Rod Dreher believes that “A time of painful testing, even persecution, is coming” upon Christians living in the U.S. Dreher, who is a senior editor of The American Conservative and the author of The Benedict Option and Live Not by Lies, claims that “A progressive – and profoundly anti-Christian militancy – is steadily overtaking society.”
Dreher identifies the persecutors as the liberal elite. They are the “social justice warriors,” and the “woke” crowd. They despise traditional Christian morality as hateful and bigoted.
Some traditional Christians think that Dreher has overplayed his hand, and I agree. His comparisons between Soviet era repression and “woke” culture activism have generated fear and hostility toward the very people Christians are to win for Christ. Persecution complexes are hardly conducive to evangelism.
The absence of cultural and political power does not equal persecution. It may, however, prepare the way for it. Once people have been villainized, as traditional Christians have been over their beliefs about sexual morality, it becomes easier to treat them unjustly. Today, if someone says that gay marriage is outside God’s will – even though President Obama said something like this in 2008 – they qualify as a hatemonger.
This cultural powerlessness-demonization-injustice sequence is old and familiar. In the middle of the first century, St. Paul came to Ephesus (a thriving port city along what is now Turkey’s central coast) and had considerable success in evangelizing people and instructing them in the way of Christ. But, as anyone familiar with the New Testament Book of Acts might expect, there was a backlash.
To make sense of what happened, some background is helpful. Ephesus was a principal center of Artemis worship in the eastern Mediterranean. A magnificent temple, one of the seven wonders of the ancient world, had been built for the goddess where, as legend had it, her image had fallen from the sky. The temple was one of the Mediterranean’s great tourist attractions.
It was also one of the Mediteraanean’s great money-making enterprises. The production of miniature shrines to Artemis was a booming business. People who purchased a shrine were assured that they could worship the goddess in their own country just as truly as they did in her great temple.
The local economy, and the lifestyle it made possible, depended on the tourism that Artemis worship generated. So, when Paul came on the scene, saying things like, “we should not think that the divine being is like gold or silver or stone – an image made by human design and skill,” he was viewed as a threat.
The text of Acts is instructive here. An influencer named Demetrius called a meeting of local craftsmen and “workers in related fields.” Some of these were probably competitors, but you would never know this from Demetrius’ skillful oratory. He addresses them as comrades who face a common threat. With his use of first person plurals, he sets up an us-against-them scenario.
He then deftly conveys the idea that the Christians pose a threat to their economic security. His, “You know, my friends, that we receive a good income from this business,” is a subtle reminder of what his hearers stand to lose.
He applies pressure by stating – perhaps, overstating – Paul’s success. He has “convinced and led astray large numbers of people here in Ephesus and in practically the whole province of Asia.” He warns of the “danger that … our trade will lose its good name.”
He rounds off his argument with a religious note: “The great goddess Artemis will be discredited … robbed of her divine majesty.” With worries about economic security in place, and religious devotion as justification, Demetrius incites a riot that imperils Christians and turns Ephesus upside down.
Could something similar happen here? Possibly. The way has been paved. What ought Christians do? They ought to pull together across denominational lines, love and support each other, and bear testimony to God’s love before the people who oppose them.
But they must not adopt their opponent’s tactics. Demonizing enemies and stirring up hostility is not the way of Jesus. St. Paul taught Christians, “Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.” Evil can be overcome in no other way.
This class is about how Christians can obey Jesus and stop judging. Instead of placing themselves above of others, they can take a position of humility and ask. Asking is the rule of the kingdom.
Understanding why you are tempted can help you overcome chronic, difficult temptations. The reason behind temptation may not be something you’ve ever thought about. This message helps us understand why we are tempted and what it means for us to pray, “Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.
Approx. 27 minutes. (Text below.)
Andrew Wilson was on a commercial flight into Queenstown when his plane shuddered and dropped 50 feet almost instantly, then did it again and, I’m not sure, possibly a third time. The cabin filled with screams and prayers to God – a God in whom many of the passengers did not believe.
