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Moseley Chimes
February 2008
Every week at church we ask liturgically for God’s forgiveness, and receive God’s absolution. Most accept God’s forgiveness, but do we really, in the core of our very beings, live in the light of that forgiveness?
Two main reasons might hinder us: first a limited conception of God’s love, and second our human inability to receive God’s loving forgiveness. The first frequently arises from understanding God as a distant Father figure, always disapproving, hard to please, cold and absent. Such a God cannot offer relational forgiveness of an all-loving, generous, and personal being that is Jesus. Secondly, perhaps our own upbringing and experiences of not receiving forgiveness from those around us makes receiving God’s forgiveness hard, especially if we endure judgmental attitudes from others, perhaps because we are different, or can’t meet standards set by our family, school, work, or friends.
Often the simple truths are hard to perceive, as is God’s all loving forgiveness to a suffering world. Forgiveness is the Church’s gift to our broken world, embracing people who need second chances, who long to be accepted by God and receive love in their lives. If someone comes to church in need, and they are judged rather than forgiven, we have hidden their right to God’s forgiveness and acceptance. Tragically people come initially to church open to God’s love, but frequently experience judgement and either leave or become themselves ‘judgers’ instead of ‘lovers’.
When God’s forgiveness is absent from Church then Christianity becomes a strict religion of dos and don’ts. A common negative perception of Church from the outside is that it is a judgmental place where hypocritical individuals come together to feel morally superior to their neighbours. If there is any basis for this, it is because we are not living God’s all-loving, all-embracing forgiveness. We can limit instead of extend God’s Love and also our capacity to give and receive love from each other.
This paralysis actually runs deeper than we like to admit, and explains why Christianity often doesn’t connect with today’s world. If we don’t believe in God’s forgiveness, then our lives are spent trying to becoming self-sufficient from God. Therefore, instead of creating an atmosphere welcoming the stranger, we are more concerned about our own image. Instead of embracing those in need, we show we are closer to God than they are. We become tragic parodies of love, needy individuals unable to listen to others. Questions play over and over again in our minds. Will we be accepted for who we are? Will people, when they find out about our private thoughts and actions, condemn and judge us as un-Christian? Surely we need to judge others first, before they judge me? The truth is, if we haven’t felt God’s forgiveness, we can’t extend it to others.
When this attitude becomes fixed, it becomes a psychological complex, leading to many forms of immature behaviours. One is to try to blame others as quickly as possible in order to prevent our own inadequacies becoming public, another is to centre on ourselves and depreciate the good things others do. But, this attitude is profoundly un-Christian, for it stems from an inability to receive God’s forgiveness and can lead to an inner hatred of the good or God’s image in others.
Ultimately, it becomes the rejection of the need for God’s forgiveness by becoming like God, above all blame. Tragically, when we slip into this cycle of thinking then rather than advancing our faith, we become figures of fun whom everyone wants to avoid. Nevertheless, there is a way out, and that is to truly accept God’s forgiveness, which he has offered to all of us whatever our life situations. Once we have accepted that we can extend God’s loving kingdom to the whole world, and the world will see the Church as it should be, a place open to receive God’s loving forgiveness.