I came across this article today on CNN's Belief Blog (which is almost always a fantastic read, if you are into American-political/religious dialogue). Today's post is entitled: "How faith can help and hinder forgiveness" and can be accessed here.
One particular sentence really struck me: “Ultimately, there’s a humbleness that comes when we realize that there’s something or someone out there bigger than myself that ultimately loves me, accepts me, cares for me, can give me grace, and in places where it’s hard for me to do that for myself,” says Richard Shaw, a marriage and family therapist in Oregon who runs Shame No More Counseling and Ministries.
The context of this statement is the "realization" of forgiveness, and in particular forgiving oneself for wronging someone else. Also, though not as explicitly stated in this article, the context is about forgiving God. Having grown up in a church where guilt was a cornerstone of life, these two things make sense together. As a new Presbyterian though, I question how forgiving myself for wronging someone else and forgiving God for not intervening become such related processes. Then I remember chapter 1 from book 1 of Calvin's Institutes and how knowledge of self and knowledge of God are interrelated. "In the first place, no one can look upon himself without immediately turning his thoughts to the contemplation of God, in whom he 'lives and moves'...indeed our very being is nothing but subsistence in the one God" (p. 35). "Indeed, our very poverty better discloses the infinitude of benefits reposing in God" (p. 36).
I wonder how faith in a God larger than ourselves, this God of love and also grace (the gift we cannot deserve but receive nonetheless), helps us learn to forgive ourselves. And actually, we come to know this God of infinite grace through our own "poverty," which in this context might reflect our self-hostage when we wrong others. I make no assumption that this isn't a complicated and delicate issue, with a huge diversity of emotions behind it, but somehow there is self-forgiveness (or our acknowledgement of God's forgiveness of us) all tied up with our forgiveness of God.
But what if holding oneself hostage with guilt does not automatically lead one to accepting or "realizing" one's forgiveness though? What if, as in the case of Laura Bush and others in this article, it simply leads to shaking a fist at God, either through action or inaction? This certainly is a common and perhaps helpful way of coping. Guilt can become unthinkable when the knowledge of self and the knowledge of God become unhinged, and we simply know ourselves as fully responsible for a terrible accident and know God as simply uninterested or wrathful and judging.
Often though, we are better at forgiving others than forgiving ourselves. While this is not a universal statement, it seems like a logical first step for many people. When I remember the works of God in the history of God's relationship with the children of God, I remember a greater story of forgiveness. Perhaps some small part of me remembers this history and I open the door to forgiving God. And if God really is a God of love, maybe God really forgives me too. Perhaps being in *relationship* with God starts and ends with the dialectical tension of knowledge of self and of God ("knowledge" is not to be confused with "brainy-ness" or "intellectualism," as knowledge includes all aspects of life, including the visceral and sensory). Still, as a musician, I see the way people with no religious affiliation come to hear the B-minor Mass by J.S. Bach, and are overcome with the Divine through the performance of that music, the Divine who is bigger than all of us and what we carry with us. I wonder if God surrounds us with God's loving presence incarnationally through the Spirit, in the special-ness of worship that is set aside to name and glorfy God, and in the ordinary-ness of the everyday (not to say that Bach isn't special!).
Another telling statement in this article: “When there’s a spiritual dimension to it, there’s a sense that there’s stuff beyond my control and someone in the universe who cares deeply about me, even in the midst of my own shame and my own brokenness," he says. "… That can be, in the forgiveness process, a healing component for some folks.”
What was that Veggie Tales song, about God being bigger than the boogy-man? Is God really bigger than our deepest pain and guilt?
In Reformed worship, not only do we confess corporately and individually in worship every week, but we have this fantastic time immediately after confession called the "assurance of pardon." A common liturgy reads this way:
Friends, hear the Good News:
In Christ we are a new creation.
The old life is gone, and a new life has begun.
Know that you are forgiven, and be at peace.
Amen.
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