I’ll start at the end:
Forgiveness changes us, not the other person.
Forgiveness is the gift of death,
and only those who are dying to themselves can understand it.
This was not hidden from us. Jesus teaches us to love our enemies and to do good to those who spitefully use us. He also says to leave your prayers and go be reunited with your brother. Come back to pray.
This is only a moral platitude to those using their own sight and senses, those who haven’t developed the vision that comes when your face is pressed into the ground. (A genuine clarity comes when we are pressed down. Otherwise, we are lost in ourselves.) It is not about taking the high road. It is taking the road to Golgotha - a very hard lesson to learn for those of us who have felt that we had a pretty good handle on Christianity.
Christianity was never about being a good person - opening the doors for others and smiling as they pass, nodding in sympathy as someone tells us about a family drama, hoping everyone gets along, being quiet and kind when everyone else is loud and pushy, or being the good, glad, hopeful one when people are down.
It is the most obvious thing in the world that Christianity isn’t about morality, but about death.
Not just our bodies dying, not just Resurrection, but the death of sin within us. How does this happen? How is this fought? Do we actually believe that sin still lives within us?
How is this war fought?
We consult doctors and YouTube for the health of our body, but for our souls, we rely on … what? Having a good attitude? Being sufficiently roused by a sermon? Holding our head high and walking away from conflict? The latest worship song sensation? The touchy-feelies?
I think we’ve given up on this fight. Actually, I think we don’t even see the real enemy, and I don’t think we know how to fight. I don’t see indications that tell me otherwise. We advocate for the repeal of this legislation or that law while overeating, judging others, and withholding our money from the poor, or do things for all to see.
We take firm stances on things outside of Christianity and take extremely soft stances - or no stance at all - on things inside “Christianity.” “Who am I to judge?”
I see Christians pointing fingers at society as if we know that if IT changed, everything would come aright. As if the culture is the Prodigal and not us. As if this culture developed apart from us and against our will. As if we tried to stop it. As if we stand against it, when we know we do not. We love how easy everything is.
It is hard to say you are fighting for your king when you are found in the enemy’s camp, dressed like the enemy, eating the enemy’s food, laughing at their jokes. “Who am I to judge?”
We find ourselves comfortably in our homes, comfortably in our opinions, comfortably outside the gates. No flaming swords required. We have left the garden, forgotten that we were thrown out.
Even so, Eden haunts us. Its peace and closeness to the sweetness and completion of God, His voice, our purpose - all disfigured and reduced to vices. The desire for peace becomes the desire for comfort. The desire for worship deteriorates into team sports. All because we are still choosing the wrong tree.
"The cross is the door to mysteries.
Through this door the intellect makes entrance in to the knowledge of heavenly mysteries. The knowledge of the cross is concealed in the sufferings of the cross. And the more our participation in its sufferings, the greater the perception we gain through the cross. For, as the Apostle says, 'As the sufferings of Christ abound in us, so our consolation also aboundeth by Christ!"
+ St. Isaac the Syrian +
We can reach out our hands to take the fruit, or we can reach out our hands to take the nails. One of these will save us.
In every argument, every disagreement, every split, every “You do you”, we hate our brothers and sisters if we do not forgive. We hate them. We stay small, they stay separate. More fractures, more isolation, more team sports.
Our lives are held in our brothers and sisters, but we are too fastened to this country and its inheritance to be bothered to do things differently. We say we want to be Christlike, but skip the examples He gave us. We ignore the witness of 2000 years - 21 centuries of Christianity. All the while, they had the remedy for this dilemma.
The ancient Christian way to re-enter Eden is twofold: fasting and forgiveness.
Reconciliation with God is reconciliation with our brothers and sisters. There is no alternate Christian route. Deny yourself. Fasting does this with our bodies, and forgiveness does this with every other part of us - intellect, will, and psychology in general.
Neither of these things depends on anyone else. No one to point to, no one to blame or shame. Face to face with yourself, your senses return, and you see the imaginary world you have lived in.
To help people come back to their senses, to wipe the mirror so as to fully see themselves, Christians have deprived themselves of foods and other comforts, not fearing that primal impulse to eat all the time or to be entertained or at ease.
This is how we win.
