The Words of the Jordan Family
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The Words of the Jordan Family |
Matt: 5:43-45 Ye have heard that it hath been said, thou shalt love thine neighbor and hate thine enemy. But I say unto you, love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you and pray for them which despitefully use you and persecute you, that you may be the children of your father which is in heaven.
Matt: 5:48 Be ye therefore perfect even as your father which is in heaven is perfect.
Possibly the greatest message to reach humanity, beyond the reality that God exists and created humanity to love and be loved by, is the message of the New Testament, and the value realized in that message; that God not only offered us forgiveness, but wanted us to learn to forgive as God was willing to forgive us. In a world of sin, a world dominated by evil and full of evil acts, in a world occupied by a humanity separated from God and separated from each other, there is no greater hope for reconciliation and the love it frees, with God and with each other, than is realized in the message of forgiveness.
To understand the real significance of forgiveness, to understand its value to us, we really need to re-examine what love is. Just what is love? What are the components of love? What are the challenges to loving? These are all good questions. So how do they relate to forgiveness? And, as the title suggests, what does forgiveness have to do with restoring our enemy? And just who, exactly, is our enemy?
We'll start this inquiry by examining who our enemy is. It may startle us. Think about that person I can't or even just don't really think of when I think of love. It might be even for the space of a day, or a moment, or even someone I see every Sunday, at church. It might be my parent, or my spouse that I became angry with. Maybe my own child.
The definition of enemy really must start at the closest point to me. Not the evil enemy, but the simplest, least fearsome enemy. My enemy is that person, that group, those people, that we find ourselves unwilling, for any period of time, for any reason, to love.
Ouch. That hurt. We normally don't think of our enemy in those precise terms.
Their sin may be trivial. It may be that mom embarrassed me in front of my friends. My husband treated me like a servant instead of a cherished sister and wife. It may be ongoing in this regard. My wife may not have listened to my great wisdom on decorating the house. My teacher disregarded me in some situation that I felt was very important.
So, for that moment, that moment that was the now of that relationship, that period in which I felt I could withhold my love, that person was my enemy. Oh, yes, to our mind's eye, most assuredly they committed some serious, grievous action that deserved the disowned moment.
Then there are those whose trespasses are greater. More harmful, more hurtful, more hateful, more hate filled. The Nazi's who killed 6,000,000 Jews and others. The Cain descendants who killed Abel repeatedly in history. The Communists who killed 160 million over the span of a century. Those responsible for the millions dead in the Killing Fields of Cambodia. Even the drunk who ran over a child, hit a pregnant mother. Or the terrorists who will bomb innocents using cars or themselves as the devices to deliver the bombs.
The list goes on and on. All these have acted as enemies. History is littered with the cast away bodies, hearts and minds of those who have been victimized. These are easy to label as enemies. And we label them as enemies, consciously or not, whether they have harmed us personally or not.
But Jesus placed a terrible burden at the feet of the world as the messiah.
He said we MUST love God. With all our being. He said we MUST love our neighbor. OK, we try to love God. We try to love our neighbor. Well, at least as long as he's not playing that loud music at night when we are trying to go to bed. And thus irritating us.
But Jesus said we must also love our enemy. OK, but now I have said our enemy is anyone, yes, absolutely anyone, we cannot love in the now. Why do I stipulate the now? Because only the now exists. Not yesterday, not tomorrow, only the now. That is the sum of our relationship with that person(s), the now.
So, if my manner of speaking irritates you, my fu-Manchu facial hair stops you from loving me, in the now, I am the enemy. Regardless of the seriousness of the offense or lack thereof. Anything that becomes an impediment to you loving me, me loving you, establishes a base of conflict between us.
So, we are faced with loving the person whom we least find difficult to love to the most hate filled of humanity to the fallen angel who has dominated humanity for 1,000's of years.
How do we love our enemy?
First, we must start by looking at forgiveness. Why? We must realize we were born the enemies of God. We were taught to be the enemies of God. How? We were all born with original sin. Therefore we were already born separated from God, our heavenly father. There was an element, already inherited, that did not and could not truly love God, trust God as God or as our heavenly father. We could not truly love our parents, our ancestors, or our contemporaries. But God, as our heavenly father, wanted to love us, share love with us, even as a parent. But God, even as our heavenly father, was limited in the love that could be manifested, even as a parent, to us.
Why? Because of inherited sin. And because, in time, we manifest individual sin. Because of group sin.
God, even as our heavenly father, cannot relate to us unconditionally. Satan, because of the fall, has a claim on us. And God cannot ignore that claim. We are directly and indirectly descendents of Satan. So, the only way God can relate to us substantially is to offer us forgiveness. God is able to do that by seeing in each of us, that original child as God created them. To see them with the love he created them with.
But is forgiveness a form of love?
