Forgiveness, among other things...

Tim: Forgiveness was the word of the day. Jay Barnes spoke. I love when he speaks because he is so open and honest about himself and his experiences. As always, he was sweet. He’s Jay Barnes after all! I don’t have much to say about this message, though, mostly because I was a little out of it during chapel. I was super tired and struggling to stay awake while I fretted over whether or not I am doomed to get swine flu just in time to take the GRE. Unfortunately those things were sufficient to consume the majority of my attention.

I won’t talk about the message overall other than to say it was about forgiveness and that I had trouble following it at points. But I do want to comment on a couple things he said. The first thing that I thought was cool was that he made a connection between God’s love and forgiveness. He talked about the woman washing Jesus’ feet with her tears and he pointed out that to her, his love and grace were much more real than to others. She was acutely aware of her sinfulness, so she felt God’s love deeply. The Pharisees were blissfully unaware of their issues or their need to be forgiven, and thus had little interest in God’s love. A lot of times we’re like the Pharisees, he said. We don’t honestly think about how dependent we are on God’s forgiveness and his love. I thought that was an interesting point that we might not think about very often.

He also said “God is never going to think of our sins, but it’s sure easy for us to remember them.” This stood out to me because it reminded me of something that my theology teacher said two years ago. He told us that there is no place for guilt in the Christian walk. Our guilt takes control of us and ultimately, it drags us back into sin. I didn’t know how to feel about this, because I had always devoted a good deal of time and energy to feeling guilty about past indiscretions. Guilt was almost like proof of repentance as well as motivation to improve. He suggested though, that we ought to acknowledge and learn from our mistakes, but then instead of feeling guilty about them, “move on to do the next right thing.” It seemed almost too simple, and certainly not self-deprecating enough to be orthodox! But in the end, I decided he was right, and in some subtle way, it revolutionized my perspective on life.

Among other things, it made me question our focus on not sinning. I’m not saying we shouldn’t avoid sin. I just think sometimes sin is bigger than God to us. I think that I was impeded in my walk for years because all I could think about was avoiding sinning. I see the same thing all around me. For instance, I can’t count the number of times I’ve heard arguments around here regarding whether swearing is bad. If it’s bad we shouldn’t do it; if it’s neutral, we can get away with it. Is the focus really supposed to be on if it’s bad? Shouldn’t our question be “is it GOOD?” If it’s good, then we should do it. If it’s neutral, then I’m not going to object to it, but may be less inclined to participate. Shouldn’t we focus on actively doing what’s good, rather than on not doing what’s bad? I realize I have long since left the topic of forgiveness behind. But what can I say? I go where my mind leads me. It’s now leading me to go find some lunch…

Peter: I’m going to keep my end of this short, because honestly I don’t have much to say, and most of what I would say has been said more eloquently by my esteemed friend Tim.  I didn’t have much to say, because honestly Jay didn’t say much.  I love Jay, I respect him deeply, but besides a few interesting points here and there, mentioned by Tim, he stated what we all know: God forgives us.  It seemed to me, however, to be somewhat of a paradox when put together with Edee’s talk.  She emphasized the sin nature over the sin, and said that what’s actually wrong is the sin nature.  Well if that’s true then is God forgiving us for our sin nature, and does he not care about the sin?  I mean, God looks at the heart, and he’s not a legalistic sort of fellow, and perhaps it’s merely my orthodox upbringing, but I think that God forgives the sin as much as the motive, the actions as well as the heart.  Jay seemed to suggest the that God forgives us our sins in the traditional sense of the term, but Edee seemed to suggest that ‘sin’ was not even ‘sinful’ so much as the ‘sin nature’ was.  Actually, to be honest I probably just don’t understand either person’s talk.  Regardless, I still question the validity of separating the two, in which case it wouldn’t matter.  I think sin is as important as sinfulness, because I think that they’re of the same entity.  Refer to the trinity if you don’t understand.  Obedience is important to God, and from a sincere heart we should examine the merits of our actions, as well as our beliefs, because as the great Batman once said: “…it's not who you are underneath, it's what you do that defines you.”  Yes, that just happened.  But the main point I guess is that whatever your view of sin, God forgives it.  He’s like a sin vacuum.  A sin-eating machine.  I just find it interesting how our conceptions of sin seem to change depending on the topic.  So yeah.  According to Jay, and myself, your sins/sinful nature/whatever is/are forgiven by God because God is just that amazing.

Jay used amazing a lot, I’m not sure why besides the fact that he was trying to get us to ‘realize the incredibleness’ of what God has done.  Of course, I was talking to a friend afterwards and she said that it was impossible to do so, because it’s more amazing than our conceptualization can conceptualize.  This made me wonder why she was frustrated at the people who don’t try to conceptualize God’s amazing forgiveness, because in my eyes they’re just saving themselves a lot of effort in futility.  If they can’t understand it even if they did try, their understanding is as complete as anybody else’s understanding, because God’s forgiveness is infinite (east from west).  Think about it.  Unless we can understand the infinite nature of God’s forgiveness, our understandings of it are equally defective no matter how much effort we put into our understanding.

And in regard to Tim’s last point, I would say that yes, we do need to do what is good, but we also need to not do what is evil.  If we are to do unto others as we would have them do unto us I would contend that that includes not doing unto others what we would have them not do unto us.  It also follows from the greatest commandments: love the lord your God with all your heart soul and mind and love your neighbor as yourself.  Well, gee, if loving God means respecting authority, and not doing what is evil, well then… yeah.  Of course if it doesn’t, then… I’m not sure where I’m going with this.  My point is that I don’t think you can separate ‘doing good’ and ‘not doing evil’ as separate entities.  I harken back to Isaiah 1:16-7 when God says to ‘stop doing wrong, learn to do what is right.’  The emphasis should be on both sides of the coin, so to speak.  So good is, well, good, but it is too narrow of a focus, as is evil.  A valid separation could be the legalistic side versus the sincere side of things, which might be what you’re getting at, in which case I agree with you wholeheartedly.