I hope you all don't mind, but I thought we'd start a new article to continue the old discussion. Dave added on to the previous one and I would like to comment on it. He brought up training a puppy dog ( a very cute and apt analogy) and how we train and teach the puppy proper behavior and occasionally use negative reinforcement to keep it from doing the wrong thing.
The other week, Mike and I were talking about human forgiveness and God's forgiveness and the issues he had with this difficult subject. It's hard to get past that NEED for things to be fair and to have the opportunity for retribution. So I also used an analogy that seemed to help for us both. We are parents of two young children. They constantly test the waters to see where the boundaries are. And while this can be very annoying, it does NOT make us love them any less. We simply say NO to the behavior, explain how they should act/what they should or should not do/etc, and then move on. We also forgive them. And we continue to forgive them EVERY TIME they do these things....even if it is the same thing over and over again. And then I went a step further and asked him if there would ever be a time that we would not forgive our children, even when they grew up. Of course the answer was a vehement NO! We will always love our children; however, we will also always continue to let them know if they are acting incorrectly and offer support for them to change when needed. DOES THIS SOUND FAMILIAR? When you think about it, this is exactly how God treats us. We are children, we make mistakes, and he forgives us EVERY time that we act out. He tells us what we should be doing and waits for us to do it. He can't make us do it, anymore than we can make our children do it.
Now, unfortunately, man is not perfect and we cannot love everyone as we love our children. So we find it very difficult to forgive other people as we forgive those that we love. And as many people have pointed out, we also don't forget. And they're right, we shouldn't forget. If someone "bites" me, I want to remember so I can behave appropriately around them and not give them an open invitation to do it again.
okay, it's your turn.....
1 comment:
This topic sure has started a lot of discussion. And that's okay. What I'm seeing is that Grace and Forgivenes are related. And they may not be what we thought they were initially. What we learned about Grace and Forgiveness in Sunday School when we were kids may not be the same thing we're encountering as adults. It's a "Scratch the surface" kind of thing. The more you look, the deeper the topic seems to be.
It's not what we thought... it's certanly not fair, it's counter intuitive, etc. I guess the question is... does knowing what we are experiencing about Grace/Forgiveness change us in any way?
Can we forgive like that? Can we show Grace like that?
It's not easy to get, to accept, to understand... and certainly not to practice. But the thing is we're grappling with these things. We're called to struggle with them, to really get into them.
That's the key to the Christian life. It's not about perfection, it's about practicing. We practice Forgiveness, we practice Grace.
We also practice looking through a different lens, we practice looking from a different angle. And that different perspective changes things.
I must tell you all, being here in this community, in this congregation, is a real blessing for me. I've felt there is something here... certainy for me. There is something happening here that I've not felt very much. And I'm not trying to disparage other churches or groups or whatever. All I'm saying is it is a blessing to be here, where people are grappling with the faith-stuff, where the rubber meets the road.
I'm a fellow traveller on the road, and what a blessing it is to be able to share about these things, to hear others share about these things, and to know it is okay to mess up every now and again, because you know there are people there that know where of you speak.
This is a special place. And among the other Mission-focused stuff, I see this place as a place of refuge for some, a place of learning for others, a place of blessing, a place of centering.
I know i've drifted from the "original" topic, but this is an example of what I'm talking about. Here we have people who are sharing about these very important topics, things that inform our Spiritual Journies. In the last post, Dave talked about this particular Sunday School class being of real interest for him. And now look, he's leading it! And others are really engaging in this whole thing.
Continuing this stream of consciousness thought here... here we all are... However we got here, how ever long we've been here... We're here now, together, and we're helping each other on our journey to God. We're talking about things that are bouncing around in our hearts and heads, we're letting other people's words percolate in our minds and spirits. And even if we don't agree, we're respectful and listen.
We're all here for a reason, and together we can help each other.
I've drifted. Preaching is more starting with a theme, developing it, leading to a conclusion, etc. Here I seem to be just spewing out what's coming into my head at the moment... while trying to watch that my son doesn't hurt himself climbing on things. I wasn't exactly sure where this might have led, but thanks for indulging anyway.
We'll talk more again.
C Ya
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