activists. They repay evil with good. We can be angry at the harm done and yet still forgive the harm doers.

Forgiveness is not reconciliation either, because reconciliation requires that all estranged parties be united. We can forgive even when those who have harmed us think their actions were justified.

Finally, I said that forgivers don’t need to wait for those who have harmed them to express regret. If such waiting were required, those harmed would remain at the mercy of the harm doers.


Love is the Heart of Forgiveness

There is no common definition of forgiveness in the scholarly literature. But there are a number of characteristic aspects of how definition is discussed, and those can help us understand what it means to forgive.

As I see it, forgiveness is a form of love. At its core, love involves promoting well-being. It encourages flourishing, positivity, and abundant life. Love advances the efforts of healing, health, and wholeness. Simply put: Love does good.[1]

While love takes many forms, forgiveness is a form of love that means intentionally acting to do good to those who have harmed us. Forgiveness usually involves a pardoning statement of some kind and subsequent actions that treat well or wish wellness to those who have treated us poorly. It also typically involves a change from negative attitudes or emotions to positive ones.

Jesus said love does not repay evil with evil. Instead, those who love repay evil with good. That’s what forgiveness does: it expresses goodness in response to evil or harm.

Incidentally, I define agape as a kind of love that promotes well-being in response to actions that promote ill-being. Agape love chooses not to retaliate against those who have done injury. In other words, agape repays evil with good.[2]

As I see it, agape and forgiveness are closely related.

The Ability to Forgive Comes from God

I believe the power to forgive comes from God, whether we believe in deity or not. God not only calls us all to forgive, I believe God empowers us all to forgive. Just as we love because God first loved us, I think we can forgive because God first forgives us. I think some people love and forgive without consciously being aware that their ability to do so comes from God.

In recent days, I have repeatedly asked God to empower me to forgive those who have harmed my family, my colleagues, my friends, and me. Many have asked me for advice on forgiveness. My wife and I have talked much about what forgiveness requires. “Forgiveness” is a frequent topic of discussion in my house right now!

I believe that God calls me to forgive in the manner God has forgiven others and me. God is in the goodness business. And forgiveness brings the goodness of healing, wholeness, and health – in a variety of ways – to a world of hurt, pain, and suffering.[3]

Give gives us the ability to forgive. And forgiving as God forgives allows us to live life to the fullest.

How Do We Forgive?

So… what does it take forgive those who harm us?

Often the first step in forgiving is simply deciding to forgive. Deciding to forgive means acting for the good of those who have been bad to us. It means wishing them well in our thoughts and actions.

Forgiveness does not seek revenge. It does not harbor bitterness or resentment, but it deals with those negative feelings when they arise. Forgiveness is not vindictive. It consciously chooses to do right to those who have done us wrong.

Saying, “I forgive,” just once is seldom sufficient. Our thoughts and emotions often bring us back to the hurt. We must frequently say, “I forgive,” to deal with painful thoughts and emotions.

I repeatedly decide to forgive. I often say to myself and to others than I forgive those who harm me. Like an athlete who practices her sport so that the sport becomes second nature, I practice forgiveness in the hope that it becomes second nature to me.

Fortunately, the more times we decide to forgive, the more we talk about forgiveness, and when we participate in communities that promote forgiveness, the likelier we will be to choose to forgive when we are hurt. Strong habits of forgiveness make us the kind of people who find forgiveness normal.

The Emotions of Forgiveness

Deciding to forgive, in a moment or in a long series of instances, is usually also accompanied by a second step. This second step is sometimes more difficult and often not entirely within our ability to control.[4] The second step involves transforming our emotions.

Transforming our emotions rarely occurs overnight. Transformation takes time. But forgiveness research and various religious and moral traditions tell us how to replace the negative emotions we experience when hurt with positive emotions of health and healing.

Interestingly, those who forgive typically reap greater benefits – e.g., improved physical health, improved psychological health, and improved social/relational health – than the perpetrators of harm they forgive. Bitterness, cynicism, and hatred plague those who choose unforgiveness. Unforgiving people live wearisome and anemic lives. Forgiving people can live life fully.

