Session
4
What's So Amazing About Grace
by Phillip Yancey
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"The many uses of the word in English convince me that grace is indeed amazing - truly our last best word. It contains the essence of the gospel as a droop of water can contain the image of the sun. The world thirsts for grace in ways it does not even recognize: little wonder the hymn "Amazing Grace" edged its way onto the Top Ten charts two hundred years after composition. For a society that seems adrift, without moorings, I know of no better place to drop an anchor of faith.." ... from the Introduction
The Questions to Consider
  • How does an unforgiving spirit enslave us?
  • Is forgiveness ever inappropriate or impossible?
Comments - recorded by Larry Fisk
Consider, if you will, forgiveness as “the act that sets us free”. Philip Yancey asks “when someone does something to offend us or hurt our feelings (or our egos!) why is it our natural tendency to hold on to the offence and let it turn into a grudge?” Our answers to this question included such considerations as: “we don’t want to deal with it”; “it hurts too much” or “it is just human nature to so react”. “We tend to replay or re-experience the hurt” either in reality or in the playing out of the hurt in our minds. Even the smaller hurts may take the form of 10,000 cuts and with repeated wounding (imagined or real) we are seriously and deeply injured. Often attached to the spiritual-psychological wounds which can accompany physical injury comes the conviction that we are not worthy of the absence of hurt (certainly true in the case of sexual abuse). The grudges we carry feed the victim role within which we hide.

Vern Redekop sums up the above tendencies by noting that those who hurt us, our perceived “enemies”…”become a significant part of our own identities, since they ‘serve as a reservoir for our unwanted selves.’ Unconsciously, they are somewhat like us, ‘although on a conscious level they should not seem to be the same as us since they contain our unwanted aspects—those characteristics we vigorously reject.’

Yancey asks: “Do you think God understands our feelings in those situations in which we feel incapable of forgiving? Does God allow us to remain unforgiving? Why or why not? Some answer yes, He/She understands but we were given free will and “He knows our thoughts before we do”. For many while God may have forgiven US there is no healing without forgiveness on our part. The fish-hook which pulls us against our free swimming remains. Others answer that God does not understand and simply allows such feelings all of which risk a relationship with Him/Her in which we were already forgiven. But, others would argue, so many of the above arguments are anthropomorphic or human-centered judgements about the Divine. The Christian understanding of incarnation would seem to offer another interpretation, one by which God in Jesus does know what we feel. The trials in the desert wilderness and Jesus’ death might indicate Divine understanding. It is after all part of the real struggle in human life.

One further avenue of discussion centred on the difficulty of forgiving a perpetrator of violence against another: your friend, relative, loved one. We may easily argue for forgiveness when it affects others at a distance. We may not know the depth of the hurt and difficulty. But for wounds inflicted on one close to us forgiveness raises all the problems of anger, hurt, grief, and remorse. It is easy to spend our time “tut-tut ting” the inappropriate actions or heinous crimes of others and what should be done to them by way of punishment or retribution. However, we can instead spend our time searching out the dimensions and dynamic processes implicit in the ability of those who have learned to forgive.

Forgiveness gives back a person’s (or group’s) humanity. It is as if the dastardly deed is sliced away, the cancerous hatred is removed and the demonization of the “enemy” and the dehumanization of oneself comes to an end.

The video segment for this fourth session featured a most enlightening description by Debbie Morris of her search for justice following her rape as told in the story and film “Dead Man Walking”. Debbie Morris said of her experience that the justice she perennially sought brought no relief and was neither fulfilling nor healing. She notes that “The unforgiveness that I was holding on to, the hate, the anger, was destroying my life. I was continuing to let these men have control over me. I was continuing to let myself be victimized, over and over and over again, because I was hanging on to the hate and I was unwilling to forgive.” Her book “Forgiving the Dead Man Walking” tells her story of profound dehumanization and her recovery through forgiveness. Reviews of her book are available at Amazon