Jesus spoke about loving in many forms… But I suggest that in his sermons, in the many ways he tried to speak to love and what it is and how to manifest it, when he spoke to forgiving others, he spoke to love itself. And he did not limit how much or how many times we must forgive, even to 7 times 70 which to those people at that time seemed an infinite number of times. In doing so, he attached a terrible significance to the act of forgiving others. He made it clear that we were not to set limits on how much forgiveness we were to offer those who harmed us.
Why? Is it merely to free us from the cycle of hate and temptation to revenge on those who have harmed us? Is it merely a means to comfort us in our loss at the hands of our enemy? Or is it to allow us a means to go on living with our loss, in spite of our loss? All of these may seem good things. And of and in themselves they may accomplish some good for us. But I would challenge this as a limited understanding of the value and significance of forgiveness as an act of love.
Would it be more accurate to stipulate it is because Jesus knew that was the tradition heavenly father established in God's determination to reach his lost children?
I would venture to say that forgiveness, in response to the fall of humanity and ever since, is the most profound form of love mankind has shared with God as our heavenly father and with each other. I want to repeat that. Forgiveness is the most profound form of love God as our heavenly father has shared with us. No greater love, as our true parent, has God shared with us.
In it is the most powerful love that can be brought to bear on any relationship that has been harmed by sin. How is this true? Just what is being accomplished when we seek to forgive another or receive forgiveness?
When we reflect back on what the Oxford Concordance to the Bible speaks of as to the purpose of forgiveness, it all comes home to us clearly. Our relationship to God is dysfunctional. It is ruled by sin. Sin separates us from God. What separates us from our enemy? Sin. The act that our enemy did that required us to stop loving them in an intimate and personal way.
But this becomes a double edged sword. If the act that stopped our loving someone should not qualify as being deemed a sin, then the onus is on us to make the effort to love the other that we have stopped loving or not bothered to love. Thus, we are required to realize whether we have been sinned against, in other words had our relationship to someone changed wherein love could not mutually exist, or whether we have not loved our neighbor as ourselves. If it is the latter, we are still called to love. If it is the former, then we are called to forgiveness.
We know that the purpose of the messiah is to forgive sins. By recognizing that we are sinners, have sinned, we establish a base of faith. What value is this to us? It allows us, it informs us, it encourages us to work with God, our heavenly father, and the messiah, and to act with each other. To what end?
In a word, restoration. To act to restore all that has been lost. This is not just act of kindness. It is the consummate form of love. One that requires our participation to make it complete. God is not asking for every sin to be restored. This act of forgiveness asks not the 100% that Satan might want, but asks us to realize the nature of our history and participate in reversing it, not 100% of what has been done, but by giving a 100% of what we can do by changing. Accepting responsibility for our lives and the lives of our ancestors and our children by doing the right thing now, in the moment we have with a repentant heart.
It recognizes that we have never been truly and fully loved. It understands our own pain of being fallen in ways we cannot even begin to understand yet. It recognizes our alienation from ourselves and everything and everyone around us. It recognizes our despair. But it also acts to give us that love so that we can see the way home. A way back to health. A way back to our true selves. A way back to relationship. And thus, a way back to God. A way back to family, community, sanity. Then, realizing who our heavenly father is, our True Parent, we can appreciate forgiveness in a way not available to most in the world. Forgiveness is the key, that when acted upon, encourages one to change, to become a new person, one that can love again, fully, as God intended us to. And thus restore that relationship lost. Forgiveness is a restorational activity to free us.
The French existentialist Albert Camus, in his treatise on rebellion called The Rebel, one of the great overlooked books of the last century, understood that for the slave to be free, be he the metaphysical slave or the real slave of history past or present, the slave had to recognize and accept that the slave owner needed to be freed as well or there was no freedom possible for the slave. That he could not murder the slave owner to gain his freedom. That the value he defended in himself when he first said, "No, no more", was shared by the slave owner himself. Thus, to be free there was no freedom for one without freedom for both. Profound, that idea… the slave must love the slave owner, love being the act of seeking the freedom of the very person who kept him in slavery.
And the first step to that freedom is forgiveness. It allows action, of such quality that no other action can allow.
So, if we understand that all human history reflects providential activity of God and we understand God as our heavenly father, we must also therefore realize God has been actively seeking opportunities to see us freed. By establishing a people who could believe in God and thus come to act with God. To recreate us to achieve the original will.
We must also realize God has been bound in the slavery of mankind as much as we have. Through the natural love God has for his children. But we were linked to sin. So, when the messiah could finally come, God had the means to offer us forgiveness.
But Jesus said to be perfect as your heavenly father is perfect. And we live in a world of sin where sin is done against brother by brother, father to son, husband to wife, neighbor to neighbor. How do we perfect ourselves? By being true love people.
