My friend, Wess, spoke on the last few lines of the Lord's prayer this morning in church. In discussing forgiveness, he said some thought provoking things that have been in the back of my mind ever since.
At one point, he talked about the story of the servant who was forgiven an unimaginably large debt but did not forgive a fellow servant who owed him a rather small debt. He said the King operated under a grace paradigm but that the servant operated under an exhange paradigm. When the King found out the servant did not forgive the other servant the much smaller debt after being forgiven a really large debt, the King saw he operated on the principle of exchange, that what you give ought to be what you get. So since he gave unforgiveness, the King joined in the world of exchange and gave him unforgiveness. The King played by the rules the servant chose for himself.
When we choose to hate, when we choose to hold real or imagained wrongs done against another person, we are working under an exchange paradigm. We think the other person is completely wrong and we are completely right. We think they have done great wrong and completely miss the wrong we ourselves have done. We pass judgement on them. We throw them in our own jail. But by putting people in the jail of debt, we ourselves place ourselves in the same cold cell, locked in by the key we ourselves made. If we operate under an exchange paradigm, that includes everyone, including you and me. If we judge others, we will judge ourselves and come out guilty every time. If we cannot forgive others, we will not forgive ourselves or be able to accept anyone else's forgiveness. We will be trapped, and the walls of that trap are not kind. They close in, they shut out the light, they shut out, or shut in, everything good about us. They are like a poison seeping through our bodies and one day it will have seeped through so far, we will no longer recongnize ourselves.
Why do we stay?
365-09 #326Labels: 365-09 Challenge, A God Who Looks Like Me, Forgiveness