Andrew was fascinated by those prayers. He said the most common petitions were of the “Deliver us from evil” variety. “Help!” “Save us!” and “Oh, God, please don’t let me die!”
The other kind he heard, though less frequently, was of the “Forgive us our sins” variety. “I’m sorry” and “God, forgive me.” So, apparently after crying out for rescue, people prepared to meet their Maker.
It occurred to Andrew that when people are not in a crisis, they usually stick to the “daily bread” variety of requests: “God, please give me this job.” “Fix my marriage.” “Keep my children safe.” “Provide for my family.” So, people pray for deliverance first, then forgiveness, and then physical provision. In other words, “we pray the Lord’s Prayer backwards … we say help, then sorry, then please do X for me, and then please do Y for others.”
There is nothing wrong with any of these prayers, but we won’t pray them well when we pray them backwards. There is a reason the prayer starts with, “Our Father in heaven, hallowed be thy name.” Only when we get that right, will we get the other requests right.[1]
Today we have arrived at the final request of the Lord’s Prayer. “Lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil.”
When you are led into temptation, you are in a tight spot. Why anyone would choose to live there (and many do), I don’t know. It is a place of constant pressure. There is no room to move. But God can rescue us. He can deliver us into a large place where there is room to breathe, relax, and be restored. That is what God did for the psalmist: “He brought me out into a spacious place; he rescued me because he delighted in me.” (Psalm 18:19).
That large place is the presence of God. With him, we have room to breathe. In his presence, temptation does not bother us. This is why we must learn, as David did, “to set the Lord always before me.” It is because he is right here – at my right hand – and not because of my own strength or piety, that temptation will not move me. When we are not in God’s presence, temptation will sweep our feet out from under us, cause us to fall, and we’ll hurt ourselves and others.
Let’s say a man falls into temptation: He lusts. Then he falls even further and commits adultery. He hurts himself terribly. It changes him, makes him a different, and weaker, man. But his fall not only injures him; it also injures his spouse – even if she never finds out about it. There will be a change in his relationship with her – to think otherwise is a diabolical deceit. And if she finds out, her trust will be broken, their children will be wounded. Their respect for their father – so important to their wholeness in this world and their life in Christ – will be devastated. Not only does he hurt himself and his family; he also hurts the woman with whom he is involved (and she hurts him).
God did not tell us to do some things and avoid others on a whim. His directions to us are not random. They are based on our design and are for our – and everyone’s – good. You might not believe that; I understand. You might rather think that what you do is nobody’s business but your own. If you want to drink to excess or watch porn all night or enter the hookup culture or get rid of the baby whose birth might result, it doesn’t affect anyone else!
But that is nonsense. Our lives are inextricably intertwined. We cannot violate God’s will and ways without hurting people – and deep down, we know it.
So, Jesus tells us to pray, “Lead us not into temptation.” Now, why would we need to pray that? Would God “lead us into temptation”? Not according to James, who wrote : “When tempted, no one should say, “God is tempting me.” For God cannot be tempted by evil, nor does he tempt anyone…” (James 1:13). But if God does not tempt us, why would Jesus instruct us to pray this?
The confusion here is largely linguistic and comes from two sources. The first is the unfamiliar syntax of the phase, “Lead us not…” The Greek scholar A. T. Robertson calls it a “permissive imperative” and says that the idea is, “Do not let us be led into temptation.” “Lead us not…” means, “Do not let us be led.” We will be so led apart from God’s providential and timely intervention.
The second thing that makes this confusing is the word translated, “temptation.” The primary idea of the Greek word is a test or trial. When we read, “temptation,” we immediately think of an enticement to do something we know is wrong. But reading the word “test” does not evoke that at all. This one word carries both meanings and, though they intersect (as we will see momentarily), it is important to understand that God never entices us to do evil. He is not out to entrap us in some sin and then punish us for it. That is completely contrary to his character.
