For me to assume the task of writing about “bearing wrongs patiently” is like asking the Incredible Hulk for anger-management counseling. I don’t bear wrongs patiently. Why should I? Those people are wrong! They need to be set right! I’m only doing my Christian duty of admonishing the sinner when I inform that jerk that he’s a jerk. I’m not indulging the sin of anger! I’m Jesus in the temple, taking a rope of cords to the money changers! Anybody who gets in my way is certainly not asking me to bear wrongs patiently or lovingly rebuking my unjust anger. He is a wishy-washy coward cringing in the face of real evil and is going all Neville Chamberlain when what is needed is righteous wrath!
You laugh. But that’s exactly how it feels when you are in the grip of vengefulness, and it’s why “bearing wrongs patiently” is so very hard to do. And don’t kid me. You’re no different—and with good reason.
The reason you are no different is that this work of mercy is not called “bear imagined wrongs patiently.” It’s talking about real wrongs, when the other guy really is a dirt bag who, very deliberately and with sociopathic malice aforethought, publicly slanders, yells at, and reduces to tears a good Christian widow with small children, all because of his envy of her and his own rankling (and richly deserved) sense of inferiority. It’s talking about when some bitter little twerp publicly attacks a holy old priest who has served God’s people for fifty years and lies about him with granite impenitence. It’s talking about that punk kid who keyed your car and got away before you could get his license. It’s talking about the cancer your kid sister got, despite years of healthy living. It’s talking about that person (you know who) who did that awful thing that one time and who not only has never apologized but still likes to remind you of how he embarrassed and hurt you. It’s talking about everything that has ever happened to you or those you love that was truly unjust, unfair, and wrong.
Now, I know, as you probably do, those people who really seem to be able to bear such things patiently––saints, both living and dead, who have encountered great tragedies or, what is sometimes harder to bear, small and persistent misfortunes and annoyances and yet come out the other side praising God and full of joy.
I’m not one of them (though I hope in God that this will eventually change). I can hardly deal with mere misfortunes, much less sins against me. Indeed, I find misfortune in some ways more difficult. After all, when humans hurt me it can at least be chalked up to free will and sins against a good God who didn’t want to see me harmed. But when life just sets me up for some random accidental misfortune, my mind almost instantly goes into full Job mode. My immediate temptation is to listen to the hissing voice that says, “God is not here, and besides, he is evil. He’s laughing at your cosmic pie in the face! He does this for his sport!”
When the wrong that I must bear patiently happens because God, in his Providence, let it happen, it feels like God is playing a cruel joke on me. So I become a seething cauldron of anger at God, and counsels to “bear it patiently” strike my sinful ears like the sick counsels of an abusive parent saying, “Smile! Daddy beats you because you cry so much.”
Not that my response to human sin is much better. Generally, my reaction to those who sin against me and against those I love is to grind my teeth and take walks or showers, during which I formulate the perfect riposte to that jerk. Recently I was fantasizing about throwing a drink in somebody’s face if I ever had the misfortune to meet him in person. On my weaker days I let fly with words calculated to hurt. On my stronger days I simply stew in my juices and have to work long and hard to really hand those people over to God and ask that they be forgiven. And even then I have my strategies for clinging to anger.
I’m enough of a Christian to know the extremely unpleasant teaching of our Lord:
For if you forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father also will forgive you; but if you do not forgive men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses. (Matthew 6:14–15)
I’m also a clever enough Christian that I can often fool myself (though not God, I am sorry to say) into believing that so long as I cherish hatred against a person when he or she wrongs somebody else and not me, then I am being a noble knight defending the honor of a friend and not somebody looking for an excuse for the sin of anger and a chance to kick butt. Like many others, I find it tempting to pretend that I am under no obligation to forgive people who sin against those I care about. I like to forget, as most people like to forget, that if the guy who robbed my friend’s house is on the receiving end of my anger for his act of theft against my friend, then I have likewise assumed my friend’s obligation to forgive him. As Jesus says:
And whenever you stand praying, forgive, if you have anything against any one; so that your Father also who is in heaven may forgive you your trespasses. (Mark 11:25, emphasis mine)
There are lots of other tricks we know for avoiding the terrible command to forgive “anything against any one.” One is to conflate forgiveness with impassiveness, as though forgiving somebody means doing nothing about the evil he or she commits. It is a standard straw-man argument that we Vengies like to tell ourselves just before we run off to commit the opposite evil of clinging to bitterness. It goes like this:
We tell ourselves (in the tone of voice we reserve for saying, “You just stirred my tea with your used Q-Tip”), “Merciful people—those gooey peace ’n justice types—are nothing but pacifist bed wetters who allow evil to go unchallenged. They are enablers of evil. Mercy for Osama bin Laden? Forgiveness for some molesting monster like Marcial Maciel Dellogado? Outrageous!”
