The Imperative of Absolution

Our society fears forgiveness. Even worse, it denies its necessity.

The thought of approaching someone and confessing the wrongness of certain words that were said, or a simple, yet invaluable action we neglected can be terrifying in itself. We hate the idea that the perfection we attain to, the righteousness and virtue we thought we saw in ourselves, was not quite all we made it out to be.

Still, how audacious it seems, when another approaches you to apologize for some wrong, to reply with the simple, yet incredible and harrowing words, "I forgive you." We prefer to respond with tamer versions like "It's okay," or "Don't worry about it." The very premise of the phrase "I forgive you" acknowledges, instead of a mistake that can be brushed over, something deeply amiss that must be corrected. Etched into each articulated word of genuine forgiveness is the underlying admission: "You have not been righteous. There has been something very wrong in you that your actions betray."

This very assertion is set against the grain of our culture because it implies that there is a such thing as right and wrong. It is much more comforting to take Benjamin Franklin's outlook on life and confine virtue to a checklist of actions that we can attend to and that with enough hard work, we can create our own virtue. We often take up this view. It is written between the lines of self-help books, humanistic philosophy, New Age religion, many foundations of Postmodern society. "Give us time and we can handle our mistakes."

It is tempting, when we sin against another, to avoid approaching the area of forgiveness and to rather try to fix the mistake or cover it up by some opposite, better action in its place. They don't need to know as long as I make everything better. This will not do. How do we know we are fixing it properly if it hasn't been worked out with the other? Often, we may find ourselves covering over a festering wound with a crude, dirty bandage and calling it all better. Forgiveness, however, asserts the presence of right and wrong that exists in and above our society. We affirm in fact that we do not just err, but we sin, and that we cannot be our own savior. This is often humiliating, but necessary. It doesn't add up to try to make right what we never acknowledged as wrong. There must be something found wrong before anything can become right. Imagine a developing team returning to the site of the World Trade Center and beginning to start rebuilding, making it what it once was, without every acknowledging or dealing with the immense wreckage left by the terrorist attacks.

We see through Jesus' words that it is not enough to merely "work through it." We find instead his firm statement that undermined everything the Pharisees stood for: "Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. I have not come to call the righteous but sinners to repentance" (Luke 5:31). Only those who are broken and unrighteous, only those in whom there is something truly wrong, only in those areas in our lives that we acknowledge as wicked, can ever hope to experience God's grace. We must see the evil within us and accept his healing hand from without.

Bonhoeffer points to forgiveness as "the highest, most divine, most wonderful, and most mysterious and holiest of anything that is to be found among men." This is because in this action we can mutually "lift the burden of guilt." God has given us the power and the responsibility to work alongside him in recreating our world, in building it up from the ruins left by our destructive, self-seeking will. But to do so, we must call Sin what it is; we must call ourselves what we are and speak and accept the invaluable words:

"I forgive you."

We are Sinners all

What happens when philosophy meets experience? It looks like vague abstraction becoming not just reality, but pain or pleasure, nagging, unrelenting emotion, thought, doubt. When we know something in the truest sense, it is not an idea floating around in our heads, but visible reality, something we feel and can point to, something that inevitably changes our lives. I think one of the gravest and most real and important bridges between philosophy and our lives is Sin. I know, in the abstract, I am a Sinner (capital "S"), and our church programs growing up never seem to be able to tell us this enough. This is fine, and though not enough, it provides a helpful framework to understand when we see that we are sinners (lower-case "s"), when we see each individual sin. We see our lies and slander of a close friend, and though we know we deserve eternal death for it, we perceive it more real than ever in the distance and broken relationships that form from these sins. Some will know the blackness of sin from unwanted impregnation out of wedlock, or the anger and bitterness from harsh words.

In The Scarlet Letter, one of the main characters, an adulterer (I'll leave out the name in case you have yet to read it, though this will probably give it away anyway) captivates his audience because he confesses openly and passionately that he the worst of sinners (it seems every Puritan has a way of doing that), but he never tells them he is an adulterer. So long as he keeps sin in the abstract, he can never seek forgiveness, and Sin somehow becomes an admirable quality to his congregation when they see how righteous he appears to be, yet how readily he confesses to have some formless idea of Sin.

When "Sin" is shown to be "sin," it pulls out the ground beneath us, and we experience the cost of our depravity. Imagine the change in the idea and understanding of Sin in Adam and Eve when it turned from being forbidden the knowledge of good and evil into eviction from the perfect home in Eden, painful impregnation, changing their entire lifestyle to that of farmers, and death. Appreciate each nail beaten into Jesus' hands, the descent from Heaven, to earth, to Hell, the ultimate realization of sin in real, palpable form.