Jesus knows that trials are going to come; they “must come,” he says (Matthew 18:7). Aware of that, he instructs us to say to God, “Don’t let us be led into the trial.” I expect that God has answered that prayer on thousands of occasions just for the people in this room. Through his provident grace, we have escaped trials for which we were unprepared, trials that may have undone us. We’ve all faced trials, some extraordinarily difficult, but we’ve all escaped trials too – not because of our ingenuity but because of God’s goodness.
This is the sixth request in the Lord’s prayer. The first was, “Hallowed be thy name,” which recognizes God’s greatness. The last is, “Lead us not into temptation,” which recognizes our weakness. This request is made by people who “do not think more highly of themselves than they ought” (Romans 12:3). People who do “think more highly of themselves than they ought” don’t bother praying this prayer.
The Apostles James and John, the Sons of Thunder, seem to have thought more highly of themselves than they ought. They came to Jesus requesting the top two positions in his coming kingdom. When he asked if they were capable of going through the trials that would come – essentially, “Do you think you’ve got what it takes?” – they answered, “Absolutely!”
Their “Bring it on!” attitude was nothing but chutzpah. When the trial came, they (like everyone else) deserted Jesus – just as he said they would. They needed more confidence in Jesus and, until they had that, less confidence in themselves.
C. S. Lewis told us that “No man knows how bad he is till he has tried very hard to be good. A silly idea is current that good people do not know what temptation means.
“This is an obvious lie. Only those who try to resist temptation know how strong it is. After all,” – and he said this in the middle of the Second World War – “you find out the strength of the German army by fighting it, not by giving in. A man who gives in to temptation after five minutes simply does not know what it would have been like an hour later.
“That is why bad people, in one sense, know very little about badness. They have lived a sheltered life by always giving in. We never find out the strength of … evil – until we try to fight it.”[2]
When it comes to standing against temptation, don’t give yourself more credit than you’re due. Dallas Willard was right: “The excessive confidence people have in their own faith—usually it is when they are not suffering, of course—simply makes the danger worse.”
I have a friend who was always saying, “I trust my faith.” But that was a mistake. Trust your faith, and your faith will let you down. Trust your God, and he will never let you down.
So, God does not tempt his children to do evil. In fact, he often protects them from trials that would otherwise defeat them – more often than any of us know. But when a trial will serve them, when it will make them more than they could otherwise be for all eternity, he will allow it. Jesus is not telling us to pray: “Don’t ever let me be tried. Don’t let me feel bad or afraid or guilty. I am satisfied to stay the way I am for all eternity.” Instead, we ask to be spared the trial that might undo us, especially the final trial that will occur at the judgment of the wicked.
Please understand that praying, “Lead us not into temptation,” is not just asking for escape from pain, and failure, and shame, though it certainly includes that. Not everything that tries us is unwanted. Money, for example, has put many a man and woman to the test, which is something Jesus made abundantly clear.[3] To pray, “Lead us not into temptation,” can also be a request to escape the success that would steal our hearts from God, the reputation that would make us proud, and the ease that would make us shallow. In other words, when we make this request, we may be asking God to keep us from the very things the rest of the world wants most! Do we really want to pray the Lord’s Prayer?
Every trial – whether the trial of a terminal illness or the trial of a promotion at work, the trial of poverty or the trial of wealth – can become a prompt to trust God or an enticement to turn away from him. This becomes clear when we understand the real point of temptation (and most of us do not).
We assume the devil gets off on making people do bad things – get drunk, have elicit sex, lie, steal, lust. But the devil doesn’t care about those things – they are just a means to an end – nor does he care about us. Understanding this is hugely helpful.
So, ask yourself: to what end does the devil tempt you? If you have sex with someone who is not your spouse, or go through the agony of getting caught, is he satisfied? No. Those things are just a means to an end.