Thus, the first step for the slave or those of us harmed by others, to actively participate in the providence with God, as his true children, is to get beyond our focusing on the harm done by others. The purpose of restorational activity is to free us, to inform us, to inspire us, that a world of true love is the purpose of creation and is within our grasp, if not immediately for ourselves, then as a widened path to pass on to our posterity. The only way to encourage others to their own freedom is to forgive them their trespasses on us. To forgive their sins against us. As we have learned we are forgiven. So we could repent and then change. So they could repent and change.
We must strive to see within them the children God originally created. The children who were created of love and by love. We must seek for that vision of each person we encounter. As we see that vision of God, see them as God saw them when God created them, we will see why God loved them. And what God wanted for them. And why God never gave up on them. And that will motivate us to love them as God did and does, even in their sin.
To forgive another is to recognize they have sinned. That somehow, in some way, in trivial or horrendous, intentionally or not, they have violated the relationship of heart that exists between themselves and others as children of God. But profoundly, in our recognition of their sin, we feel their pain. The pain of a life without true love. Or not having been true loved or able to truly love. We don't want them to stay sin filled people, unable to love, unable to be fully loved. Each of such conditions a terrible tragedy. It is literally hell.
As such, we recognize and affirm our own relationship to such people. These people, in their sinful state, which we all share, are distorted, perverted in nature. We want to love them completely, without reservation or distortion. We want to be loved by them, creatively, without reservation or distortion. Just as God wants to be loved by us.
We want to do a love dance with them, a creative, mind bending love dance, that recognizes that without love between us, us for them, them for us, we are neither complete. In as much as we are in a relationship with them, even now a fallen one, we want it to be a relationship based on true love. We want intimacy with them. We want vulnerability between us. Shared vulnerability. We want to love and be loved. And as our enemy, we cannot fully love or be fully loved.
So, our act of forgiveness is the first step for both of us. It is our offering to them. It says, "I love you. I want to love you more. I want you to share love with me." That was and is what Jesus says to us in offering forgiveness of sin. When we offer it to others it is our act of love that the moment offers us to be, as children of God who understand the gift we have received and the example that is given us. It allows us to act when so often in the past, in response to our enemy; to act in such a moment would seem we might kill, by affirming that we did not want to love them nor to be loved by them.
Enemies will always find it hard to love. But if we believe in a heavenly father, one with the nature of love, we cannot want to stay enemies. As we understand the love of heavenly father in trying to send us a messiah, that could help us understand our plight and guide us to overcome sin, so that we can fully approach our heavenly father again, so we will understand how great heavenly father's love was in creating us. In this, we will understand heavenly father's hopes, dreams and vision.
Forgiveness recognizes the harm done, the sin acted out, the heart relationship violated. It makes no excuses for it, does not seek to explain it away or otherwise dismiss it. But it allows the individual to use their free will in a proper way. By using their free will to repent, and in repenting, to set such conditions as will be proactive not only in reversing the harm, but even more profound, in re-creating the self to become a more perfect true child of Heavenly Father.
It also affirms the message of the first blessing in the Bible, to become fruitful or as Jesus said, to become perfect as our heavenly father is perfect. Thus, as a true child of God, a family member to each and every person in the world, past, present and future. And in acting in the here and now to make such a change, we most demonstrate our love of the future in what we create in the here and now and thus leave to our posterity.
In this act, we recognize that the slave owner the slave liberates is really his/her own brother/sister. The Nazi is really related to the Jew, the African tribal member is related to the enemy tribe, the man raping the woman is raping his sister. In it we realize the travesties we do to one another are really our own family, and thus, we also can realize that the forgiveness we offer to each other is really also to our own family.
The tragedy of the fall of humanity has not only been the loss of innocence, but also the loss of consciousness as to who our family is, and most tragically, who our heavenly father is that made us all family. Incredibly significant for us in our loss of identity, purpose and true intended value, we have become illegitimate children, who know no home, nor even realize we are lost. But forgiveness is that love that allows us, as lost brothers and sisters, to realize our hell, to realize the hell we are creating for ourselves and imposing on each other by our actions, and then allows us the chance to accept responsibility for our sin. In doing so, by repentance, we create an environment conducive to restoration, and thus, to find true identity, true purpose and the means to reach home and who is waiting for us there.
But a final word is required here. While we may forgive, while we may be forgiven, until the relationship is restored, until it is optimized back to an ideal form, final healing is not realized. Forgiveness is not a one way street. It is not complete until the forgiveness is responded to and received. Both parties must become united. Thus, the forgiver is never truly at peace, never truly healed, even with the act of forgiveness, until the other and oneself are united in love.
This, this is the secret significance of forgiving another. It is the only road to heaven, the road slave and slave owner must travel together… heart in heart, hand in hand.
As Jesus admonished us, let us not forget, "Be therefore perfect as your heavenly father is perfect". And let it start with me.