Any group watching this segment of the Yancey video could not help but be moved, in addition, by the story told by Dr. Tony Compolo. In summary: while over one half million Americans were killed in World War II, over 40 million Soviet Russians lost their lives. When the defeated Germans marched away from Moscow the streets were lined with countless Russians ready to rip apart the stiff-necked well-fed uniformed Nazi Officers. The citizens were only prevented from their acts of revenge by Russian police and military. Yet, when the scraggly, poorly dressed, emaciated enlisted soldiers dragged by, one Russian woman broke through the lines to offer a hungry soldier a piece of bread. Soon the scene was one of scores of simple Russian folk offering food to the German men. This act of forgiveness, for in its spontaneous identification with the impoverished German soldiers that is what it was, is summed up by Tony Compolo. “I think we would all be gracious if we could look at each other and not see the enemy but see that each of us, in his or her own way, is somebody’s little kid, sick and dying and far away from home. Grace.”

In small groups three biblical stories around the place and difficulties in forgiveness were discussed:

(1) the story of Joseph sold into slavery and his eventual forgiveness of his brothers – Genesis 37:12-28 and Genesis 45:1-11 where Joseph is reunited with his brothers. Great anger followed by equally great compassion are both shown to his brothers by Joseph, not unlike the decline of the soldiers described in Dr. Compolo’s story.

(2) The story of Peter’s denial of Jesus (Mark 14:66-72) is instructive since, as the story is also told in John 21:4-19 the Greek word agape (self-sacrificial love) is used in Jesus’ question of Peter “do you LOVE me”. Yet the third time Jesus asks the question the word love appears as phileo or brotherly love. If you love me, feed my sheep. Some have argued that Peter needed to experience the act of betrayal in order to appreciate the essence of agape (self-giving love.) His denial in such a case would indicate his initial unwillingness or understanding of such love. The story also reveals something about Peter’s seeming inability to forgive himself. Ivan Illich, renowned Christian scholar and historian has argued that Jesus’ humanity places Peter in the situation of knowing he has betrayed his closest and dearest friend (phileo). In this context the incarnation and redemption stories are to be understood first and foremost as a question of betrayal and a desire to reconcile with an unmatchable friend whose friendship, love and support is undying.

(3) The final biblical passage was Psalm 130 which speaks of God’s incredible forgiveness, where in spite of all sins God chooses not to keep track. The Psalmist acknowledges that he cannot stand in God’s presence given his failings yet God forgives. The Psalm encouraged discussion of our need to be forgiven and to forgive. It reminded some of us that in forgiving we cannot, as Smedes has argued in his The Art of Forgiveness, envision the relationship which will follow once forgiveness is granted and accepted. It is the awe of God’s Being and Creation which both humbles the Psalmist and reminds him of the depths of God’s forgiveness. The Psalmist felt the awe and wonder in the desert night above him. In our time the Hubble telescope focused on a grain of sand in the darkest region of the universe accomplishes for us the same awe and wonder. That speck of darkness in the course of ten days and 240-plus timed photographs revealed countless stars and galaxies—and in each of those galaxies billions of stars. It is that Creator in whom we today stand in awe and wonder and who’s Forgiveness we seek and by which we are strengthened.
You can access Psalm 130 or any other biblical quotation from 20 different English versions of the Bible at the following website: http://www.biblegateway.com Nova Scotia poet and writer Regina Coupar in her book The Seeker's Heart: Meditations Inspired by the Book of Psalms (Blue Gamma Publications Corp. Lethbridge, AB), 2004,transliterates Psalm 130 as follows:
Psalm 130 A song of ascents.

1 Out of the depths I cry to you, LORD;

2 Lord, hear my voice.
Let your ears be attentive
to my cry for mercy.

3 If you, LORD, kept a record of sins,
Lord, who could stand?

4 But with you there is forgiveness,
so that we can, with reverence, serve you.

5 I wait for the LORD, my whole being waits,
and in his word I put my hope.

6 I wait for the Lord
more than watchmen wait for the morning,
more than watchmen wait for the morning.

7 Israel, put your hope in the LORD,
for with the LORD is unfailing love
and with him is full redemption.

8 He himself will redeem Israel
from all their sins.





you remove
the stains of
our transgressions
from your eyes

you do for
us
what we cannot
do for ourselves

you wash us
with water from
the living stream

you cleanse the
meditations of our
hearts
and the desires
of our minds

we are whole
in your
forgiveness


                                ... Regina Coupar


Oct 2006