Fifty Years to Forgiveness

I had the occasion this week to read again Letters to an American Lady, the compilation of letters that C.S. Lewis wrote to Mary Willis Shelburne, an American widow living in Washington, D.C..  The correspondence began in 1950 and ended shortly before Lewis' death in the fall of 1963.  The letters themselves are remarkable in how they reveal Lewis' steadfastness for this woman who seemed in constant need of encouragement.  Lewis was steadfast to all who corresponded with him.  He committed himself to reply to every letter he received -- children and adult alike.  His collection of letters, published by Harper, stretch to well over 3000 pages with several letters to a page! 

In the last year of his life, four months before dying, Lewis wrote Ms. Shelburne with the glad report that he "at last had forgiven the cruel schoolmaster who so darkened my childhood."  This was a man who appeared in his life fifty years before and had arbitrarily and maliciously abused his students physically and emotionally.  He was later to be found insane.  Nevertheless, Lewis harbored anger and resentment.  Even after accepting Christ he couldn't bring himself to truly forgive the man.  He would pray forgiveness for the evil schoolmaster, long dead, but in his heart he knew that he couldn't let the pain go.  

But he wouldn't stop trying!  He took the clause in the Lord's Prayer seriously:  Forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.  He realized that the two acts are forever interlinked.  "The forgiving and the being forgiven are really the same thing," he tells the widow Shelburne.  For fifty years he appealed to Christ for help in doing what he himself could not do.  And finally, after a half century of pleading, the Holy Spirit brought about a work of grace. 

It makes me wonder how seriously I take the call to forgive.  How many times have I given a faint wave of grace and yet harbored a lingering resentment.  God cares too much about our enemies to let us get by with the mere lip service of accepting apologies.  He knows it takes more than that for people to truly encounter the sweet mercy of Christ.  It takes our appeal to the Holy Spirit for something to be done IN us, so something can be done FOR them.  All become the better for it. 

Who remains on your "need to be truly forgiven" list?  Fifty years is a long time, but it's worth it in the end. 

Love, whether you like it or not

C.S. Lewis always manages to defy simple characterization. Just when you think he fits the customary evangelical model he comes out with something that makes you pause and wonder and reconsider. Try this on for size from The Four Loves:

God, who needs nothing, loves into existence wholly superfluous creatures in order that He may love and perfect them.  He creates the universe, already forseeing -- or should we say "seeing"? there ar no tenses in God -- the buzzing cloud of flies about the cross, the flayed back pressed against the uneven stake, the nails driven through the mesial nerves, the repeated torture of back and arms as it is time after time, for breath's sake, hitched up.  If I may dare the biological image, God is a "host" who deliberately creates His own parasites; causes us to be that we may exploit and "take advantage of" Him.  Herein is love.  This is the diagram of Love Himself, the inventor of all loves.

Lewis in other places writes that God is beyond time.  All things happen in one moment for God.  We see events unfolding sequentially, God sees them happening at once.  And so when God creates, he creates with the cross in mind.  He loves because we won't love back.  This is love -- love unconditioned by our response.  It doesn't matter if you like it, God will love you anyway. 

Karl Barth in his Dogmatics says, What unites God and us men is that He does not will to be God without us, that He creates us rather to share with us and therefore with our being and life and act His own incomparable being and life and act, that He does not allow His history to be His and our ours, but causes them to take place as a common history.  That is the special truth which the Christian message has to proclaim at its very heart. 

Your life, beyond what you may ever know or want, has been taken into the life of God on the cross.  His history is our history.  His love is our love.  Denying it, doesn't make it not so.  What a great message to share. 

This might surprise you

C.S. Lewis raises an intriguing point in Mere Christianity that is worth thinking about.  He says this,

"[The invisible Christ] works through Nature, through our own bodies, through books, sometimes through experiences which seem at the time anti-Christian.  When a young man who has been going to church in a routine way honestly realizes that he does not believe in Christianity and stops going -- provided he does it for honesty's sake and not just to annoy his parents -- the spirit of Christ is probably nearest to him then than it ever was before.  But above all, He works on us through each other.
"Men are mirrors, or 'carriers' of Christ to other men.  Sometimes unconscious carriers.  This 'good infection' can be carried by those who have not got it themselves.  People who were not Christians themselves helped me to Christianity.  But usually it is those who know Him that bring Him to others."

Lewis leaves a lot of room for a lot of different folks to be participants in the kingdom of God, doesn't he?  When he imagines that those uninfected by Christ can themselves be contagious with Christ, he seems to suggest that there are countless people in this world unconscious of the fact that they have already been enfolded into the divine plan.  Can you be "of Christ", or can Christ be "in you" without your knowing it?  If an honest turning away from Christianity is something that actually draws you closer to Jesus without your awareness, what might this mean to our fellow human beings who are honestly seeking the truth outside of the church?  Might they be deeper into the kingdom than we think? 