The Sinner's Prayer

I fell to my knees with eyes contrite
Looking to His Throne
And knowing myself a wicked man
I asked Him to atone:

“I know I am a Sinner, dark
Of the worst kind.
I speak the Heart’s native language,
And in this I die.

“The Wages of Sin is Death to All
For All have fallen short.
I am the Worst of Sinners all,
Condemned in His High Court.

“Yes, I am a Fallen Man
With Sin as Black as Evil
Faithless, fell, and needing Pardon,
His Beautiful Upheaval!”

And in response, my Truest Judge
Kicked me in the side
Till I spewed blood onto the floor
To show what I could not hide

In mirror red upon the floor.
I perceived two black, black eyes,
Two lies that claimed her as my own—
In mind together we’d lie.

I saw a rotting tongue confess
The slander of a friend
His face I twisted with my words
Struck it ‘til it bent.

I saw a scepter in my right hand
Held over those beneath—
With it I decreed their sin
And crushed them without relief.

Then black coins fell – those I had earned –
Thirty, all told, in count –
They struck me, bled me on the brow,
A ceaseless crimson fount.

Then knelt down my Truest Judge
And held me with his eyes –
His open hand became a fist,
His words, harrowing ice.

“A sinner, true, and here’s the cost—
I’ll strip you bare and cold
Beneath the Winter of Black Sin
And leave you there alone

“Except for my piercing eye,
A sword dividing soul,
Until you see this Wickedness
Is plague, is blood, is throe.

“Or you may turn out the light,
With polite chagrin
And kneel in your quiet room
In contrite, lofty Sin.”

And then I was alone, I felt,
Except for a cadaver,
Clothed in dirty, tattered rags,
To leave me never – never.

Hooray! another Christmastime rant…

It is once again that time of year when the majority—as we like to call them, though I think we all have some idea of what’s going on—gather around the tree and exchange mass-produced gifts while those of us who like to think we are more thoughtful, cynical, or broke (and some might assert Christian) gather into dark corners and complain about “Christmas commercialism” and further about how we will wait yet another year to change it. Nothing is ever new.
I’ve been brooding on it because I realize that more frustration and indifference is given for this tradition with each passing year. If I am going to rant, complain, and be cynical, I may as well do it in an organized manner and write it out so I have something more concrete to work with. Here are a few of my thoughts on our season, especially on the tradition of gift-giving:

Christmas is oftentimes a risk-free venture: We are emotionally detached from whatever we give to others because the gift-ness of it is mediated through cash instead of personal meaning. We put nothing of ourselves forward when we give gifts because for so many of our gifts we hold onto the receipts just in case. If it’s not what they want, no big deal, we can get something similar in its place. It seldom happens that we put forward something that is truly a valuable thought or part of ourselves that leaves us exposed so that the other person can see our care and accept that, or carelessly trample it.
One of the most thoughtful gifts I’ve seen given was (I’ll keep the names out) when one person secretly took his wife’s vinyl collection from her youth and converted them to CD’s so they could be listened to again more readily. He said he put at least twenty hours into this, I believe. When she received them she basically shrugged and said she only ever cared to listen to a couple of the CD’s he converted. He was crushed.
But do you see what was put forward? Instead of putting forward a few dollars that we’ll always have anyway, he put forward something that was invested in who she is, a thought about what matters to her that once put forward, could not be revoked. It was a permanent sacrifice that could not be replaced. He put forward time, which is invaluable beside any amount of money because it is permanent. Otherwise, after giving our gift, we can move on and have no true advances in our relationship with another. No trust is built or shaken. We often prefer to connect with our gifts than the people behind them.

What we put into Christmas has no inherent value to us: Again, because we always have money, and gifts are exchangeable, they have no value in-and-of themselves but only as they are useful to our entertainment until we find the need of something else. There is no personal value or meaning behind the gift beyond its mere use. More often than not, you could have received the Ocean’s 11 DVD this year, or last year, or five years ago. You can’t remember and you honestly don’t care because it’s just as entertaining each time you watch it no matter when you received it. It lacks what Walter Benjamin calls an aura, any value that attaches it to a particular moment in time and any value that is gained by its history over the years. Because we don’t put ourselves into it or any truly meaningful thought, when it is picked up again in another year, no memories are recalled of when it was received and how much it meant or why it was meaningful because it was just a part of a mass-produced train-of-thought that the giver happened to jump onto for a moment just to help them ride through another holiday season. It has no attachment to any point in time, any events, nor tells any story. It’s usually hard to look at a Starbucks gift certificate and to recall why you wanted it the particular year you got it, or what receiving it tells you about the person you got it from.
Maybe it will be said that I’m reading too much into this, but I believe this speaks volumes about our society. We seem to no longer value history or memory, only the pending moment. We care foremost about what keeps our attention for a moment, and if it is lost, it is no big matter because no huge part of ourselves is lost. When something of true value is gone, with it is lost is part of who you are, memories of who you were. Say someone wrote a poem for you as part of a gift, or made a craft of personal value. Reading the poem may tell you about certain goings-on at the time you first read it. It was a part of the giver, not another cookie from the cutter, at the time it was received. The craft takes on wear over time, and it actually matters if it breaks because it cannot be replaced. All of the memories of the times it has been used and dropped never leave the object, and it is silly to think to buy a look-alike to remind you of the memories of someone else’s craft you got rid of. We have an odd tendency to attribute meaning to ordinary objects: not “Aw, this was the watch you paid $105.99 for, plus shipping and handling” but “You gave this to me when we had that fight, and I threw this at you, and there’s the dent that looks just like that dent on your forehead.”

