Tag Archives: Anger

Words Destroy or Hallow

“Let’s put him on blast!” I hadn’t heard the phrase before, but I instantly knew what it meant: whatever the business’s misstep had been, the call was sent out to grab it by its social media handles and tear it down. A bit of photographic evidence, a globally-audible, locally-tangible siren, and the business was tagged: the company was now “it”—a toxic bit of business that infected whatever and whoever it touched. So, tear it down and stay away.  This doesn’t just happen with businesses. People get blasted, too. People scrub their Instagram and Twitter pasts to wipe away any bit of (perceived) filth before their Facebook posts are pressure washed with the words of others.

Anthropologist Mary Douglas noted the power and danger of dirt. We fear the filthy; dirt threatens disintegration. The best way to handle such dirty danger, whether located in the business misstep or social media slip up or political pariah, is to “blast” it: to use words to show the other’s filth, to distance oneself from the defiled, and to wash up the mess—all with one sweet Tweet.

But public humiliation is not new. In the fifth century, Augustine warned of the risks of wicked words (Confessions I:29):

  • Watch out for hatred! We do more harm to ourselves by hating another than the other can do to us.
  • Watch out for hostility! Harbored hostility toward another harms the self, even if it isn’t acted upon.
  • Watch out for hubris! To pursue fame is to place oneself under a human judge and to perceive others as competitors.

Hatred, hostility, hubris: A deadly combination in a fifth century social spat where one was careful to pronounce every word correctly without care for the actual human being who happened to be the victim of their verbal evisceration. Canceling another with words isn’t just a 21st century phenomenon: the form of the public put-down has changed, but the feat remains en vogue. Neither have the effects changed. Words aimed to take down a livelihood or life do not simply impact their target. They also impact the speaker-typer-texter-poster. Like shrapnel flung back upon the grenade lobber, words of hostility, hatred, and hubris score the soul who would blast another from the silent side of a screen.

C.S. Lewis also warned of the effect of destructive words, the most powerful of which in his series The Chronicles of Narnia was called “the Deplorable Word.” The Word, uttered by the Empress Jadis to arrest the forces and very face of her sister as Jadis’ defeat loomed large, stopped all living things, including her own forces and subjects. Jadis had spoken the deplorable word to destroy everything but herself, preserving her own life until the time was right and she could be awakened. And while Jadis, the White Witch, isn’t quite human, her verbal blast poses a warning for every Son of Adam and Daughter of Eve. Jadis’ own world (and its flagship city of Charn) is over, but she has been let loose in the new world of Narnia, and Polly and Digory’s own world is not immune to the temptation that took her down:

“When you were last here,” said Aslan, “that hollow was a pool, and when you jumped into it you came to the world where a dying sun shone over the ruins of Charn. There is no pool now. That world is ended, as if it had never been. Let the race of Adam and Eve take warning.”

“Yes, Aslan,” said both the children. But Polly added, “But we’re not quite as bad as that world, are we, Aslan?”

“Not yet, Daughter of Eve,” he said. “Not yet. But you are growing more like it. It is not certain that some wicked one of your race will not find out a secret as evil as the Deplorable Word and use it to destroy all living things. And soon, very soon, before you are an old man and an old woman, great nations in your world will be ruled by tyrants who care no more for joy and justice and mercy than the Empress Jadis. Let your world beware. That is the warning.” (Lewis, 1955/1980c, p. 164)

The Queen presents a warning for using our own deplorable words. Contrasted with the singing of Aslan that brings Narnia into being, Jadis’ deplorable word only arrests death; it does not bring new life. This is not a passing theme. Jadis’ words reduce things to dust. In Charn, Jadis reduces “high and heavy doors” to “a heap of dust” (p. 57). In London, she attempts to turn Digory’s Aunt Letty to “dust” just as she had the gates in Charn (p. 76), but when she realizes this power of “turning people into dust” has left her (p. 77), she settles for hurling Letty across the room. Finally, in London, Digory believes that Jadis has reduced several policemen to “little heaps of dust” (p. 79). Her words and actions are powerful, no doubt, but they are not creative. Her words result in death and destruction. Her words, at best, only arrest her own death.

