I’m back from vacation.
Thanks for allowing me the chance to take a breather. I know you didn’t have a choice in the
matter, but I thank you anyway. 😉
Philippians 2:5-8, The Message - Think of
yourselves the way Christ Jesus thought of himself. He had equal status with
God but didn’t think so much of himself that he had to cling to the advantages
of that status no matter what. Not at all. When the time came, he set aside the
privileges of deity and took on the status of a slave, became human! Having
become human, he stayed human. It was an incredibly humbling process. He didn’t
claim special privileges. Instead, he lived a selfless, obedient life and then
died a selfless, obedient death—and the worst kind of death at that—a
crucifixion.
Breaking how to forgive down into steps
would be a little misleading. The “steps”
of forgiveness rarely occur in any specific order. Sometimes, the steps have to be
repeated. Using a mental checklist for
these would usually bring frustration.
So instead, I prefer to talk about the components of forgiveness. When you are able to forgive someone, these
components are part of the process. Working
to bring all of these components together is a better way to describe the
practice. Today we will talk about one
of them – (re)discovering the common humanity of the offender.
When someone hurts us, there is a
tendency to put them in a different category than ourselves. Many times, this isn’t really a conscious
thing but sometimes it is. A simple example is when I label someone “a jerk” (you
can substitute you own preferred derogatory label here). Implicit in me beginning to think of them as
a jerk is that I, on the contrary, am NOT a jerk. They are different from me. I would not do what they have done, so I am not
a jerk and they are. I belong in a “better”
category than that offender because I am not a jerk.
Putting someone in a lower category
from myself has a name; the name is judgement.
I have judged my offender to be somehow less than myself. Here’s where the problem comes in. Judgement or categorizations of the value of
other human beings is not an activity I am well suited to do. After all, I am a human being. I am biased at best. This is why God says leave judgement to
God. God, unlike me, is well suited to
make value judgements about human beings.
First, God IS in a higher category than us. Second, God knows what it’s like to be a
human because God become one named Jesus.
Jesus is fully God and fully human simultaneously. God voluntarily put Godself in the same category
as us.
God perfectly models for us what
this aspect of forgiveness looks like. God
discovers what it’s like to be a human being.
Instead of separating form us, God joins us. An essential component of forgiveness is
doing this same thing with our offender(s).
If we are able to be completely honest with ourselves, we have been “jerky”
at times too. Maybe it wasn’t exactly
the same jerkiness that the other displayed, but it was jerkiness to be
sure. Maybe, in their same circumstances,
we could have found ourselves doing the same thing they did. After all, we are all human.
Tomorrow, we’ll talk about another
component of forgiveness, but for today, consider these questions.
Questions: Do you
have labels for people that have hurt you that you would not apply to yourself? Have you considered how it might be possible,
given different circumstances, for you to do the same thing that your offender
did?
Prayer: Jesus, thank
you for becoming human like me. You had
every right to remain separated from me, but you chose to join me instead. Show me what it would look like to remove the
separated label I have placed on people that have hurt me. Amen.
Prayer Focus: Pray
for people who do jobs everyday you could never see yourself doing. Amen.
Song: Judge Not – Bob
Marley
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