Forgiveness

I am not quick to forgive.  I have, what my husband calls a "justice mentality," and what I have often called my "Holy Spirit complex."  I want right to be done, wrong to be vanquished and the truth to be proclaimed...and preferably in my favor. 

In my mind there is a right and a wrong, a winner and a loser.  And what has really driven me crazy in life is that I used to believe that whoever brings the most truth to the table "wins."  A few more years into life, however, I know that whoever brings the most crazy "wins."  That just doesn't seem right.  Add it to the list of injustices in the world.

I've spent a lot of time trying to force people to see the truth...sometimes actual truth and sometimes my own version, I suppose.  When they don't see it, it infuriates me.  It is even worse when I am personally hurt and not just pissed off at a more general injustice.

So, it's ironic that today I'm leading a devotion for some of our World Impact volunteers about forgiveness.  It covers the passage in Mark 2 where a paralytic is brought to Jesus by some crazy friends, who actually dig a hole in the roof of the building where Jesus is teaching and lower the paralyzed man down to Jesus for healing.  I'd have liked to be in that room and seen the first clod of dirt hit the floor.  People start looking at the ceiling in confusion as little by little more sunlight and dirt starts pouring into their eyes.  And then, all of a sudden, a man appears with four eager faces hovering over his still body.  But, then Jesus does something very odd (and to stand out as odd when there's suddenly a man hanging from the ceiling says something).  As the man's air-borne pallet hits the floor, He tells him his sins are forgiven. 

What a let down that must have been for the man, hoping and praying that his limbs would start to move!  I mean, imagine it!  You haven't walked in years, if ever, and you're waiting for some tingling sensation to start in your toes when, instead, you get your sins forgiven.  I'd have been disappointed.  You would have too, I think.

It's humbling, for an unforgiving person, to realize that in God's Kingdom forgiveness is of first importance.  Jesus does heal the man physically, but only after the important healing has already taken place.  His dancing legs were not what gave him his freedom that day.  Jesus' forgiveness did that.  So often I go to God and ask Him to be freed of an illness, or burden, or a hurtful or irritating person or situation, when what my heart is actually in need of is forgiveness...both to accept it and to be able to offer it.  Forgiveness brings peace and action to a world hung up in injustice.

Still, my justice oriented mind has a hard time wrapping itself around forgiveness.  I like there to be consequences when wrong is done.  Preferably swift and painful.  But then...there were consequences.  Someone did pay the price.  I may wish it was the blockhead who wounded and pissed me off, but instead it was a perfect, sinless Savior.  And He paid for my sins too.  "Big," "small," it doesn' matter.  Jesus hung on that cross with the force of every single sin.

Crap. That kind of takes the wind out of my prideful sails.  It certainly doesn't make it any easier to ask for and offer forgiveness, but it gives me the motivation to work on making forgiveness come first in my life...I have a long way to go.