Likewise, the White Witch’s leadership in Narnia was only possible to arrest spring. She does not bring joviality; she can only keep it out. In The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, Father Christmas says, “She has kept me out for a long time, but I’ve got in at last” (Lewis, 1950/1980a, p. 99). The Witch’s leadership is not fruitful because nothing grows in winter. While Charn had grown to become a great city under her ancestors, one assumes that the Witch’s leadership in Charn was likely similar to Narnia: it stunted growth and stifled life. In The Silver Chair, the owls say she “bound our land” (Lewis, 1953/1970, p. 52). In word and deed, the Witch cannot lead to anything of life; she cannot bring newness or construction. She can only preserve from death or bring to dust. Such is the life and soul of the one who would wield the deplorable word.

What might we glean from Augustine in the fifth century and from Lewis’ fiction? The justice-by-Tweet temptation is real, but yielding to that temptation is not for the one who would follow the Word made Flesh. For in the world of this Word – the only true world – we must foster, not hatred, hostility, and hubris, but instead, holiness. Within a sacramental worldview, every word is a kind of prayer. There is no word that is not overheard. God, the giver of words and the Word, is present. But the Word who allowed himself to be blasted, to be torn open as he was raised up, was deplored so that deplorable word users could become his preachers and prophets; so that words could be bound up in lives that do not simply arrest death in futility and bring pseudo-justice through rhetorical rage, but lead and love not with words of hubris, hostility, hatred, but of humility, peace, and mercy.

References:

Augustine (1997). The Confessions (The Works of Saint Augustine I/1). Trans. Maria Boulding. Hyde Park, NY: New City Press.

Lewis, C. S. (1970). The Silver Chair. New York: Macmillan. (Original work published 1953).

Lewis, C. S. (1980a). The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. London: Lions. (Original work published 1950).

Lewis, C. S. (1980b). The Horse and his Boy. London: Lions. (Original work published 1954).

Lewis, C. S. (1980c). The Magician’s Nephew. London: Lions. (Original work published 1955).

Lewis, C. S. (1980d). The Last Battle. London: Lions. (Original work published 1956).

Featured image by Brett Jordan on Unsplash

The Surprising Call to Gentleness

There are many motifs and illustrations utilized to unpack who Jesus is and what Jesus did, but perhaps one of the most important characteristics of the life of Jesus Christ was a quiet one – gentleness. References abound to Jesus as prophet, priest, king. The Christus Victor portrait has remained strong over centuries, for good reason. Angles that peek toward Christ as suffering servant continue to comfort the weary, ill, or dying.

For centuries, theologians have written engrossing works on the nature of Christ and on a mosaic of approaches to the atonement. But the Holy Spirit won’t quite let us escape the surprising call to gentleness. To encounter Jesus is to encounter holy, powerful love. But how odd would it sound to hear someone say, “I became a Christian because I was fascinated by how gentle they are”?

In a way, that was John Wesley’s experience; he was transfixed by the gentleness of the Moravians traveling on the same ship. He knew the letter of his faith but not the love of it. His life was unraveling, his goals unmet, his relationships a mess. Terrified in a hurricane, he listening to the simplicity of hymns sung during a storm. There’s plenty of emphasis on his observation that the Moravians didn’t fear dying; but it’s worth noticing that he didn’t comment on that alone. He’d watched them on the days without hurricanes. He watched them take on unpleasant jobs without complaining; he saw them insulted or bullied by other passengers, cheerfully refusing to rise to the bait. What he knew by rote, they knew by heart. Wesley wanted the peace and assurance they exhibited.

It is one thing to sing calmly in a hurricane; it’s another to live with gentleness in the middle of disgusting, unwanted tasks or in the face of belligerent arrogance and anger.

Consider words floating in our atmosphere, like soot and ash rising from the destruction of wildfire. Rage. Cancel. Fury. Hoax. Death toll. Damage. Catastrophic. Unprecedented. Anger is everywhere; and some of it is righteous anger. But how do we keep our righteous anger righteous?

