Forgive us our trespasses more than we forgive those who trespass against us …

  • You know, the prob­lem with these Ortho­dox read­ings some­times is that you never know when they’re going to sud­denly be talk­ing to you in a very spe­cific way instead of talk­ing about oth­ers in a very gen­eral way. While read­ing Metropoi­tan Anthony Bloom’s “Liv­ing Prayer” this morn­ing, I got to this pas­sage where he’s exam­in­ing the idea of for­give­ness in the Lord’s Prayer:

    As you for­give, the mea­sure which you use will be used for you; and as you for­give, you will be for­given; what you do not for­give will be held against you. It is not that God does not want to for­give, but if we come unfor­giv­ing, we check the mys­tery of love, we refuse it and there is no place for us in the kingdom. …

    But for­give­ness is some­thing extremely dif­fi­cult to achieve. To grant for­give­ness at a moment of soft­en­ing of the heart, in an emo­tional cri­sis, is com­par­a­tively easy; not to take it back is some­thing that hardly anoyne knows how to do.

    Ouch.

    What we call for­give­ness is often putting the other one on pro­ba­tion, noth­ing more; and lucky are the for­given peo­ple if it is only pro­ba­tion and not remand. We wait impa­tiently for evi­dence of repen­tance, we want to be sure that the pen­i­tent is not the same any more, but this sit­u­a­tion can last a life­time and our atti­tude is exactly the con­trary of every­thing which the gospel teaches, and indeed com­mands us, to do. So the law of for­give­ness is not a lit­tle brook on the bound­ary between slav­ery and free­dom: it has breadth and depth, it is the Red Sea.

    What we call for­give­ness is often putting the other one on pro­ba­tion. Dou­ble ouch. But that’s very true. It’s actu­ally very rare for me to have any­thing very impor­tant to for­give. But when I have, I find that it’s just as Mpn. Bloom has said: I can eas­ily get to a quick and imme­di­ate state­ment of for­give­ness, and I even mean it sin­cerely. I can re-establish the lines of com­mu­ni­ca­tion and not bring up the offense again.

    What I can’t do is keep from putting the other per­son on pro­ba­tion. It’s as if I’m not really let­ting them out of prison, I’m just putting them under house arrest. I can act as if the bad thing didn’t hap­pen, but I can’t act as if I don’t know what that per­son is capa­ble of. I with­draw from them a lit­tle bit and sub­sti­tute a ver­sion of myself that’s a lit­tle more polite, a lit­tle less generous.

    What a long way we all have to go. At least I hope this involves every­one. If not, I’m cer­tainly out there giv­ing my broth­ers and sis­ters a LOT to forgive.


    Related posts:

    1. For­give me
    2. “Lord, have mercy”, cont.
    3. The scary Mary prayer

    February 6th, 2007 | Grace | 4 Comments |

4 Responses and Counting...

  • Jim N. 02.06.2007

    “sub­sti­tute a ver­sion of myself that’s a lit­tle more polite, a lit­tle less generous”

    you too? :)

  • Grace

    Yeah, unfor­tu­nately so. And I didn’t know how trans­par­ent and uncon­vinc­ing it was until other peo­ple did it to me. You know for cer­tain that you’re on pro­ba­tion. It’s not a very nice feel­ing, and sus­pect­ing that the per­son who’s doing it is feel­ing very good about how mag­nan­i­mous they are makes you feel even worse.

  • Jim N.

    pro­ba­tion sucks. L isn’t like that, thank God, but I sure can be. Although, there is some­thing to be said for being polite. Some­times polite­ness is all the wounded have to offer!

  • Grace

    Well said.

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