Kargador at Dawn

Kargador at Dawn
Work in the Vineyard

Tuesday, March 02, 2010

How can forgiveness help me to see in a new way?

How can forgiveness help me to see in a new way?

As long as you can deal with evil by some other means than forgiveness, you will never experience the real meaning of evil and sin. You will keep projecting it over there, fearing it over there and attacking it over there, instead of “gazing” on it within yourself and “weeping” over it within all of us (see Zechariah 12:10).

The longer you gaze, the more you will see your own complicity in and profit from the sin of others, even if it is the satisfaction of feeling you are on higher moral ground than other people.

Forgiveness is probably the only human action that demands three new “seeings” at the same time:

I must see God in the other who has offended me,
I must access God in myself to forgive major grievances, and
I must meet God in a very new way that is larger than as an enforcer or a judge.

(Adapted from Richard Rohr, OFM. Things Hidden: Scripture as Spirituality, p. 194)

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