When we look at Jesus, we see tremendous power restrained through the beauty of gentleness. It is tempting to find vicarious satisfaction in the flipping of the tables when he cleansed the table: but Jesus could do that with holy love and pure motive, willing also to be crucified for those same people. If I want to overturn tables and scatter people who profit off of vulnerable people, but I’m not willing to die for the people whose tables I just knocked over, I don’t have love. I may have anger or even righteous anger. But I don’t have love. I’m a reverberating gong, a clanging cymbal.

What may be more telling is the quiet presence of gentleness in countless scenarios in the Gospels.

“Let the toddlers come to me.”

“Would you give me a drink of water?”

“I’m coming to your house for supper.”

“Can you see yet?”

“Daughter, your faith has made you whole.”

“Where are your accusers? Then neither do I condemn you. Go, and don’t do this anymore.”

“Render to Caesar what is Caesar’s and to God what is God’s.”

“Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. Don’t let your hearts be troubled.”

“Forgive them, they don’t know what they’re doing.”

“Peter, do you love me? Feed my sheep.”

Of all the unglamorous fruits of the Spirit, gentleness is perhaps the most forgettable. Until it isn’t. Until it’s such an uncommon trait that it becomes powerfully noticeable.

Methodism exists in large part because of the gentleness of a bunch of John Wesley’s fellow passengers on a ship. Not their cleverness; not, like good Gryffindors, their bravery. Their gentleness.

We do not need to be loud to be powerful, as therapist James Perkins recently explored with leadership strategist Tristian Williams. In the middle of deafening noise, what is one more loud voice? But there is surprising power in quiet, strong gentleness.

Christians are called to gentleness. Gentleness is not lack of clarity, lack of courage, or lack of conviction. It is strength that is under control, that serves others, that bypasses the satisfaction of putting someone in their places. It is illustrated in Proverbs 15 – “A gentle answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger.”

Many children have a keen sense of danger from an unstable power larger than themselves. But children were drawn to Jesus; this was a being who, like Lewis’ Aslan, was powerful but good. The fullness of God dwelled in Jesus Christ, but children wanted to play, tease, sit on his lap. To enter the Kingdom of God, Jesus said, adults must become childlike in our trust.

And one way we can build trust with others in a bitterly cynical age taut with suspicion, anger, and self-preservation, is to practice the rhythms of gentleness. There is no substitute for the clear, calm witness of Christ followers like the Moravians. No one wants to empty the buckets of the sea-sick. No one wants to let the opportunity pass by, to one-up a caustic bully. No one wants to hold their loved ones on a wooden ship without GPS in the middle of a hurricane wondering if they’ll die.

But by the power of the Holy Spirit, God cups our jagged, slicing slivers and, ever so gently, softens our razor-edges into serving trays. There is simplicity in following Jesus, but sometimes, like Simon Peter, we try to bring our weapons with us. As the Spirit of God gradually pries our fingers from our sword hilts, we are set free to live cheerfully, to serve cheerfully, to ignore cheerfully. The only weapon in the classic “armor of God” set is – the sword of the Spirit. The Word of God will shape us and arm us to love well; to love powerfully; to love gently.

It is not only in our current time or place that gentleness is surprisingly counter-cultural; plenty of civilizations have not valued gentleness. But our world starves for it now, too. Consider the impact of Mother Teresa, or Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., or Mr. Fred Rogers. Notice the resurgence in popularity of quiet-toned public television artist Bob Ross or the popular craving for mindfulness techniques, meditation, or hygge. When people decry polarization, part of the unspoken weariness is weariness of roughness, meanness, meltdowns, altercations, and rejection.

We can’t be like Jesus if we ignore gentleness. To become like Christ is to soften – not into non-entity or non-being; but into a strong, Spirit-empowered, gentle version of ourselves. We hand over our weapons and let Christ fashion them into serving tools. Gentleness isn’t weakness; it’s strength with a sense of humor.