Empathy

We can deal with negative emotions and thereby have a change of heart when we empathize with the perpetrator of our pain.[5] To empathize is to feel the feelings of others. Empathizing involves identifying with the other person’s basic humanity.

Empathizing often involves placing ourselves in that person’s shoes, thinking about that person’s own history and motivations. When we empathize, we see those who have hurt us as broken, insecure, and injured persons themselves. We also try to see the world from their perspective. This helps us understand their motivations a little, without requiring us to justify or condone when they have done.

This point is so important I want to emphasize it: When we empathize with perpetrators of evil, we need not approve or endorse the evils done. We can feel repelled, repulsed, and angry at the pain they have caused. But in empathy, our “hearts go out” to those who have been hurtful. We seek to understand them and their lives in some redemptive way.

The process of empathizing with those who perpetrate evil often involves admitting that we too have harmed others. We have also sinned. We should humbly admit that at times in our lives we have caused harm to others.

Perhaps our sins have not been as awful as the sins of others. Perhaps our victims are less hurt than we have been. But we also need to be forgiven. We all sometimes hurt others.

Helping Others Who Hurt

Finally, countless examples suggest that those who forgive well often work to help others who are hurting. Turning inward and becoming entirely self-focused often leads to depression. But reaching out to others is a powerful act that helps us and those we want to help.

I’ve been moved in powerful ways by the stories found in the book/film, Half the Sky. In fact, I have often shown the DVD in my NNU classes on love.

Half the Sky addresses the evils done to women around the world. One episode features Somaly Mam, a woman sold as a sex slave at a very young age. Mam escaped her hell on earth, however, and now rescues other young girls from the sex trade. She speaks about the pain she endured, her work, and forgiveness:

“This pain never leaves me,” says Mam, “I have lived my life day by day, with love and forgiveness, and the belief that helping others could give them voice and choice and create change.”[6]

The old saying “It is better to give than to receive” has a portion of truth in it. We can and should work toward our self-help and self-healing. But often the best way to find help and healing for ourselves is to seek help and healing for others.

Community

Forgiveness most often occurs in community. This community can come in the form of a wise friend or professional counselor. It can come in the form of a small accountability group or caring friendship. Books and other literature can channel this community that encourages forgiveness.

Some of the most powerful communities seek not just to help their own people deal with evil and pain. They help those outside their communities. They seek to cooperate with God to heal themselves and the world.

At its best, the Church are a people who forgive. They foster an environment that promotes forgiveness. At its best, the Church helps those outside it to discover the benefit of living lives of forgiveness.


Conclusion

In my own situation, I am choosing to forgive. I choose to forgive various people who have hurt me in the past weeks, months, and years.

My choice to forgive is one I repeat often. I repeat in my mind or aloud my commitment to forgive. I repeat my commitment to forgive when additional harm is done. I repeat my commitment when hurtful memories invade my mind or negative emotions press upon me.

I also try to empathize with those who have hurt others and me. I accept their humanity, complete with its ignorance and limitations. I remember the harm I have done to others. This helps dissipate some of the negative emotions I feel toward those who hurt me.

In my forgiving, I also seek to be active in helpful ways. I try to help others who have also been hurt. Forgiveness combats injustice and tries to change structures that do harm. It repays evil with good.

To forgive is to love. Among other reasons, I forgive because I want to imitate a forgiving God by my living a life of love that resembles the loving life Jesus lived. (Eph. 5:1).

I chose to forgive. And I am continuing to choose forgiveness as I seek to live a life of love.


Notes…

[1] Love is defined in various ways. In this blog, I will not take the time to defend my understanding of love. I offer my defense and definition of love in many books, but I especially recommend my book, Defining Love: A Philosophical, Scientific, and Theological Engagement (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Brazos, 2010).

[2] I explore in depth the meaning of agape in Defining Love and in The Nature of Love: A Theology (St. Louis, Mo.: Chalice, 2010).

[3] See my book, The Nature of Love, for more on this issue.

[4] I am grateful to my NNU colleague, Joseph Bankard, for teaching me about the relative lack of control we have over our emotions when forgiving. See his current work titled, “Forgiveness as Process and Virtue: How to Overcome Feelings of Anger and Resentment.”

