Forgive Us
If you are willing to serenely bear the trial of being displeasing to yourself, you will be for Jesus a pleasant place of shelter. – Saint Thérèse of Lisieux
Today we are focusing on one half of a line of the Lord’s Prayer: Forgive us our debts. Or is it, Forgive us our trespasses? Or maybe it’s Forgive us our sins? This gives us a moment to recall that the English Bible is translated from Greek. But Jesus spoke in Aramaic. So, lots of translation issues here. Aramaic scholar, Neil Douglas-Klotz, suggests that the word from which we get sins/debts/trespasses can include the following interpretations:
Debts. Sins. Offenses. Trespasses.
Hidden Past. Secret Debt. Inner Fruit.
Hidden, Stolen Property. Failures. Mistakes. Accidental Offenses.
Tangle Threads Needing Restoration.
Frustrated Hopes.
I guess we have a lot to be forgiven for!
There are a lot of factors that come into play regarding our ease with forgiveness. Personality type matters – some of us are more self-loathing than others (that would be me). How we’ve been trained by our family of origin matters – the more openly honest the family, the more openly honest we’re likely to be with ourselves. Our ethnic heritage matters to some degree – some cultures appear to be more comfortable with emotional expression than others. Where and when we live matters – some times and places are more prone to attending to forgiveness for different reasons (how does our cultural reality influence our capacity to be honest and real with ourselves and others?). None of us enter into this subject without a lot of influence behind us. How have we been influenced?
At some point in our journey – and many times along the way – the Divine whisper is going to invite us to take stock of our lives. Not because God is an angry Judge that can’t help himself – the motive isn’t wrath or vengeance. The motive is always love. Shalom is my go-to word embodying everything about the character, nature, motive and behavior of the driving force of creation, the nature and reason for the web that connects us all, the reality we call God/Spirit/Divine. We really are swimming in it. We cannot escape it. We can, however, ignore it. Deny it. Avoid it. When we do, it is to our own detriment. Yet the Divine whisper always invites us into greater wellbeing, peace, healing, and growth.
However lovely and life-giving Shalom’s invitation may be doesn’t mean it will be welcome or comfortable. In fact, there is always a degree of discomfort. There has to be. To utter the words, “forgive us,” is inherently uncomfortable and unsettling. The only way it isn’t is if we generalize the statement so much as to become utterly meaningless to the degree of being practically a falsehood. To ask forgiveness without feeling any effect may not be genuine.
There are a lot of healthy things we should do that aren’t comfortable, right? Any fans of going to the dentist? Urologist? OBGYN? None of these may be fun (or do I just have the wrong doctors?), but they all help us stay healthy. Yet I have known many people who didn’t pay attention to their signs, neglected their health, and suffered the consequences. Ill health. Even death. Today I encourage some deep intrapersonal work to simply sort out our readiness for making such a bold request – forgive us. Expect discomfort!
We don’t like to utter this phrase for lots of reasons – some are known to us. Admitting wrongdoing is threatening to us. It feels like weakness, inviting vulnerability, opening ourselves to attack. Lizard brain kicks in! Halt! Sometimes seeking forgiveness is too difficult because we don’t want to admit to ourselves what we’ve done or thought. It is easier to keep such truth at arm’s length or tightly locked away where nobody can ever discover it.
Easter Orthodox writer, Frederica Mathewes-Green, noted: “People usually say that a person ‘won’t accept forgiveness,’ but I think what we won’t accept is that we did it in the first place.” How does this quote land with you? Sometimes we keep ourselves from uttering such words because of the unknown process it will begin. There is pain involved. We can feel unmoored. Our identity feels threatened – which is only somewhat true because what we are protecting is merely a false self we’ve created to make ourselves and others think we’re wonderful or powerful or whatever image we’re aiming for.
Warning signs: what does your check engine light mean? Our cars have “dummy” lights that let us know if we’re having problems. Images are illumined if a tie is low on air, or our electrical system isn’t generating power, or if there is something wrong with our engine. When those light up, we know to pay attention. The same is true for our bodies and emotional life. Sometimes we get actual scans that tell us to pay attention – heart monitors, blood pressure, blood work, pokes and prods where we usually don’t like to be poked or prodded. Sometimes it’s more subtle. Anxiety and depression are signals that something’s going on. Relationship strain or distancing can be a signal. Work performance problems. Increased self-medication. Weight gain if you’re an emotional eater like me. What are the signs in your life and body that signal there’s something going on under the hood?
Sometimes our issues don’t seem like they fit under the forgiveness category. But they are related. Next week we’ll talk more about forgiving others. Sometimes we may discover that our neglecting to deal with what has been done to us becomes something we struggle with. The neglect becomes a self-inflicted wound. We hurt ourselves. We hurt the dream of ourselves. We hurt the “us” others are in relationship with and therefore our neglect damages the relationships we are in. While the primary cause of our pain may have been caused by another, the secondary, related issues become our responsibility, our issue to address. No one else can do it for us. Neglect, while it may be done wittingly or unwittingly for self-protective reasons, can also turn into self-harm. Sometimes, as with our physical health when we need to trust professionals to tend to our treatment, we need to trust the Spirit of God to tend to our inner being. Sometimes God uses therapists to help us process through our pain.
This week, I hope I have been part of God’s ongoing nudge to seriously consider what’s going on under your hood, so to speak, that may be related to the “Forgive us” aspect of the Lord’s Prayer. While next week we will focus on the complexities of forgiving others, this week take stock of yourself. What might you be holding on to? What do you need to be free of? Philip Graham Ryken defined forgiveness like this: to let go without a sense of guilt, obligation, or punishment. How’s that going for you?
Letting Go, Heartbeat by Heartbeat (Neil Douglas-Klotz)
Loose the cords of mistakes binding us,
as we release the strands we hold
of others’ guilt.
Forgive our hidden past, the secret shames,
as we consistently forgive
what others hide.
Lighten our load of secret debts as
we relieve others of their
need to repay.
Erase the inner marks our failures make,
just as we scrub our hearts
of others’ faults.
Absorb our frustrated hopes and dreams,
as we embrace those of others
with emptiness.
Untangle the knots within
so that we can mend our hearts’
simple ties to others.
Compost our inner, stolen fruit
as we forgive others the spoils of
their trespassing.
Loose the cords of mistakes binding us,
as we release the strands we hold
of others’ guilt.