Are you bruised right now? Could you use some gentleness? The Holy Spirit is waving you over to the side of the race track to mend your injuries.

Have you lost some of your gentleness? Are you noticing brittle places emerging in your spirit? The Holy Spirit is waving you over to the sidelines, to take your hardened blades and refashion them into farming equipment.

This is the way of Jesus; there is no shortcut.

James Petticrew ~ Praying for Compassion Collisions

As a Scot, I am sort of unique.  I don’t drink whiskey and have never played a round of golf. However, my golf-obsessed friends tell me that there is such a thing as a mulligan: the chance to take a shot again because you didn’t like the first one. So I wonder: who do we ask for a mulligan for 2020? I don’t know about you, but I would really like a do-over of this year.

Here in Switzerland, over the last few months of our COVID lockdown, I’ve found myself constantly saying things to myself like, “I wasn’t trained for this,” “I have never ministered like this before,” “people have never had to handle stuff like this before,” “how will they cope?” and “how on earth can I respond to that?”   

As if COVID hasn’t been difficult enough for our churches to handle and navigate, the death of George Floyd exposed racism to still be a malignant and yet callously mundane force in many cultures worldwide. Social media exploded with reactions, from righteous indignation, to a great deal of malicious misinformation, to some not-so-righteous responses from people who feel under attack (or let’s face it, who are just unrepentant racists in denial). A couple of U.S. pastors told me privately that they were glad that their churches have been on lockdown and not meeting face to face – because the face to face interaction most likely to happen between some congregants was angry confrontation. Months of lockdown anxiety and politically potent issues have made some of our congregations powder kegs of pent-up frustration and barely concealed anger.

So how do we respond to all that we have gone through and all we are facing right now in our churches and cultures?

How should we respond to all the hurts, anxiety, and anger with which people are emerging from lockdown?  

What should be our response as disciples of Jesus? Because if we are not responding first and foremost as disciples, we are in trouble, and heading for more.

Now I know we can be too eisegetical when it comes to Jesus’ culture – reading our contemporary situation back into his. Nevertheless, it is not an exaggeration to say that the culture in which Jesus ministered was riven with sectarian divisiveness and filled with enormous amounts of real and pressing human need. It struck me recently while reading the Gospels that Jesus was often confronted by angry people and needy people. What Jesus faced in Judea 2,000 years ago must have felt somewhat like 2020 does to us in many ways. (Though I am sure Jesus is happy to be spared “Zoom fatigue” and the frustrations of low bandwidth.)

All of this fills my mind and prayers as lockdown in Switzerland eases and people begin to meet again, with appropriate masks and social distance.  Recently, a song and a text came together in Holy Spirit serendipity, giving my answer on how I should respond as a disciple, and how we as a church should respond as a community. As I hit play on a video incorporated in our online service, I heard the voice of the Spirit through the words of the song: “everyone needs compassion.”

Those who are struggling with the physical, emotional, and relational impact of COVID need compassion. The victims of racism need compassion – and justice. Even racists need our compassion, if we are serious about that enemy-loving stuff that Jesus seems to have been serious about. People with whom I differ on politics need compassion. I need compassion. The politicians who frustrate me and have a talent for pushing my buttons need compassion.

Just in case I hadn’t got the message, God followed up with a verse from the Gospel of Luke. I’ve been preaching a series called “Overflow,” about how God’s character overflows into our lives and then overflows from our lives into the lives of those around us. I chose the texts weeks before, and as I heard the song, that Sunday I was due to preach about overflowing with -compassion. “Show mercy and compassion for others, just as your heavenly Father overflows with mercy and compassion for all.” (Luke 6:36)

In that moment, I could see the message of Luke 6:36. I could see what it meant for myself, for the church I pastor, and may I tentatively suggest, for the whole Church of Jesus Christ at the moment. Faced with everything that is happening to us, in us and around us, we are to be people and communities of indiscriminate, overflowing compassion.