[5] For a very helpful book on forgiveness research and on how to forgive and seek reconciliation, see Forgiving and Reconciling: Bridges to Wholeness and Hope, by Everett L. Worthington, Jr. This is a revised edition of his previous book, Five Steps to Forgiveness.

[6] Simon Marks, “Somaly Mam: The Holy Saint (and Sinner) of Sex Trafficking,” Newsweek 5/21/2014. http://www.newsweek.com/2014/05/30/somaly-mam-holy-saint-and-sinner-sex-trafficking-251642.html 


Saturday, November 9, 2013

Unconditional Love Brings Death

 
http://theupsidedownworld.com/2013/07/09/unconditional-love-brings-death/
 
by Rebecca Trotter
July 9, 2013
 
I’ve come across a number of Christians lately who are questioning the impulse to elevate love above any other concern. Love is too soft and squishy, they say. Love becomes an excuse to avoid hard things like confronting sin and enforcing discipline. One writer even asked if we are in danger of making love an idol. (Perhaps he hasn’t gotten to the part where the bible says that God IS love?!?).
 
I have something to tell you about people who say that love is squishy, soft, a cop-out: quite clearly, such a person has never actually attempted to love unconditionally. Loving unconditionally is the hardest thing any human being can ever try to do. Confronting sin? Upsetting friends and family? Setting boundaries and rules? Pffftttt . . . . Those are the simplest, most natural things in the world for the fallen human mind to do. Loving unconditionally? That WILL DESTROY YOU. It will cost you EVERYTHING. You will DIE if you try to do it.
 
Then Jesus said to his disciples, “If any of you wants to be my follower, you must turn from your selfish ways, take up your cross, and follow me.” ~ Matthew 16:24
 
These Christians who warn against love are right to be afraid of it. But not because it’s soft and squishy. Just the opposite. Unconditional love is the hardest, heaviest cross a human being can bear. It sent Jesus to his death.
 
He warned us that it would divide “father against son and son against father, mother against daughter and daughter against mother, mother-in-law against daughter-in-law and daughter-in-law against mother-in-law.”
 
In fact, unconditional love is so hard and so dangerous that I’ve had mature, devout, loving Christians who I respect warn me against it.
 
One man told me to never ask God to teach me to love people the way he does. It’s impossible, he said. Another woman told me the same thing about the sort of love described in 1 Corinthians 13. It’s impossible.
 
Jesus said to them, “With people this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.” ~ Matthew 19:26
 
When you love unconditionally, you don’t get to make demands. You don’t get to pressure the other to change, to make you happy, to do as you see fit. When they hurt you, you have to forgive. Every time. When they don’t give you what you need, you don’t get to withhold in return.
 
To love unconditionally, you have to “be perfect as your father in heaven is perfect.”
 
“Your Father who is in heaven. . . causes His sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.” ~Matthew 5:45
 
Which is the real secret of unconditional love: it has nothing to do with the person you are loving. Human love is all about the other person – how they make me feel, if they are good, what is pleasing about them, if they treat me well. If the person is good, kind, giving, gentle, attractive, useful, then our affection for them grows and we call that love. When someone is bad, mean, selfish, harsh, ugly, useless, then we struggle to call up any affection for them and loving them can become impossible.
 
Unconditional love works differently. It comes from the goodness of the lover, not the loved. We humans cannot do it unless we have been redeemed and purified in love. And that’s the rub. It is as we attempt to do the impossible – love unconditionally – that we are redeemed and purified in love. Love is a terrible cross. It is the narrow path that few find. It is our salvation.
 
The truth is that humanity is suspicious of love because loves doesn’t address what we see as the real problem – other people and their sins. Instead, love focuses like a laser on me and my heart. I cannot attend to the work love demands of me and look at the sins of others at the same time. But if I let go of my worry about everyone else and follow love where it will lead me, the Kingdom of God will begin to be manifest in and through me.
 
“Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.” ~ John 12:24
 
Salvation comes from dying. If you try to love unconditionally, make no mistake about it; you will die. You will lose everything you ever took life from: the approval of others, status, power, comfort, achievement, certainty, rules, talents, relationships, titles, roles – all of it will be lost. God is a jealous God – he does not share his throne with anything or anyone. Because he is the only source of life – in his presence everything else must become dead to you.
 
When I am hurt by someone, when I am maligned, when my needs are not met, human love dies. If someone mistreats me and instead of fighting back, I absorb that and bring it to my father for healing and correction, what is meant for evil becomes part of my salvation.
 
People will push your love to its limits so God can remove them. They will trigger your every dysfunction so they can be unlearned. They will create and play with your every hurt so it can be scrupulously cleaned out, sutured, operated on and attacked until it is all healed. They will slam up against your hard places until they are soft and abuse your soft spots until God makes them strong.
 
“Hold everything in your hands lightly, otherwise it hurts when God pries your fingers open.” ~ Corrie ten Boom
 
When you give up your right to judge, to hold a grudge, to be offended, to control and pressure, to withhold affection, to demand that your rights be respected, you will lose faith in everything you know, everything you trust, and everything you depend on so that it can all be cast aside. Learning to love unconditionally will lead to everything being removed from your clinging fingers until you have nothing left to hold onto except God alone. Your life in the flesh must die. And make no mistake – like death on the cross always it, it’s a long, painful, ugly, tortuous death.
 
”My Father, if it is not possible for this cup to be taken away unless I drink it, may your will be done.” ~ Matthew 26:42
 
Unless you really want God, unless you really want his kingdom, unless you really want to give yourself over to love completely, this is not a journey you should take. Because before it’s all done, you will beg for mercy a million times over. You will search for a way to quit. You will spend countless hours calling out to the darkness that surrounds you. You will collapse under the weight of the cross. You will despair and feel forsaken by God and man. Dying hurts, but we must die to be born again in the Spirit.
 
There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love. ~ 1 John 4:18
 
Those people who are worried about love – ishy, squishy, namby-pamby love? They are right to be worried. Because if we all follow love, then we will have to put down the tools humanity has been been using to try to shape reality with since time immemorial – the rules, the boundaries, the battles. And if we put those tools down – everything will come unhinged. Every boundary will be crossed. Every evil will occur. The dams we have been propping up to keep the worst of human nature at bay will break. We will die. They know this and fear it. But it’s already happening. They can’t stop it and they are going to die right along with everyone else. In fact, the longer they fight love, the longer and more painful the death will be.
 
But it’s the storm before the calm. These people don’t trust love and are desperate to avoid the storm because they don’t really trust God. They don’t understand that the enemy death which they fear so much has already been defeated for us by Christ. In their heart of hearts, they are afraid that God will be defeated by the forces of darkness, cruelty, sin and, yes, death. And they are wrong. Completely and utterly wrong.
 
And he who was seated on the throne said, “Behold, I am making all things new. . . “ He said to me: “It is done. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End.” ~ Revelation 21:5,6
 
God’s Kingdom is a bit like happiness – we can’t get there by trying to create it directly. In God’s Kingdom, there will be no sin. So we wage war on sin, thinking that will bring about God’s Kingdom. But sin can only be defeated through purification by love. In God’s Kingdom, there will be no suffering. So we try to fix, suppress and hide from whatever makes us suffer, thinking that is the way to God’s Kingdom. But the end of suffering comes only when we have walked through the suffering of death to new birth. In God’s Kingdom, no one will stand above or below another, but we will love each other all the same. So we work to elevate the downtrodden and bring down the mighty thinking that will manifest God’s Kingdom. But to love the low and the high all the same, we must unlearn human love and embrace unconditional love and all that entails.
 
God’s Kingdom is love. It is made by love. It comes through love. It is manifest through love. If we ever want to see the new heaven and new earth God has promised, it can only be found by picking up the cross of love and following it through death, hell and into the resurrection of new life.
 
I heard a loud voice from the throne, saying, “Behold, the tabernacle of God is among men, and He will dwell among them, and they shall be His people, and God Himself will be among them, and He will wipe away every tear from their eyes; and there will no longer be any death; there will no longer be any mourning, or crying, or pain; the first things have passed away.” ~ Revelation 21:3-4