That end, according to James 1:13 is to “drag you away” by powerful, personal desires or, “lure you away” by high and noble ones—the operative word being “away.” Away from what? Ask rather: “Away from whom?” The whole purpose of the temptation is to get you away from God who bought you for himself at great price.
The bait – sex, success, reputation, etc. – means little to our enemy. He changes baits more often than a tournament bass fisherman. He cares nothing about whether you commit adultery, or win the lottery, puff your chest out in self-righteousness, or beat your kid. It’s all the same to him as long as you move away from God. And if you have moved away from God, you are right where he wants you.
In the end, you – though he is happy to destroy you – are nothing to the devil but a means to an end. The devil’s principal target in every temptation, the person he longs to hurt – understand this – is God. Temptations are scams, we are the dupes, but God is the target the devil wants to defraud. When we give into temptation, we that is what is really happening.
I said that the baits mean little to the evil one, but that does not mean they’re not effective or even sophisticated. The tempter is so good at what he does that you may find yourself trying to get up even before you realize you’ve fallen down. Satan does not send out a notice letting you know that you’ve been chosen for his latest scam.
In his book, Tempted and Tried, Russell More refers to the work of Temple Grandin, the extraordinary scientist and animal behaviorist. Years ago, Grandin, who is a strong proponent of the humane treatment of livestock, developed a painless process for cows to be slaughtered.
Workers, Grandin said, should never yell at the cows, and they should never use cattle prods, which she said are completely unnecessary and even counterproductive. If the cows are simply kept contented and comfortable, they’ll go wherever they’re led. Grandin argued that the cows should never be surprised, and nothing should be done to unnerve them. They should not be hurt in any way … until their throats are cut.
Grandin designed a curving path for stockyards. It was so gentle that the cows “don’t even notice when their hooves are no longer touching the ground. A conveyor belt slightly lifts them gently upward, and then” … a blunt instrument strikes them right between the eyes, rendering them unconscious. They go from being livestock to being T-Bones and sirloins, and “are never aware enough to be alarmed by any of it.” Dr. Grandin labeled her invention, “the stairway to heaven.”
This is Russell More’s commentary: “Forces are afoot right now, negotiating how to get you fat enough for consumption and how to get you calmly and without struggle to the cosmic slaughterhouse floor. The easiest life for you will be one in which you don’t question these things, a life in which you simply do what seems natural …. You might feel as though your life situation is like progressing up a stairway so perfect it’s as though it was designed just for you. And it is. In many ways the more tranquil you feel, the more endangered you are.”[4]
We are not smart enough to see the temptation coming that will strike us right between the eyes. So, let us pray: “Lead us not into temptation.” Now, look at the second part of this request: “But deliver us from evil” or, “the evil one.” The noun could be neuter (in which case it would be “evil”) or masculine (in which case it would be “the evil one”). We cannot be certain as to which Jesus intended—and we don’t need to be. Where the evil one is, there is evil; where there is evil, there is the evil one.
To be delivered is to be rescued, to be saved. Rescued from being a dupe, a tool of evil. Rescued from the consequences of sin (there are consequences), and, most importantly, from being separated from God. To be separated from God is to be separated from your only source of life and your only hope of joy. It is to be separated from meaningfulness and delivered to futility. It is to be cut off from your advocate on the Day of Judgment. No wonder we pray, “Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.”
But it is hypocritical to pray, “Lead us not into temptation,” when we are unwilling to be led in the other direction. In Bible college I knew a guy who, when a pretty girl walked by, would say: “Get thee behind me, Satan … You’re blocking my view.” Some people pray, “Lead us not into temptation,” with that same attitude.
A study from a few years ago tracked the top temptations Americans admit they face. (Interestingly, they admit what doesn’t shame them but are quiet about what does.) People surveyed said they struggled either “often” or “sometimes” with: worry or anxiety—60 percent; procrastination—60 percent; eating too much—55 percent; spending too much time on media—44 percent; being lazy—41 percent; spending more money than they could afford—35 percent; gossiping about others—26 percent; being jealous—24 percent; viewing pornography—18 percent; abusing alcohol or drugs—11 percent.