Two words from this verse jump out at me: “just as,” drawing a direct parallel between God’s treatment of me and my posture towards others. Jesus is telling us that God’s compassion needs to be experienced and expressed: experienced by us as his people and expressed to the people around us. Just as our heavenly Father overflows with indiscriminate compassion for all, we are to allow that compassion to overflow without restriction or discrimination to those around us.

 Is there anything that our world needs more right now than people and communities of overflowing, indiscriminate compassion?

I’m now praying for what I’m calling compassion collisions. I am praying that God will fill me, fill us as a church, until we are brimming full of his compassion, and that God would make us bump into people, spilling his compassion all over them through us.

Maybe you would join me in praying for compassion collisions?

What if we pray for Holy Spirit-orchestrated compassion collisions in our families, in our churches, in our workplaces, in our neighborhoods? What if God’s antidote for the anger and need swirling around us right now is his compassion administered through us?

Featured image courtesy Vonecia Carswell on Unsplash.

Carolyn Moore ~ When Jesus Gets Angry

Find Mark 1:41 in your Bible. How does that line read in your version? How did Jesus feel about this leper who asked for healing?

Some versions say Jesus was filled with compassion for the leper who came to him for healing. My version (NIV) and a few other versions say Jesus was indignant. By my experience, there is a pretty wide gap between indignant and compassionate, so which is it?

There is a temptation to let that difference shake our confidence in the Bible or at least in our English translations of it. In fact, a famous atheist uses this very word in this very verse — alternately translated as compassion or indignant — as part of his argument against scriptural integrity.

I had not noticed this odd word before last week when folks at Mosaic were exploring this passage together using the SOAP method of inductive study. When someone else in the room noticed the difference between their translation and mine, we went scrambling. It turns out we’d stumbled on a big debate in Bible translation circles. Someone has written a whole book on this one word — 609 pages worth of debate between compassion and indignation.

Bruce Metzger says that of the 20,000 lines of the New Testament, only 40 lines have debatable translations. That means there is agreement among scholars around about 99.6% of what we read in the Bible. Nonetheless, there are going to be a few hard words, some things we have to wrestle with, some words or phrases that don’t translate easily into English. This word in Mark 1:41 is one of them.

So … is it compassion or indignation? A couple of versions even use the word “pity” or “anger.” But pity is not compassion. I want someone to feel compassion … but pity, not so much. Likewise, anger and indignation are not the same things. Indignation and pity are look-down-your-nose words while anger and compassion are feelings that can actually drive us toward people, not away from them.

According to my friend, Dr. Ben Witherington, the Greek word refers to the kind of feeling that comes from your bowels. The closest expression to the Greek is “the bowels of compassion.” The feeling evoked is something fierce or passionate — not just feeling compassion but the kind of concern that moves a person to compassion. Not just aggravated by a disease or a man who has lost his drive to go hard after his healing, but angry at all that has sapped the hope out of him.

And I’m thinking about Jesus as a healer and shepherd and it slays me to think that maybe God has inspired the use of a word here that means both things at once. Because a person can be both angry and compassionate at the same time. In fact, a person can be fiercely compassionate, moved to go after someone stuck in a pit while angry at all the things that got them there.

As a pastor, I feel this bowel-level burden for people. How often does my broken heart for someone push me to hang onto them long past good sense? How often do I get so angry with the demon someone is wrestling with that I’m moved to a simmering rage over the stubborn addiction, the serial relationships, the dysfunction? How desperately I feel the heavy weight of habits and wounds that leave people stuck,  compassionate toward the person but indignant toward what got them there.

Of course, Jesus got angry! Not all anger is without compassion, and not all compassion is … well … without passion. Not just feeling compassion but moved by it to go after the healing.

To find this kind of complex, nuanced word in the Bible only makes this book more trustworthy, not less. I am stunned by the depth of it, the beauty of it, the brilliance of God himself. To hear in God’s Word his identification with the everyday work of a pastor like me is just stunning. In this word, Jesus sees not just the leper, but me.

