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 pluck the fruit, or we can reach out our hands to receive 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, the culture, the nation, its narrative, and its opinions. There is one lifestyle for Christians, and it is sacrifice. 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.
END OF PARTS ONE AND TWO OF FOUR