(By Ian Smith) – If you know me at all, you’ll know one thing: I am an apologetic person. I apologize for everything and anything. Sometimes it’s a force of habit and sometimes it’s real and genuine. But this got me thinking about the nature of apologizing and what it means. Apologize comes from a Latin word, apologia. The word literally means to give defense for one’s position, giving reasons why you believe or act in a way. You may have heard this word before. The art of defending the truth of the Church is commonly called apologetics. But this got me thinking that we live in a culture of apology, and that isn’t a good thing. We practice the act of giving reasons for everything we do, of giving defense for ourselves. Countries do it all the time. We do things that are wrong and give reasons for it. People do it; we say I did this action because of some reason or another. God demonstrates another way for us to live, a better way, a way that is more real. That is the way of forgiveness.
I think that as Christians we must recognize that forgiveness stands at the center of everything we do. It takes precedence. Christ states in the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-7) that if we remember that our brother has something against us (not if we are angry with our brother) before we offer sacrifices to God, we must be reconciled beforehand. Prior to worshipping and sacrificing we ask forgiveness of each other. We are to be asking forgiveness always, from God and from each other. Of course the best example is Christ himself who asked God to forgive his executors, even though they didn’t ask, and instead of saying “hey, I did these things because I am the Messiah”, his only words were forgiveness. We also have the book of Leviticus, a book that God gives to teach us his ways, to teach us to be holy. When it comes to how God wanted the children of
Now we will ask, as I know I do, do we ask when we have no enemies? What about those I don’t know? Why would I ask them? This is where we may have missed the point; true we could do something wrong, but we could forget to do something we should’ve, we could not have even thought of it, etc. A wiser man than I said: “Forgiveness is so important because it makes us realize, maybe for only one minute, that our entire relationship with other people is wrong. It makes us look and see ourselves as children of God with each other. It makes us see that in a world that is so cold and inhumane.
There is a story told in a popular book about a group of Christians on a college campus. They wanted to do something on campus as an outreach, but couldn’t think of anything. But all of the sudden they came up with an idea: a confession booth. But instead of hearing people confess their sins, they confessed the sins of the Church to other people, and asked forgiveness. It was a real beautiful time on that campus.
Forgiveness is taking the culture around us that makes us cold and indifferent to anyone who isn’t us and saying, hey I don’t love you like I should. It’s saying hey I know I’m not right and acting right all the time. In that we are not only showing love and humility to each other, but we as a Church are being healed, being made new. Imagine how different things would be if instead of giving reasons for what we did, always defending ourselves, we just started asking for forgiveness. Imagine how different things would be if when countries did things wrong they asked for forgiveness instead of just giving reasons. It could go on forever, until we even forgive not only seven times but seventy times seven. It could change the way we are with people forever. Let’s ask God for some courage and follow the example of Christ.
Further reading:
Donald Miller, Blue Like Jazz.
Father Alexander Schmemann
“On forgiveness”
“Forgiveness Sunday”