Maybe this word in Mark 1 isn’t your word, but today I am even more compelled to urge you toward a regular and devotional reading of the Bible. I am convinced that if you will go digging — if you will find your own practice of inductive, devotional Bible reading — God will meet you and show you treasures and even show you yourself and his heart for you. He’ll show you that you are known at the deepest levels, in the places you may be most lonely.

Jesus knows you. And once you know that, you won’t be able to not share it with a lost and hurting world.

Carolyn Moore ~ Just How Angry Are You?

The Institute for Ethics at Duke University conducted an online survey of about 1,500 people as part of a project designed to measure the morality quotient of Americans. They asked people to rate how likely they’d be to do certain morally questionable things like, for instance, kicking a dog in the head. As it turns out (happily), seven of eight respondents would refuse to do that and in fact, would turn down any amount of money up to $1 million to kick Fido in the noggin.

However, half of the participants said they could be motivated to throw a rotten tomato at a politician they dislike. For free.

Would you be among them?

There is no denying it: we have a maddening political climate. We also have anger issues. Anger is not a secular issue; we who follow Jesus are not immune. Just check your Facebook page. In fact, more and more, anger is becoming part of our caricature. Angela, the token Christian on The Office is an angry, tight-lipped, buttoned-up woman. In most cartoons and commentaries, we’re known as the ones who sling condemnation.

So really … are we that angry?

(You’ve heard the old joke– right? — about the shipwreck survivor they discovered on an uncharted island. The ship that spotted him sent a rescue team to shore and found the man alone among three huts. They asked what the three huts were for, since there was no one else around. The survivor explained, “Well, I live in one and go to church in another.” “What about the third hut, then?” asked a rescue team member. “Oh, that,” growled the man. “That’s where I used to go to church.” It is funny only because it is familiar.)

Face it. Christians have something of a reputation and it is only getting worse. I suspect we’re operating out of fear. We’ve pitted our values against a permissive culture and it has left us feeling powerless. In the comparison we’re accused of being angry, condemnation-tossing haters. And to some extent, we deserve the criticism. We who follow Jesus too easily pander to the reputation of being known for what we’re against more than what we’re for.

Wouldn’t it be exciting for Christians to be known more for the infectiousness of their faith than the accuracy of their tomato-tossing?

George Barna is a researcher who does ethnographic research on churches, and one study he did showed that only 4% of adults make their decisions based on the Bible. In his book, Think Like Jesus, he says, “the primary reason that people do not act like Jesus is because they do not think like Jesus … We’re often more concerned with survival amidst chaos than with experiencing truth and significance.”

Hear that again: We are often more concerned about survival amidst chaos than with experiencing truth and significance.

“Survival amidst chaos” hits close to home, doesn’t it? If there has ever been a season of chaos in our country, this would be it. But I have to say — and I say this with great love and respect — I’m concerned for how Christians are responding to this season, for how we are talking in public and what it says about our faith. We are not thinking like Jesus. We have become so focused on what is in front of us that we’ve forgotten what is beyond the horizon.

We’ve engaged emotionally with difficult issues but have failed to speak with integrity, offering emotional responses that are more defensive than intelligent. Our go-to response is more fear than faith.

But you say, “A person can’t sit idly by and let the world roll over them.” Or more personally, “You don’t know my circumstance — how hard I’ve had it and how much it hurts. I can’t lose this war, too.”

To that, Jesus would say, “It doesn’t matter. The ground of our forgiveness is not our circumstances. The ground of our grace is not emotion.” Jesus told a whole story to make this very point (Matthew 18:23-35) saying that grace is a mark of the Kingdom.

Here’s the thing: If it all depends on circumstance, we are right to be desperate. Circumstances can seem hopeless but circumstances do not control my capacity for joy. We who know the end of the story should be responding to life and news and “rumors of wars” with a faith that proclaims something greater than our immediate circumstances. In other words, I don’t have to wait for folks to act right so I can have peace; I can live there now, by faith.

What I am responsible for is the character of my responses to life, and what those responses reveal about the character of Christ in me.

Brothers and sisters, we may be in a confusing season right now but we know how the story ends. We know what is beyond the horizon.

