Forgiving As the Central Meaning of Christianity

I watched a good film recently titled ESL: English as a Second Language. It's a story about two young Hispanics in the U.S., one an illegal new arrival, with no knowledge of English, and a wife back in Mexico. The second, a second generation Latina, is mixed up and self-destructive. Her domineering parents expect her to go to law school because she's smart, but she doesn't want to, and treads a self-destructive path to avoid it.

The young man, after sleeping on the street, is hired to dance in a tenderloin district, and starts making lots of money titillating lecherous young and middle-aged women. The girl's destructive lifestyle gets her pregnant, and her poor relationship with mom and dad lead to an abortion.

Life spirals downward for both. They get to know one another in an ESL class where she's a teacher's aide, serving out a drunk driving sentence in a diversionary program. He is trying to improve his job prospects by learning English. They console each other in mutual misery: he by accompanying her to her abortion appointment, she by caring for him after he attacks and is beaten by his employer.

What appears to be a sure road to perdition takes a turn for the better. How? Essentially, through forgiveness. The girl's parents decide to forgive her abortion and love her despite their disappointment. They decide to accept her decision not to go to law school, and to teach ESL. She helps the young man when he is beaten up, and encourages him to return to Mexico to his wife and expected son. The film ends positively with the boy leaving for home, and the girl making plans to spend time with her mother.

The key to the better outcome was the forgiveness shown to their daughter by her parents.

According to James P. Danaher (Contemplative Prayer, p. 78), "Christianity is all about restoring relationships through forgiveness." We're mistaken if we think God loves better those who are more moral. God, according to Danaher, wants, more than anything, to heal relationships. That's why he forgives all sins, including all of ours!

Christianity begins with God's forgiveness of us and then extends, by Christ's command to love one another, to our forgiveness of the ones who have harmed, offended, or disappointed us. "This is the most essential aspect of the Christian life, and it is what makes real Christianity so unappealing to most of us. For that reason, true followers of Jesus are rare."

"They are so rare that Mark Twain once quipped, 'The Christian religion was a great idea, too bad no one ever tried it.' Indeed, we all fall short of the kind of forgiveness to which Jesus calls us. That, however, puts us in the strangely blessed position of continually seeking forgiveness for our own lack of forgiveness, the receiving of which, ever so slowly, does make us more forgiving."

When we humbly recognize our own wholesale need for forgiveness, and repent, we are closer to becoming able to forgive those we disdain or hate for having harmed us.

This is a radical move because it is opposite to what we would normally choose: to answer taunt with taunt, blow with blow. But Christianity's "out of the box" thinking is literally a matter of life and death for all in need of forgiveness (as the boy and girl's experience in the movie shows), and we all are more or less in that predicament. To pretend otherwise is blindness and pride. The antidote to the poison of sin is to experience, through prayer and repentance, God's forgiveness of our own great sinfulness, allowing us to grow in our willingness to forgive others.

That, according to Danaher, is what "following Christ" is about. I can think of more than a few areas of my own life where I could put it to practice. Whether I am willing to is the question. I had better pray about it.

Listen to Sara McLachlan sing "Forgiveness"

Listen to Jason Aldean, "Don't Give Up On Me"

Listen to Pretenders, "I'll Stand By You"

Listen to Michael Ruff, "I Love You More Than You Will Ever Know"

Listen to Bon Jovi "I'll Be There For You"

Listen to Nazareth, "Love Hurts"

Listen to Air Supply, "All Out of Love"

Listen to Air Supply, "Making Love Out of Nothing At All"

Listen to Air Supply, "Lost in Love"