I think of Emeth at the end of The Last Battle whose whole life had been a yearning to honor and follow the false god Tash.  Lewis gives us the surprise ending of Aslan welcoming the young man into Narnia.  He counts his earnest pursuit of truth as enough for the kingdom. 

Might this mean, according to Lewis, that the kingdom life has more to do with the honest pursuit of what is real and true wherever that takes us?  That we are "in Christ" and Christ is "in us" when we share in the honest pursuit of what is true and good and real.  And if that's so, doesn't that change the whole conversation of faith we might have with those who disagree with us?  Christ is already in those who struggle with us to discover what is ultimate. 

It certainly might help us avoid the mistake made by the folks in Matthew 25 who wondered when they had ever seen Jesus.  And Jesus says, "You saw me in the hungry, the thirsty, the stranger, the naked, the sick and the imprisoned. In all those who were seeking goodness from you.  I was "in" them.  They were contagious with me." 

It sure changes things if I can imagine that with every person that comes into my life there is the real possibility that I am at risk, no matter who they are, of being infected further by Jesus. 

The election

I live in one of those states that hang in the electoral college balance:  Florida.  For the next three months we will be subjected to endless and demeaning political ads that don't particularly want to tell us the truth about anything or anyone.  Issues are beside the point and this election will succeed only in making more and more Americans grow more and more cynical and discouraged.  I never thought as a former political science major that I would come to cringe at the mention of the word "election", but I do. 

But then I indulged myself in a little reading of Karl Barth today -- Church Dogmatics II v. 2 -- and there I read about Election.  A great election.  God's unequivocal election of his people.   God in Christ says Yes to us.  He chooses us out of his grace.  "The election of grace is the sum of the Gospel."  God reconciles the world to himself.  The WORLD.  There is nothing we can do to keep God from saying Yes to us.  There is no card we can play to trump it.  God loves us unconditionally.  No strings attached.  No conditions.  No secret code.  No formula of prayer.  God chooses us and invites us to live in response to this election. 

We get to build our lives upon this vote that God casts for us.  We get to live the abundant life of assurance.  We don't have to worry whose on what side.  We're all on God's side.  Nothing shall separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.  It's one issue over which polarity does not exist.  And it just happens to be the most important issue of all. 

Finally, an election to be hopeful about. 

Penn State and the Presbyterians

In one of my all-time favorite Lake Wobegon pieces by Garrison Keillor he tells the story of a college professor in some Midwestern university who is slowly falling out of love with his wife and quickly growing infatuated with a female colleague. The two of them are scheduled to go to a conference together and he knows that when they do they will begin an affair. He stands out in his front yard waiting for the woman to come pick him up. It is at that moment that this man Jim begins to really think about what he’s doing – and later he describes what happened:




“I looked up the street of my little town which was health to my flesh and blood, where people went to church, and voted in elections, and bought what the Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts sold them, rooted for the home team, raised money for the library and tended the parks. And I thought how much we depend on each other. All these houses and all these families, my infidelity will somehow shake them, pollute the drinking water, and send noxious fumes up the ventilators at the elementary school.



“When we scream in senseless anger,” the professor continues ruminating, “a little 8-year-old girl several blocks away we don’t even know spills gravy all over a white tablecloth. And if I go to Chicago with this woman who is not my wife, somehow the school patrol will forget to guard the intersection, and someone’s child will be injured. A 6th-grade teacher will say, ‘What the heck,’ and eliminate South America from geography. The minister will say, ‘What the heck,’ and decide not to give that sermon about feeding the poor. The guy at the grocery store will say, “To heck with the health department, this sausage was good yesterday, it’s just as good today.’ And I decided that we all depend on each other more than we can ever know.”



The story ends with Jim walking back into his house and forgetting the trip.



Keillor beautifully makes an oft-ignored point. No man is an island. We live in a web. We are connected to everything else. Every move sends ripples across the web strings. And it reminds us that everything we do matters because it affects so many, far beyond what we know.



The tragic events at Penn State show clearly how much of a connected system we are in. Boys are violated and the web shakes as a result. And because we are all connected we all have a responsibility when the ripple crosses our part of the web -- whether we are the first to hear and see or the last to hear and see. And we each react and our action or inaction sends further ripples. It’s not just one man who is responsible and it’s not just a few men who are responsible. We’re all responsible because we’re all in the web. Blame lies not just with a team’s culture or with a university’s culture, but with a sport’s culture. I am a part of that. And I am just as vulnerable as the next person to be tempted to do the wrong thing, or to pressure others to do the wrong thing for the sake of my enjoyment. If I behave like I want my team to win at all costs – the team or coach might just do that. I bear responsibility for that.



And yet typically our response to such tragedy is to point fingers at whatever piece of the institution we think is most to blame and say, “There’s the problem.” We attempt to make it an island, dislodge it from the main, cut out the piece of the web that we think is guilty and attempt to leave the rest intact. The problem is that when you cut out a piece of the web, the rest of the web collapses. You have nothing to hang on.



