Forgive Them Anyway

"People are often unreasonable, irrational, and self-centered. Forgive them anyway."


A couple weeks ago, I posted Mother Teresa's adapted "do it anyway" mantra. The sentence above is the first part of it. Those words are some of the most difficult words I have ever read. The all-time most difficult are their inspiration:


"Then Peter came up and said to him, 'Lord, how often will my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? As many as seven times?' Jesus said to him, 'I do not say to you seven times, but seventy times seven times.'"


Matthew 18: 21-22. It is followed by the parable of the servant who would not forgive his fellow's debt although he was forgiven his own debt by his master. It ends as such:


"'Then the master summoned him and said to him, 'You wicked servant! I forgave you all that debt because you pleaded with me. And should not you have had mercy on your fellow servant, as I had mercy on you?' And in anger, his master delivered him to the jailers, until he should pay all his debt. So also my heavenly Father will do to every one of you, if you do not forgive your brother from your heart.'" (Matthew 18: 32-35)


My greatest fault is my unwillingness - or perhaps I should call it inability, at least without God - to forgive others. Grudges are - literally - sacrilege to God, and yet we hold them. I hold them. I'm not sure why forgiveness is so difficult for me. I can sooner love my neighbor, or refuse to lie, or keep myself from swearing, but forgiveness is my crutch.


Peter very well may have been pleased with himself that he thought to forgive someone seven times. That's a great deal of forgiveness, considering how difficult it can be to forgive someone once. Jesus, of course, turned Peter's self-satisfaction on its head (as He was wont to do): not seven times, but seventy times seven times. In other words, infinitely, because that's how much God forgives us. Infinitely. Every second, every nanosecond, every one-millionth of a nano-second, because we are always sinning. And we aren't just sinning, we're sinning against the perfect, almighty God. We are not entitled to forgiveness. We don't deserve it, and we never have. And yet, we receive it. We ask for it. We are given it willingly by the Father. 


In the parable, the master delivers the servant unto the jailers until he can pay his debt. The thing about debtor's prison was that you couldn't earn money because you couldn't work because you were in prison, so you could not possibly pay your debt. Thus, the servant would forever be imprisoned and separated from the master. This is Hell - eternal separation from God. It's terrifying. The parable sounds awful. We are bound to be unforgiving of others; how can we hope to escape prison? Well, here's the other thing about debtor's prison: you could get out if someone else - generally a family member, but sometimes a friend - paid your debts for you. 


Isn't that precisely what Jesus did? He saw all of humanity imprisoned in sin and death and completely unable to escape. So He paid our way out. He gave his life so that our chains would be broken. 


Of course, this doesn't mean that we can go around refusing to forgive others just because we have God's grace. In fact, it's the Holy Spirit within our new selves that urges us to forgive. Christians know that grudges are bad. Even if someone has wronged you terribly and you want to say, "But you don't know what they did," you know that you should forgive them. The idea may be completely unpalatable, but we aren't given a choice. God is in us, and His Spirit speaks to us. Even when we don't want to hear. Even when we want to make excuses. Seventy times seven times, He says. People are unreasonable, irrational, and self-centered. It doesn't matter.


Forgive them anyway. 

Exonerating Cressida

The past two months of my life have been dominated by Troilus and Cressida. I'm a theatre kid; I have been since high school. This year, I'll have assistant directed one show, directed two, and played a lead role in what is perhaps Shakespeare's least-loved play, Troilus and Cressida. Saturday night was the final performance. For the first time in all of my years of theatre, I completely invested myself in the role. I decided several weeks ago that I wasn't going to play Cressida. I was going to become her. I'm not a method actor; I usually just hop on stage and do my thing. This time, though, it was different. This time, I cared - perhaps too much. This time, I gave everything.

Cressida never existed. She was invented 900 years ago to be the very epitome of falsehood. For almost a millennium, she has been a "whore." She has been used variously to glorify courtly romantic feelings in men, to warn against the flightiness and inconstancy of women, and to spur the men around her into action. She is never given a greater purpose. She is "false Cressid."

Except, that's not the whole story. Cressida is a young Trojan woman whose father, Calchas, has abandoned her and fled for Greece. In Shakespeare's version of the story, she is practically given away by her uncle, who thinks her a fine prize for Troilus, the youngest Prince of Troy. She is wooed, bedded, and then given away to the Greeks in exchange for a Trojan prisoner. Not one person tries to stop it from happening. Usually, she is portrayed as being false to Troilus from the very start of her imprisonment by becoming the lover of Diomedes, the Grecian warrior. Troilus sees her with Diomedes, declares her falsehood to the heavens, and uses his anger to fuel his rage in battle. So, you see, she is just a literary pawn. As I got to know her, though, I realized how much more is going on in her story and, eerily enough, how alike we are.

In my show, Troilus is played by a guy that I've spoken about in previous posts. A guy for whom, in spite of my best efforts, I developed feelings. A guy that told me, after our last performance, that he feels the same way about me. A guy that I cannot be with for myriad reasons. A guy that broke my heart in two. My will to play Cressida as a victim with no agency whatsoever stemmed from that heartbreak. I refused to let her be the whore of the story, because I loved her too much. It wasn't fair to her to be used, and it wasn't fair to me to be scorned.

So, after two months of emotional turmoil, I'm done with the play and, therefore, am finished trying to exonerate Cressida. People who came to the show could have chosen to see her as the whore, but I know that I did my part to make her something else.

There are two sides to every story, friends. We throw around labels like candy. Sometimes they're meaningless, but sometimes they stick. Sometimes, they stick for 900 years. Let us choose our words carefully, always cognizant of how important language is. And let us be willing to listen to the whole story and to encounter those involved the way God wants us to: as infinitely-loved, ever-forgiven children of the Creator.

Unabashed Craziness

I've got a lot of posts percolating in my mind right now, including one half-finished draft, but I wanted to post something in the meantime. One of my best friends from high school is extremely active in the interfaith community at her university, and she wrote a blog post about Holy Week. She's Hindu, but she knows how to engage with the Bible in a very meaningful way. She included in her blog post the following quotation famously adapted by Mother Teresa:

"People are often unreasonable, irrational, and self-centered. Forgive them anyway.

If you are kind, people may accuse you of selfish, ulterior motives. Be kind anyway.

If you are successful, you will win some unfaithful friends and some genuine enemies. Succeed anyway.

If you are honest and sincere, people may deceive you. Be honest and sincere anyway.

What you spend years creating, others could destroy overnight. Create anyway.

If you find serenity and happiness, some may be jealous. Be happy anyway.

The good you do today will often be forgotten. Do good anyway.

Give the best you have, and it will never be enough. Give your best anyway.

In the final analysis, it is between you and God. It was never between you and them anyway."

Jesus is the "anyway." Each of the "anyways" could be replaced with "because of Jesus." That's what Christianity is about: doing what God commands in spite of the sheer craziness of it. Giving abundantly, sacrificially, and faithfully. Loving with total abandon. Jumping to give people a second, or third, or one hundredth chance. Sounding completely crazy to the world. Allowing the Holy Spirit to inhabit you fully until every part of you is about God. Jesus asks us for nothing less than complete insanity, from the world's perspective. I will begin to ask myself if I'm on the edge of the cliff being talked into finding safer footing by Satan, or if I'm really and truly taking the dive into the reckless bliss that is Jesus. We must make the decision to jump every single day, every hour, every minute. Does the Creator of the Universe deserve anything less?