Forgiveness week 2:

Listen to:

http://prairiehome.publicradio.org/programs/2006/07/01/scripts/mother.shtml

Study the scriptures on forgiveness and reflect on these questions:

Genesis 45 -- A brother’s forgiveness.  

Leviticus 25:8 and ff-- Return of fortunes to those who have lost it.  The year of jubliee.

Jonah 3-4 -- What if we don’t forgive?  Contrast Jonah’s resistance to God’s desire to forgive.  

Luke 15:11-32—Is forgiveness fair?

Luke 23:34 – Forgive them father for they know not what they do:  Are we forgiven even when we don’t know we sin?

Lord’s prayer – forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us:  Does that mean God’s forgiveness is contingent on our capacity to forgive?

From Martin Luther King:

How do we love our enemies?

First, we must develop and maintain the capacity to forgive.  He who is devoid of the power to forgive is devoid of the power to love. . . . the wrongdoer may request forgiveness.  He may come to himself, and, like the prodigal son, move up some dusty road, his heart palpitating with the desire for forgiveness.  But only the injured neighbor, the loving father back home, can really pour out the warm waters of forgiveness.  

Forgiveness does not mean ignoring what has been done or putting a false label on an evil act.  It means, rather, that the evil act no longer remains as a barrier to the relationship.  Forgiveness is a catalyst creating the atmosphere necessary for a fresh start and a new beginning.  It is the lifting of a burden or the cancelling of a debt.  . . Forgiveness means reconciliation, a coming together again.  The degree to which we are able to forgive is the degree to which we are able to love our enemies.

Second, we must recognize that the evil deed of the enemy –neighbor, the thing that hurts, never quite expresses all that he is.  . . This simply means that there is some good in the worst of us and some evil in the best of us.  

Third, we must not seek to defeat or humiliate . . . but to win his friendship and understanding.

Why should we love our enemies?

Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, added deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. . . so when Jesus says “love your enemies,” he is setting forth a profound and ultimately inescapable admonition.

Another reason why we must love our enemies is that hate scars the soul and distorts personality. . . Like an unchecked cancer, hate corrodes the personality and eats away its vital unity.  Hate destroys a man’s sense of values and his objectivity.  It causes him to describe the beautiful as ugly and the ugly as beautiful, and to confuse the true with false and false with true.

Love is the only thing capable of transforming an enemy to a friend.