Let’s live and speak as if Jesus is who he says he is.

Andrew C. Thompson – The Power of Forgiveness

 

For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.

That’s Sir Isaac Newton’s third law of motion. It explains how birds fly and fish swim. Jump on a trampoline and you’ll experience the third law firsthand: You force the bounce mat down, and it springs back to throw you up into the air.

Newton’s law applies to actions and reactions in the physical world. But we can also see a similar law in human relationships. When you act emotionally towards someone else, he or she will always react back toward you.

Offer love to another, and you expect to receive that love back again. But lash out in anger, and the response will be different. Just as with Newton’s law, the character of the emotional reaction is determined by the initial act itself.

This isn’t so much the law of motion as it is the law of the heart. We’re made with it stitched into our souls. Human relationships work on an action-reaction dynamic. So wouldn’t it be great if we always acted out of love? And wouldn’t life be simpler if our loving acts were always interpreted as we meant them to be?

Unfortunately, the analogy between the law of motion and the law of the heart does have a limit. A bird’s wings beating against the air or a body’s weight on a trampoline are impersonal forces. There is no moral quality to motion.

Human relationships are very different. With us, the impersonal becomes very personal! Every one of our relationships has a moral character to it. We don’t, in fact, always act as we should. Even when we do, our actions and attitudes are not always interpreted as we mean them to be. The sinful and broken reality of life intrudes on every relationship we have.

Instead of love, we act in anger. Rather than gratitude, we experience greed. Given the opportunity to show compassion, we show cruelty instead. The clarity we wish existed in person-to-person interactions is missing; in its place we find the fuzziness of mistaken intentions and plain misunderstandings.

The law of the heart—as it turns out—is more like the law of the broken heart. The presence of sin within us ends up affecting our interactions at every level—a vicious cycle of hurt and revenge. Husbands and wives experience it in marriage. It thrives both in the workplace and the marketplace. Politics is rife with it. It’s the reason wars are fought in every age.

We don’t have to be convinced that love should be met with love, and anger with anger. We just don’t seem to know how to choose love consistently. Sometimes we don’t even know how to interpret love when it comes our way. We act out of anger and hate and resentment, and we react in those ways when others provoke us. Thus do we feed a monster whose appetite is endless.

From Revenge to Forgiveness

Our dilemma is that we ought to act and react in love, and instead we find ourselves doing the contrary. The Christian faith has a solution to the cycle of hurt and revenge, though, and it lies at the heart of the gospel. That solution is found in forgiveness.

We first must realize that there’s nothing natural about forgiveness. To practice it, we have to react to others in ways that are not equal and opposite to the actions upon us. “Where there is hatred, let me sow love,” the Prayer of Saint Francis puts it, and this is exactly the counterintuitive commitment that forgiveness requires. It’s so difficult that we cannot do it on our own.

The need for forgiveness to be at the center of human relationships is proven by the fact that forgiveness was at the very center of Jesus Christ’s ministry. He came into the world claiming the power to forgive sins. It was this very act that caused the religious authorities to oppose him saying, “It is blasphemy! Who can forgive sins but God alone?” (Mark 2:7).

We see in the crucifixion how the Son of Man who came to forgive sins finally becomes the agent of forgiveness through his own body. His sacrifice upon the cross mediates God’s forgiveness to the whole world. As the Apostle Paul puts it to the Corinthians, “For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Corinthians 5:21). We are all called to receive Christ’s forgiveness, which we come to know through a sure trust and confidence in him and the power of his atonement for our sin.

Learning to forgive is the only path to truly loving relationships with others. And Jesus shows us that to acquire the forgiving heart that can allow us to forgive each and everyday, we must first come to know what it means to be forgiven.

Forgiveness and Sanctification

We are reconciled to God when we receive forgiveness in Christ. That is a monumental spiritual experience! But we haven’t fully overcome our problem just by being forgiven. We need both pardon for sin and the power to overcome its corrupting effects as we move forward in our lives. Without the power added to the pardon, I could hear the message of the cross with joy aplenty as it pertains to God’s forgiveness of me, while going right ahead and dealing out vengeance on all those I think have wronged me.

