'As We Forgive ...'

It's the highest and hardest calling.

Photo by Wim van 't Einde on Unsplash

I trust you all had a blessed Lent and Holy Week, filled with insights and affirmations of the goodness of our God.  This period for me was extraordinarily hard and wonderful.  That seems to be the way with the severe mercy of our Lord.

While serving as a Russian captain in World War II, the great Russian writer Alexander Solzhenitsyn was arrested and imprisoned for criticizing Josef Stalin in a private letter.  Years later, he reflected on his eight brutal prison years, which he said nearly broke him. He wrote:

Bless you prison, bless you for being in my life. For there, lying upon the rotting prison straw, I came to realize that the object of life is not prosperity as we are made to believe, but the maturity of the human soul.

This recent episode in my life feels like I’ve been unfairly thrown into a prison of sorts—though not nearly as brutal as a Gulag, to be sure.  Still, I have felt trapped under a dark cloud of false accusations with no way to escape. My reputation and my legacy have been trashed in the eyes of thousands of individuals. Friends, colleagues, and publishers have canceled me, as the saying goes, so that I feel deeply betrayed at many levels.

But I’m not asking anyone to feel sorry for me. I’m actually suggesting otherwise. I resonate deeply, if not yet fully (that will take years) with Solzhenitsyn’s sentiment, because this painful episode is already turning out to be surprisingly fruitful.

For example: When I was spinning into depression one morning, I realized that I was much more existentially anxious about my reputation than I have ever been about loving God--or better, failing to love him with all my heart, soul, mind, and strength. This may seem like an overly pious reflection, but when I realized it, I was shocked. When one writes about spiritual matters, there will always be a gap between what one writes and how one lives out what he has written. But in this case, it felt like Someone hit me on the side of the head with a two-by-four. This early morning insight was, excuse the pun, a literal wake-up call.

While you angrily fester about a sin against you, like betrayal, you are reminded (again by that annoying Spirit) that you have betrayed friends and loved ones in your own life, and the remembrance of those moments still tears at your heart. Let him who is without sin, etc., etc.

This in turn forces an examination of root motives, which for me is profound self-centeredness mixed with nagging self-pity. While this worship of self is common to all, at moments like this, I see how it has been manifested specifically in my life. I see a lot of muck and chaos within. 

This in turn makes me realize afresh that God has known this about me all along—and it didn’t make a damnable bit of difference.  I mean that literally: it does not prompt God to damn us. Suddenly the gospel shines at its brightest. As Catholic writer Christopher West put it,

That’s who we really are, beautiful messes. And we are loved in that messiness. That’s the good news, and when we know that, not just in our heads but in our hearts, we can be naked without shame—not because we have nothing to be ashamed of, but because we know we’re loved right there in our shame.

The greatest gift of this episode for me so far is the reminder that I have been loved despite my ugly sinfulness. It will be an ongoing gift because, for years to come, I’ll run across people who have heard about or read the CT article and believe everything in it. And when that happens, I will be tempted to allay shame by justifying myself, explaining myself--when the best thing is for me to let shame do its work in me—and in others.

After the recent Maundy Thursday service at my home parish, a man with whom I have worshiped approached me and shook my hand warmly. “So glad to see you here tonight,” he began. I had taken a short break from attending this church. I didn’t want to be a distraction at Mass as tongues would surely wag when I entered church. Things have since calmed, so I began attending again during Holy Week.

“I want you to know,” he continued, “that you are welcome here. I don’t know what you’ve done and what you’ve not done. I don’t care. We’re all sinners, and sinners are welcome here.”

Naturally I immediately wanted to clarify to him what was false! But then by the grace of God, I was able to just say, “Thank you.”

And that’s when it occurred to me: In one sense, it doesn’t matter if others believe every accusation made against me or not. Fellow Christians are, each in his or her own way, just as sinful as I am. We are called to be a part of the company of sinners called the Church. We are called to welcome one another, no matter what we’ve done or not done, into the fellowship of the Cross. When we realize that afresh, it is such good news it makes one weep in gratitude.

So I’m with Solzhenitsyn, “Bless you, Accusers!”  If Jesus needed to be made perfect through suffering (Heb. 2:10), how much more is that true of me; so I’m grateful that God has permitted this sordid episode to occur. 

I continue to grieve that I have done or said things that so hurt and angered people that they have lashed out at me, to the point of bearing false witness and defaming me. I continue to look forward to opportunities to better understand their hurt, to offer apologies where necessary, and hopefully to see some restoration in broken relationships. Whether this will happen in this life or the next, we’ll just have to see. But happen it will. After rereading Ephesians 1 recently (“… he made known to us the mystery of his will … to bring unity to all things in heaven and on earth under Christ”), I realized that while the arc of history is long and jagged, it bends toward reconciliation.

I can hear the objections of some who say there can be no reconciliation without repentance.  Anyone who is married or in a close friendship knows this isn’t true. How many arguments have ended in a stalemate, where neither party will admit they’ve done anything wrong, sometimes because they really haven’t done anything wrong—and yet the relationship is restored precisely when each party forgives the other whom they believe, rightly or wrongly, has trespassed against them.

That microcosm is, in fact, the way the universe works. “...in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them” (2 Cor 5:19)--long before you and I realized we needed to repent or had an opportunity to do so.

I don’t want to underestimate repentance. The sacrament of reconciliation, also called confession, is extraordinarily powerful and necessary for spiritual growth.  And the act of apologizing  to those we’ve offended brings deeper levels of healing to the relationship—and as I’ve said, I continue to pray that someday I will be able to meet personally with people I’ve hurt or offended and apologize. But I’m not going to wait around for apologies I think I deserve, let alone demand them.

One high and hard calling of the disciple is to forgive when no repentance by the offender is forthcoming. Jesus unconditionally loved people whether they repented or not. The classic example: The woman caught in adultery never actually repented of her sin, and yet Jesus said he didn’t condemn her. Jesus didn’t say to forgive 70x7 only after someone has apologized.  And he didn’t prod us to forgive those who have trespassed against us only if they have asked for forgiveness. To forgive unilaterally is one of the most crucial and hardest ways to love our neighbor—impossible for us, but all things are possible with God. That at least is what I’m called to do for now—to pray for the grace to forgive my trespassers as I continue to hope for an opportunity to reconcile more completely.

After announcing God’s astounding unilateral move of reconciliation with us in 2 Corinthians 5, Paul adds, “and entrusting the message of reconciliation to us.” This message, of course, must not merely be announced but also lived. I’m praying that this radical grace will permeate my soul at deeper and deeper levels.

For the time being, this will continue to be an occasional newsletter as I try to discern the way forward for my life and for my writing.  If this calling to write is a true calling, what I’m to do with it will be revealed to me. 

Comments are open for now, with the usual request that posts be respectful and on point.

At any rate, thank you for your continued prayers and support.

Grace and peace,

Mark