Jordan 5: Toward Forgiveness
Submitted by Ford Prefect on January 25 2001 15:03:21
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Dear Jordan, I think we all need, for our own well-being, to be able to forgive those who have hurt us. This is where I think the separatist theology falls short. By classifying non-Christians (or even Christians who don't believe just as we do) as being "those others" we are praying the prayer of the self-righteous man in the temple: Thank you God, I'm not like others. Thank you God, I'm not a Jew, or a Muslim, or an agnositic, or an atheist, or a Morman, or a fundamentalist, or a Calvinist, or a Catholic, or black, or brown, or white, or from the U.S., or a conservative, or a liberal, or.......on and on and on and on. I truly believe this is the closest thing there is to an prayer which is being uttered by someone in the world at any given moment. The reason I want to consider each and every one of us as a child of God regardless of what we believe or what we've done is that it's consistent with Jesus' desire that we treat everyone on earth as our brother or sister. When we concentrate on how we differ instead of how we are alike, we are led to an empty forgiveness: I can forgive you becuse you really aren't worthy of much attention in the first place. When we concentrate on how we are alike instead of how we differ, we are led to a fuller forgiveness: I can forgive you because I'm broken myself and I understand what it's like.....we are brothers. ---Ford |
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