Say “no” to ourselves, to the culture, the nation and its narrative, its opinions. There is one kingdom for Christians, and it isn’t America. (If that sentence causes a reaction within you, there’s your sign…)
Here is how Alexander Schmemann says it:
Fasting - the refusal to accept the desires and urges of our fallen nature as normal, the effort to free ourselves from the dictatorship of flesh and matter over the spirit.
Forgiveness - the triumph of sin, the main sign of its rule over the world, is division, opposition, separation, hatred. Therefore, the first break through this fortress of sin is forgiveness: the return to unity, solidarity, love…To forgive is to reject the hopeless “dead ends” of human relations and to refer them to Christ. Forgiveness is truly a “breakthrough” of the Kingdom into this sinful and fallen world.
As I said last time, I have been thinking about struggling, and these two things came up (fasting and forgiveness). In retrospect, I can see how an intense, life-altering struggle paved the way for a simple way of seeing and living - a redemptive way of walking, that forced me to the ground where forgiveness lay.
I would not have chosen it.
It was in that low and terrible place, face pressed into the dirt, utterly low and without, where I learned - actually learned - what all the sermons and verses were about. It came out of my head and heart and into being.
I saw how forgiving the involved parties was nothing compared to the simple clarity obtained by letting go of everything but Resurrection. I saw how hunger and repentance are entwined, as I didn’t eat because of sorrow.
I saw my own shameful death and I gave it over to God. Whatever was left of me - the rags hanging from my soul’s skeleton, I simply let go of. I could not even hold myself up, so how was I to carry hard feelings and hurt? How could I bear the weight of my own wrongdoing and the wrong done to me if I had no strength?
I was involuntarily brought very low and found strength in ancient Christianity, with its multitude of remedies for the human condition,
but you do not have to experience tragedy to learn how to live.
The Christian witness offers these two medicines to heal the human being: fasting and forgiveness. There are more, but if you can begin to learn about fasting first - not like monks do it, that is too much for us - you will see the forgiveness follow. It is amazing what becomes clear when we actively say “no” to ourselves. (I am not talking about choosing “something to give up” for a period of time, as I’ve heard go around. How did the ancient church teach it? That is what I mean.)
So, what comes after you are pressed into the ground and realize that those who put you there are not the problem? What comes after the realization that you’ve been leading an imaginary life? What happens when the life you built crumbles?
When you get to your low spot, know that you must go lower. You may feel like wondering if God is there. You may be tempted to side with the atheists who say we are all just accidents, that nothing matters. Unanswered prayers will flood your mind. Every time you didn’t see the outcome you wanted will rise in your consciousness. All manner of temptaions to rage and despair will come.
This is when you must choose to fight - to do violence to your will - or not - to give in to despair and worldly attitudes. We must do violence. We must take up arms and overthrow the ruler of this world. Will you die in your questions, a slave to rational thought, or will you give your life away to the mystery? Is Jesus alive or not? This world or the Kingdom? Not choosing is not an option. Old or new? Fruit or nails?
This is the beginning of rebellion.
When we come to the place where we are utterly alone with ourselves with nowhere to hide, nowhere to run - that place becomes like a tomb.
Tombs used to be familiar to Christians.
In these places where God and Right and Justice and anything Good seem so far away, like stupid things for children, the battle has started.
All of our bad choices and regrets and heartaches swirl around us like the Souix around Custer, and all the while a larger war rages.
To sink into the Devil’s dream or to rise and fight?
How can giving up lead to a win? How can surrender mean victory?
This is the battle.
Yes, we were wrong. Yes, we were terrible. Yes, we are hurt. Yes, we are confused. Yes, we are angry. Yes, we are damaged. Yes, we are lost. Yes, we are helpless. Yes, we are -
but I will arise and go to my father. Just as I am. Without one plea.
We are shaken awake with new clarity and uncompromising focus to rise and make a new choice.
This is the battle.
To realize that you’d rather die on the road back to God than to live one more second in an imaginary life,
this is the battle.
To use the weapons that have guarded Christians for 21 centuries in the quest for Christlikeness,
this is the battle.
To endure the violence of shipwreck, push up from the sand, and finally decide to really live,
this is the battle.
To die having forsaken all other opinions, persuasions, lifestyles, and pursuits that take us away from Christ,
this is the rebellion. This is how we win.
Let us all die as rebels.
DO NOT THINK THAT I CAME TO BRING PEACE ON EARTH. I DID NOT COME TO BRING PEACE, BUT A SWORD.