Hm… that was long-winded. And this is all to say nothing about the time when the ultimate meaning was attached to our world when God took on flesh. I don’t want to overuse the cliché of Jesus being the ultimate Christmas gift, but few of us end up crucified from our Holiday gift-giving, and though that may not be a necessary aspiration, it is worth our consideration. No other gift was so meaningfully or closely related to real people, and God did not attach a receipt to the baby and wait to apologize when the receiver was disappointed. “Hello there,” He might have said, “You are going to take this baby whether you like it or not. This is the Word, part of myself begotten to you. I am well pleased with Him. This is hope. You cannot return to sender, though you will probably thrash him around a bit.” And that we did…

I hope you enjoyed ranting with me for yet another holiday. I think we could stand to gather and do it again in another year when we reflect on how much hasn’t changed by next Christmas.

"Call me Ishmael"

This may help to clarify my blog name. This is the introduction and conclusion to a paper I wrote on Moby Dick in American Lit. class. Ishmael is the lone wanderer at sea that Herman Melville uses to raise all sorts of existential questions about humanity and the seeming inaccessibility of God. Not that I agree with Melville's conclusions, but he raises intriguing and even damning questions.
The Apostle Paul compares the lives of those who love Christ to wandering nomads living in tents with no true stability in this world. I've been talking with a friend who has been experiencing like never before the volatility of our lives, that we could vanish in an instant from some freak accident or sickness. Melville certainly disagrees with me here, but while we certainly have unstable identities as regards our life on earth, for those who are Sons of God we find we have an immutable clue as to who we are in relation to the whole scheme of the universe, even when what is right in front of us is not so clear and very well may escape us as vapors at any moment.

Melville and the Game
From the introduction of the beloved narrator in Moby-Dick, one possible interpretation the modern reader may anticipate is akin to Tom Stoppard’s two nameless players thrown into Shakespeare’s Hamlet in Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead: “Call me Ishmael. Some years ago—never mind how long precisely—having little or no money in my purse, and nothing in particular to interest me on shore…” (MD 18). Just as Stoppard maintains the question of who is Rosencrantz and who is Guildenstern throughout the play, the reader of Moby-Dick has no assurance that Ishmael is the narrator’s actual name, but its implications from Abraham’s story in Genesis of an uncovenanted, man-made existence are certainly fitting to the circumstances in which Ishmael “set about performing the part [he] did” (MD 22). This begs a question central to both works: who is each individual in the grandness of the universe? Do we have stable identities, or are our names merely provisional in a vast improvisational scheme of things? It is no surprise that such a wanderer as Ishmael considers “[taking] this whole universe for a vast practical joke,” (188) but if such a thought is true, or at least if any ultimate meaning is inaccessible or unalterable to human hands, it must be detrimental to each person’s sense of identity and their ability to relate to those around them. Melville expounds upon this consideration in great detail throughout Moby-Dick as he contrasts Ahab’s monomania that leaves him as the inaccessible stuff of legend to Ishmael’s pragmatism whereby he survives only to be swallowed into obscurity. Melville’s answer is that while discontent with mortal bonds, man remains irreconcilable to any higher existence...
Melville essentially leaves room for two major types of existence in a world where it is impossible to take the whole of the human experience on a grand scale and balance it with explanation open to comprehension. The Ahabs may forever shake their fists towards the heavens, yet their cries will ever echo off the prison wall of transience. The Ishmaels may continue their existence oblivious to the malign signs of wrath or indifference from above, all while unable to find security or stability in any meaningful human connection, though they forever wander the earth. In man’s fleeting existence, if one acknowledges these limitations, as Ishmael, and learns somehow to adapt to what he is given by fate, there is some vague hope that “in truth man can perform great deeds” (Durer 253), but in either case, humanity is incorrigibly bound to decay in body and from memory. To Melville, man is the fatherless orphan without a savior: “He sleeps with clenched hands; and wakes with his own bloody nails in his palms,” (169) crucified to his own mortality.