On 6th Avenue Manhattan there is a very unusual clock. Unlike most clocks it's neither round nor square, but rather rectangular. It needs to be a long rectuangular clock to accommodate the digits which tell, not the time, but the current state of the debt owed by the US Government - all $14 trillion dollars of it. The sum is mind boggling. And of course the debt dosen't remain static. Every minute the debt interest owed on it goes up, and up. Assuming reading this blog post will take you about 15 minutes, the US national debt will have gone up, in that short space of time, by around $40 million. What if someone could show the US Treasury how to eradicate the debt in a stroke? What a relief it would be to zero the clock.
Debt in some form or another is an issue for us all. The average UK personal debt is around £8,000.00 excluding mortgages. When you're in someone's debt you have transferred some of your freedom over to them - they have a hold over you, some kind of leverage
Debt is a powerful force, and a powerful image. It was one Jesus made significant use of. In his model prayer as recorded in Matthew's Gospel (chapter 6) he puts it at the heart of our communication with the Father. 'Forgive us our debts' he taught us to pray 'as we forgive those indebted to us.' In Chapter 18 of the same Gospel we have the record of one of his parables which develops the same theme. A servant - let's call him Kit - owes a phenomenal debt he can't repay and begs his master, the king no less, not to sell him and his family into slavery as a way of paying it off. His master shows astonishing mercy by cancelling the debt completely.
Sadly, Kit's gratitude does not go any further than his own personal benefit. Having been freed from his own debt, he immediately seeks out a fellow servant - call him Vas - who owes by comparison, a small sum. Kit grabs the man by the throat and demands his money back "Pay me what you owe!". Ignoring pleas for mercy, Kit has Vas arrested an imprisoned until the debt is repaid.
The story goes from bad to worse. The king hears about Kit's behaviour and is appalled by his lack of mercy. Kit ends up in jail in the company of torturers. Vas ends up in prison. The king is disappointed.
Jesus told this parable to illustrate the difference between forgiveness and unforgiveness. When someone wrongs us, they are in our debt. If we forgive them and cancel the debt we are, in a sense, morally out of pocket. It can be a painful decision, but one that Jesus tells us in no uncetain terms that he expects us to make.
Put simply, forgiveness involves cancelling the debt. Unforgiveness involves demanding the debt be repaid.
The amount of moral debt we are in to God is in its own way even more colossal than the entire debt owed by the US Government to its national and international creditors. It's simply unpayable, and goes up so fast by the second that we could never hope to clear it. Happily, one of the results of the cross is that by choosing to accept Jesus's verdict on our lives - that we are hopelessly in debt to God - and his offer of forgiveness, our debt is cancelled. The clock goes to zero. And how ever much further moral debt we run up before the Father, his fogiveness is more than enough to cover it. In the experience of such unfathomable mercy he expects us to extend the same attitude and cancel the debt of others.
That's not always easy. Some of the damage people do to us in life is profound, and takes time to work through. With some people I have to regularly make the decision to set their clock to zero.
Rob Bell in one of his Nooma vids encapsulates the essence of a sermon I think we must have both heard on this subject. Google 'Nooma 7 Luggage' and take 10 minutes out of your life to watch it. It's powerful stuff. I did a post in February last year summarising the same talk which I've reproduced below for convenience.
If you're reading this and someone comes to mind - someone you know is morally in your debt - have a think about how you might go about cancelling it. There's some great practical wisdom in the video and in the text below. And if someone won't cancel a debt they feel you owe them - a situation I can relate to - there's some really practical wisdom that will help you navigate that particular tricky stretch of water.
I've downloaded an ap on my Ipad - World Debt Clock - which gives me the current levels of national and personal debt in many of the world's leading economies. It reminds me of the astronomical mess I was in before Jesus offered to clear my slate. It puts a whole new perspective on the notion of keeping short accounts.
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I recently heard a good message on forgiveness - wise, challenging, and immensely practical. Main points.
Forgiveness is not forgetting. Some people are toxic, divisive, and dangerous. You can forgive and still set boundaries to protect yourself from repeated abuse. You can forgive and get a restraining order.
Forgiveness is not reconciliation. You can forgive, but the relationship may not be restored. Restoration is the objective and the ideal, but realistically it won't always happen.
Forgiveness is not necessarily protecting someone from the consequences of their actions. Reaping the consequences may be what's needed for them to change their ways.
Forgiveness is personal. You can't forgive an institution. You can only be free from the hurt and anger of your own experience by naming and forgiving the person and act that caused you the problem in the first place.
Forgiveness is a process. You may have years of patterns and habits to forgive. If today you stop plotting someone's mutilation and torture, that's progress. If tomorrow you fantasize less about their demise, that's a further step in the right direction. You sometime have to work through layers of pain, and phases of forgiveness.
Forgiveness, then, is dropping the desire for revenge. If you read the story of Samson in Judges 15 you see the effects of the desire for revenge. Samson reckons that because he's been badly treated himself (or feels he has) then that gives him the license to get his own back. Except in his case, he gets his own back with plenty of interest. The result is escalation.
Revenge always inflames. It creates an inflated ego which says "..now I have the right to do to them what they did to me." Revenge is, you might say, relational 'Pong' (the electronic game cavemen played). "They called into question my integrity? I'll tell you stuff about them." Or "I'll teach you not to mess with me." There is also a passive revenge which celebrates when our enemies suffer. When we are unable to pray for our persecutors, we are essentially just waiting for them to be punished.
Forgiveness begins when you drop the jawbone.
From 1Peter 2:23 we see that Jesus so trusted in God's justice that he was able to give up a desire for revenge. Revenge, then, is a failure to trust yourself to God's justice. You want matters to be 'put right' in your way and your time. Paul's advice is to take a longer-term view, based on faith - do not repay evil for evil, leave room for God's proper ordering of the world in God's time. So forgiveness often starts with surrendering the right to revenge and trusting fundamentally in God's justice.
Finally, forgiveness is setting someone free.
Luke 23:34. On the cross, one of the last things Jesus does is think about forgiveness. To follow that example, I make this decision. The pain caused by injustice done to me, stops right here with me. Christ absorbed the pain so that it wouldn't stay in circulation. It dies here. Forgiveness is refusing to make 'them' pay for what they did. Not lashing out at someone when that's all you want to do is agony. It's a form of suffering. But by doing this you are absorbing the debt, taking its cost on yourself, rather than taking it out on the other person. It hurts terribly. Many would say that it feels like a kind of death.
But it's a death that leads to resurrection!
If I accept the pain, absorb it, end it here, this is Christ's pattern of forgiveness, and one that leads to resurrection.
The cross transforms pain from a destructive impulse to a transforming power. In accepting the cross Jesus not only absorbed the pain of unjust suffering, he opened a channel for the flow of God's redeeming love. We have the same choice.
Great article Geoff — thanks. Cancelled debt through forgiveness is at the heart of the Christian good news. Of concern to me is the oft-encountered notion that Jesus paid the debt owed to God, as if a third party could somehow repay the moral debt of another. Any thoughts?
Posted by: John | July 21, 2011 at 01:53 PM