Majesty

One day one of the disciples had the idea to ask Jesus to teach them how to pray. As an answer to this request, Jesus offered what is considered a model prayer which many Christians know by heart and which is the only part of the Bible that some Christians know at all. Among the examples of requests that we should make when praying to God, Jesus mentioned the following: “And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us” (Matt 6:12). If the Lord’s Prayer is the best known part of the Bible, this line of the prayer is no doubt the most appreciated because it tells us that God is a forgiving God and he wants us humans to learn to forgive just as God is forgiving all the time and everyone without any discrimination. If we could make humans as forgiving as God does, we would live in a world in which no one would hold anything against anyone else and we would live in the happiest world never clouded with the slightest negative feeling. Who cannot not understand such a simple truth and request?

If this is what Jesus wanted to say, he had a terrible problem with grammar, particularly syntax. If Jesus thought that God would forgive anyone by default, he should not have told us to say: “and forgive us . . .” To ask God to do something which God does even without being asked would be a waist of time and there would be no point in Jesus’ teaching us to ask something in prayer for the sake of asking. Moreover, if Jesus wanted to say that God is not the problem because he forgives all the time and the problem are we humans who have a hard time forgiving, he should not have taught us to ask God to forgive us the way humans forgive. If we humans are not forgiving, when we ask God to forgive the way we human do, we are actually asking God not to be as forgiving when he follows our example and therefore we ask him to be less tolerant. It does not make any sense for Jesus to teach us to ask God not to be as forgiving as he is. Why not pray instead: “And keep forgiving our trespasses the way you always do, and DO NOT ever forgive us the way we forgive one another.” If this is what Jesus wanted to say, using the language he used presupposes that Jesus had a terribly bad grammar.

If we assume that Jesus’ grammar was not bad and the language he used accurately convey what he wanted to say, he assumes that God does not forgive easily and it is we humans who are very lax when comes to forgiving, therefore we ask God to lower the standards and follow our human standards so that we can receive God’s forgiveness more easily because we humans have no standards in dealing with our sins or “trespasses.” If that is the case, it makes sense that Jesus taught us to make this request from God so that we can get off the hook for our sins more easily. Accordingly, our problem as humans is not that we are not forgiving enough, but that we make a mockery of sin and its forgiveness and as a result we make a mockery of God’s dealing with sin as well.

 
The idea that God is so forgiving that it is even offensive to think that God would ever hold anyone accountable for anything is offensive to many Christians and they even blame Christians do not forgive wrongdoers by default for failing God so that God would be angry with them because God has forgiven both them and the wrongdoers while they fail to raise to God’s standard. We come to a hilarious situation in which God is forgiving wrongdoers but becomes angry with the Christians who are victims because supposedly the Christians do not forgive them with a smile and thank the evil ones for hurting them. The questions which is a no brainer is: Why being a Christian anyway?
The idea that it would be wrong for God and a worshiper of God not to forgive is supposed to have been proved by Jesus himself when he prayed on the cross for the Roman soldiers who were crucifying him: “Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing” (Luke 23:34). Some reason that if Jesus could not hold any grudge even against those who were crucifying him, then he cannot possible hold anyone accountable for any actions, and so does God, since he came to show us what God is like. But again, a straight forward reading of Jesus’ statement shows that he was not praying for blind forgiveness or forgiveness for the sake of forgiveness; he prayed for those who were crucifying him because they did not know and did not care what they were doing as long as they were carrying orders. Although Jesus did pray for their forgiveness, it does not mean that God necessarily forgave them. Although God does take into account ignorance, God never considers ignorance as an excuse for doing evil and therefore we are taught by the Bible to pray even for the sins we commit and are not aware of them. In spite of the fact that Jesus prayed for those who killed him, as long as they themselves did not pray for themselves, particularly after Jesus came back to life, the Bible suggests that those who killed him will face him again and will be terrified, which means that until they dies they failed to obtain that forgiveness. But even if those who killed Jesus out of ignorance did get forgiveness, that does not mean that those who gave orders to the soldiers did not know what they were doing. Jesus did not even prayed for them because he should have said: “Father, forgive them AND those who gave them orders.” Judas did not believe that what he did was out of ignorance and since Jesus asked for forgiveness for them, he must consider himself forgiven, otherwise would not have killed himself.

I realize that at this point many Christians who are reading these lines are bursting with outrage just as old wine skins would burst to pieces when filled with new wine. The idea that sin is serious and forgiveness must be taken serious is very offensive to popular Christianity today. The world of Christianity which we have today in which there are no standards of dealing to our wrongdoings and making the “right” to be forgiven for anything we might do the most universal human right possible has not created that happy world without any cloud of negative feeling. That world would be realized if we all took sin seriously and understand that forgiveness must be accompanied by repentance in order not to do it again. This is God’s standard, and although Jesus did teach us to ask God to lower the standard to our level, that is not possible and the actual implication of the prayer is that we should raise our standard of dealing with our failure in our relationship with one another. In other words, we do not need to teach God how to forgive, but we need to learn that we need to ask for forgiveness when we do wrong to one another. It is only after we pray or ask for forgiveness from our fellow human beings we are in the position to even dear to ask God for forgiveness. If we have not bother even to seek forgiveness from humans, it is pointless to expect it from God. On another occasion, Jesus said that if you are on your way to bringing a sacrifice and remember that someone holds something against you, you better forget about God and the sacrifice and get things straight with our neighbor. Jesus’ teaching may not be popular, but makes a lot of sense.   



Aurel Ionica - Majesty.ro