We talk a lot about this on Good Friday. When Jesus hangs on the cross we don’t ask who’s to blame. We don’t point the finger at Pilate or the Romans and say, “It’s your fault.” We bear our own responsibility and rhetorically sing, “Were you there when they crucified my Lord?” And the answer is yes. We are in the human web, the sinful human web that brings about the death of the Messiah.



I think this is what the apostle Paul was getting at when he talks to the fractured Corinthian church and says, “YOU are the body of Christ. The eye cannot say to the hand, ‘I have no need of you.’” We in the Church are connected to each other whether we want to be or not. We can’t disown a part of the body just because we don’t like it or understand it. Paul continues, “If one member suffers, all suffer together with it; if one member is honored, all rejoice together with it.”



So I find it curious that when the Church finds itself in disagreement there are some whose response is to dislodge themselves from the main and create an island. Disconnect from the web and see if we can go it alone. Become like-minded. Dismember themselves from the body and say, “I have no need of you.” It seems to fly in the face of I Corinthians 12. It’s easy for us to find something that gives us reason to separate because we live in the fantasy that we are stronger on our own.



Our friends in State College, Pennsylvania are known to exclaim on Saturday afternoons, “We are Penn State.” It was true last year and it’s no less true this year. When some suffer, all suffer. When some rejoice, all rejoice. We’re all responsible.



Doesn’t the same go when we sing with our children, “I am the church. You are the
church. We are the church together?” Or when we sing, “Blest be the tie that binds?” Christ has entangled us in his web and there is no letting us go or, for that matter, letting each other go.

God, church and baseball

I'm in Pittsburgh attending the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church. It is the bi-annual gathering of Presbyterians where we go to discover how different we are. For some reason this always seems to surprise us. We lament how little we have in common. We cast aspersions on folks on the other side. Sometimes the divide is razor thin, sometimes a little bigger. There is always dissent. It is as it should be. It's what makes being a Presbyterian such a great thing. It seems though at these things we spend so little time focusing on what we have in common; the core reason for why we're there. While in Pittsburgh I stole away one night to catch a baseball game. The Pirates were in town playing the Astros. I like baseball and I'm a big St. Louis Cardinal fan. I don't follow particularly the two teams that were playing, but the game itself brought me there. Not everybody there was a Pirates fan, nor an Astros fan. But we were all baseball fans. We like the game: the balls and strikes, the pitches and catches, the home runs and strikeouts, the play of the players. Everybody understands what we're there for - to watch, cheer and participate in baseball. What's the "game" that brings us to be the church? In my church back home we do something just about every Sunday - we repeat together the Apostles' Creed. Just about everything else we do is different each Sunday - the music, the scriptures, the prayers, the sermon - but the creed stays the same. And once we leave our variety of actions are even more varied than what we've done "in sanctuary". Still we come back each week to say the creed. It's what we believe, it's what informs our particular paths and it's what brings us together. It's baseball. The Church gets in trouble every time we try to add to it, and when we insist that the rest have to agree to the "add-on". We do this with new confessions, new policy positions, new moral guidelines. And we offer these add-ons not as ideas and points to consider and celebrate, but rather as dictums to be obeyed. And sure enough we gather at the stadium and spend our time fighting in the stands rather enjoying a good game, the best game. There are more U.S. Presbyterian denominations than there are Major League baseball teams. Each seems to want to play a different game. And yet few would disagree over the Apostles' Creed. God in Christ has done an amazing thing. It takes a lifetime to even scratch the surface of how amazing it really is. Every day affords us the chance to respond to it in wide, varied and creative ways. How about a Church of the Apostles' Creed? How about when we gather we take in the game? Celebrate the game? Participate in the game? And not let the rest distract us from what's going on on the field. I know it sounds like a naive suggestion and I know it will fall prey to the sophisticated and the cynical. But wouldn't it be a place to start a conversation - a new conversation about an old game.

We may think God wants actions of a certain kind, but God wants people of a certain sort.

“We may think God wants actions of a certain kind, but God wants people of a certain sort.” (C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity)




In one beautiful sentence Lewis points to a fine line in the spiritual journey that is challenging for any of us to walk. Those of us who are offspring of the Reformation are eager to agree that spirituality is not as much about what we do, but what God does in us. The first project for God is not the world, but the soul. Each soul. It is through recreated souls that God brings about certain actions that shape the world in a certain way.



The challenge though is to read this sentence and not jump to the conclusion that we are the certain sort of people God wants. Doesn’t God have more to do with you? One of the pitfalls of religion is to base the prototype of spirituality on ourselves. How boring and self-righteous! It’s what makes life exciting – to think that God’s not through we me yet! And the more we realize what more God has left to do in us, the less we might be worried about what more God has to do in others. Maybe that’s the sort of person he’s looking for – someone who graces others as much as she or he has been graced by God … to be as gracious with other’s faults as God has been with ours.



In the end, we will know what kind of people we are becoming by what actions we are performing. Is the nature of my behavior changing? Jesus said, “By their fruits you shall know them.” Is my fruit pleasing for those around me? That will go to show what tree I’ve become.