It’s an inviting and easy thing to say. Murderers escape justice, and not a few abusive priests have managed to avoid the just punishment of the law because somebody thought it would be “unforgiving” to call the cops. We know that this is rubbish and feel the frustration of any morally sane person at passivity in the face of such evil. We know perfectly well that the task of the Christian in such a situation is to report the crime to the police lest other innocents suffer. Forgiveness, we shout in exasperation, does not equal passivity. But then we make the fatal error. We go on to imagine that suckling at the breast of fury and unforgiveness constitutes “doing something” about priest abuse, or terrorism, or whatever other evil.
The reality is that unforgiveness does nothing—nothing whatsoever— to defeat evil or establish justice. It does not get rid of bad clerics, help victims, stop terrorism, or bring a single person closer to God or to the communion of saints. The only actual, practical results of unforgiveness are that people are filled with bitterness, hold an ever weaker grip on their faith, “encourage” one another in small but growing ways to consider the possibility of schism and hatred of their country or the enemy, and nurture an ever deeper cynicism. St. James is right: “The anger of man does not work the righteousness of God” (James 1:20).
Some people play the “I don’t have to forgive until my enemy says ‘sorry’” game. If we buy that, we must realize we are directly disobeying Jesus Christ, who says, “Love your enemy,” not “Love your former enemy.” Moreover, we must learn that the punishment for refusing to forgive is the unforgiveness itself. For unforgiveness punishes us, not our enemy. When we refuse to forgive, we hand our happiness over—forever—to people who may not even know we exist, much less care. We chain ourselves to eternal misery and enslave ourselves, often to people long dead. It’s folly.
That’s why Jesus is right. Refusing (for “the sake of justice,” as we always tell ourselves) to extend forgiveness is one of the most deadly manifestations of pride in the world. It achieves nothing of what it promises (“Someday he’ll say he’s sorry, and you’ll be vindicated for all to see!”), and it ruins not just our life but typically the lives of friends and family and all those who must suffer our descent into unrequited rage.
Indeed, refusal to forgive trains us for nothing but misery. We think we’ll find peace when they say they’re sorry. But if we’ve trained ourselves to live in bitterness and cynicism, we’ll be stuck there no matter what “they” say (because who can ever believe them anyway?). So we hold on to our bitterness. Bottom line: Strength and vindication do not come from refusal to forgive. Nor do safety, security, or any other good things. Only slavery.
The command of Jesus is to extend forgiveness to enemies. It is not to pretend the sin never happened. It is not to pretend the impenitent person is penitent. It is not to be nonconfrontational, or sit there and take it, or see no evil. It is not to refuse to take practical action, up to and including jailing or, in a just war, even killing your enemy. But it is to forgive nonetheless. It is to wish their good; to refuse to let cynicism master faith, hope, and charity; to hope for the best while keeping a firm eye on reality. Refusal to extend forgiveness (extend, mind you: It is up to the sinner to repent and receive it) does only harm—and primarily to the person who refuses to extend forgiveness.
But still we look for strategies to withhold forgiveness. These include the notion that extending forgiveness means offering “cheap grace.” It’s the notion that if you don’t go on hating that husband who ditched you, if you don’t keep repeating to yourself every day the litany of wrongs your mother-in-law has done you, then your enemy will have gotten away with it! The crimes will go unpunished if you do not make yourself the Eternal Repository of Memory. The thought “I must not let them off the hook!” sums this up. In reality, what it means is that you are drinking poison and expecting the other person to die.
I sometimes run across people who chew their cud over sickening headlines about sins in some other part of the world and who rationalize this as somehow “bearing wrong patiently.” If they were doing penance, that could be helpful. But the sort of person I mean is often completely neglectful of prayer or fasting. Instead they simply load themselves with rage and worry about evils that do not involve them and that they cannot possibly affect (except with their neglected prayers for justice and mercy). They dwell in a fantasy world where they imagine that cursing at a computer screen or TV will somehow cure the world’s ills. But somebody swearing at her TV in Ohio over some sin committed in Boston or Iran does absolutely nothing except corrode her own soul. It will never change a sinner’s heart. It will just destroy her own.
In short, our forgiveness must be modeled on God, who “shows his love for us in that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8) and commands us to do the same. That is what “Love your enemies” means. It doesn’t mean “Love people who pay back your emotional bank account by saying they are sorry, thus assuaging your rage.” It means “Extend unconditional love and forgiveness to nasty people who despise you and want to harm you. Desire their happiness. Do not cultivate bitterness against them. Fight their evil actions, when necessary and possible, but do not wish them ill.”
Of which more tomorrow.
(For more information, see my book THE WORK OF MERCY: BEING THE HANDS AND HEART OF CHRIST (available here, signed by me, or in Kindle format here, or as an audiobook here).
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