So where can any of us find that power?

John Wesley’s account of how the power of forgiveness is conveyed into the lives of believers is helpful on this point. Indeed, Wesley’s view on the power of forgiveness is full of deep spiritual insight—especially as it is related to the way that forgiveness can transform us inwardly. Take for example the oft-repeated story of Wesley’s experience on Aldersgate Street on May 24, 1738. Sometimes we can sentimentalize Wesley’s “heart strangely warmed” and confine its importance it to a moment of his personal spiritual journey. But Wesley’s narration of the Aldersgate story in his Journal makes a statement about the profound importance of forgiveness within the experience of salvation for all of us. Here’s how he describes what happened to him that evening:

“I felt I did trust in Christ, Christ alone, for salvation; and an assurance was given me that He had taken away my sins, even mine, and saved me from the law of sin and death.”

Wesley is sharing one of the primary convictions of evangelical Christianity in this testimony: God’s forgiveness through Jesus Christ is meant to be received personally by every child of God. This is what it means to know God as Father, and it is the way we are adopted into God’s family. The reconciliation we find in forgiveness is such a dramatic experience that it gives us new birth.

In Wesley’s view, though, the power of forgiveness extends event beyond the great moment of our reconciliation to God. Forgiveness is a part of our ongoing spiritual growth as well. To be redeemed—fully redeemed—means to be transformed by the love of God. So when the Apostle Paul writes to the Colossians that Christ Jesus is the one “in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins” (Col 1:14), Wesley writes in his New Testament commentary, “Forgiveness is the beginning of redemption, as the resurrection is the completion of it.” He links the pardon of the cross with the power of the resurrection, not wanting us to diminish any part of the fullness of redemption.

On the other hand, Wesley also understands that forgiveness continues to work in us as a special kind of power, forming the very Christian virtues that will nurture a forgiving heart. Later in Colossians, Paul says we should embrace compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, patience—and finally love. And in the midst of that counsel, Paul emphasizes the need for Christians to forgive one another. “Just as the Lord forgave you, so also should you forgive” (Col 3:13), he writes. Wesley adds in his NT commentary that those who have been renewed by Christ’s forgiveness are none other than the elect of God, writing, “Holiness is the consequence of their election, and God’s superior love, of their holiness.” So forgiveness begins a renewal—a healing—in the soul. And the character of that renewal is a soul filled with God’s love. This is what it means to be made complete, as Wesley points out using the New Testament’s language of perfection: “The love of God contains the whole of Christian perfection, and connects all the parts of it together.”

The power of forgiveness is rooted in the fact that it is an act of God’s love. So forgiveness cancels our sin and then begins to heal us of that sin entirely, all the while enabling us to begin forgiving others.

Forgiveness, in this sense, is the very rhythm of redemption. Our redemption and the redemption of all our relationships.

“We love him because he first loved us,” Wesley tells us in the sermon, “On Family Religion.” That love is, fundamentally, the “love of a pardoning God.” It’s a love that “may admit of a thousand degrees” (for not all of us are at the same place in our journey). But it always makes us thankful for Christ’s gift to us and compassionate toward all those others for whom Christ died. “Gratitude to our Creator will surely produce benevolence to our fellow-creatures,” Wesley tells us. “If we love him, we cannot but love one another, as Christ loved us.” Then he goes on: “And toward all the children of God we put on ‘bowels of kindness, gentleness, long-suffering, forgiving one another’…‘even as God for Christ’s sake hath forgiven us’.” We learn to forgive in love, because the loving forgiveness we have received makes us into new creatures.

Whereas life in the world makes us react to others with a hard and self-centered temper, the forgiveness we receive through Christ teaches us a better way. Knowing mercy, we are made merciful. Having been forgiven, we learn to forgive. And then we are welcomed into the company of Jesus’ true friends, where we commence “steadily walking in all his ways, [and] doing his will from the heart.” This is the power of forgiveness—the power that will save us and the power that will ultimately transform this world.