When those same people were asked if they had tried to avoid giving in to temptation, six out of 10 said no. [5] Jesus wants us to pray, “Lead us not into temptation,” not “Help me not to sin when I’m already there.” We will never succeed if we just want to avoid sin; we must also want to avoid temptation. To do so is a major step forward in the Christian life.
If it is a step you are choosing to take, I invite you to pray this great prayer with me now:
Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed by thy name, thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil. For thine is the kingdom, and the glory, and the power forever. Amen.
[1] Andrew Wilson, “Backwards Prayers,” CT magazine (Jan/Feb, 2016), p. 30.
[2] Source: C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, book 3, chapter 11; Cited in Sermonnotes.com.
Thirty years ago, Bill Clinton stated that “Abortion should be safe, legal, and rare.” The issue of its legality is still up in the air, but abortion has never been safe – especially for the developing fetus – and no one in our day can call it rare.
The Guttmacher Institute reported that in 2020 the percentage of pregnancies ending in abortion jumped to almost one in five. So, when Congresswoman Suzanne Bonamici, who belongs to Mr. Clinton’s party, intones, “We must, we absolutely must, protect the right to safe, legal abortion,” it’s worth noting that the word “rare” has been dropped from the mantra.
Many of us think that abortion should be rare. In the few cases where the mother’s life can only be saved by aborting the fetus – a situation former Attorney General C. Everett Koop stated he had never seen – then, yes, save the mother’s life by all means. But how to fulfill Bill Clinton’s vision of making abortion rare is complicated.
One way, of course, is to outlaw it. The year before the Roe v. Wade ruling, the abortion rate was 23 percent lower than the year after. But cutting abortions by a quarter will not make it rare. Using current CDC estimates, that would still mean nearly 700,000 abortions annually in the U.S. So, while I support laws to protect the human being in utero, it is clear that more will need to be done – much more.
To understand why this is so, we must learn to see abortion as one thread in a dense fabric that is woven from attitudes and beliefs regarding the nature of the good life. People like Representative Bonamici think that abortion must be safe, legal, and readily available not because they are bad people, as abortion opponents sometimes claim, but because of what they believe—their worldview.
One of the threads that make up the dense fabric of beliefs into which abortion is woven is people’s understanding of sex – it’s place and purpose in human life. Society’s views of sex have varied in different eras, from Chaucer’s late medieval bawdy to Victorian prudishness to the sexual freedom movement of the late 20th century.
Some people view sex as a personal right (think of the women’s liberation movement of the sixties and seventies). Others see it as an amusement or a stress-relieving diversion (today’s hook-up culture). But there are also those who regard sex as God’s good and purposeful gift to humanity for expressing love and commitment, experiencing pleasure, affirmation, and acceptance, and generating new human life within a stable environment of love.
Those who hold this latter view, which is the Christian view (too) briefly stated, will think that abortion should be exceedingly rare. Those who hold the former views will not. Which view we hold will depend on our personal/spiritual formation. Everyone is formed through a learning relationship with teachers. Whether their teacher is Jesus or popular culture will make a tremendous difference.
Another thread in that worldview fabric is a person’s view of what constitutes success. If success is what our culture pictures it to be – a fine house, new car, plenty of time off, social influence, and endless options to pursue – bringing children into the world will at best be deemed an inconvenience and at worst a disaster. Those who buy into society’s version of success will consider abortion a necessary evil. Once again, this is the result of how we are formed.
Yet another thread in the fabric that holds abortion in place is the belief that reputation trumps behavior. Young professionals fear the mockery of their friends. Teenagers think it better to abort their child than abort their reputation—or the reputation of their parents. One’s regard for reputation is also the product of spiritual formation.
Passing laws to protect human beings still in utero is wise and humane, but we who consider abortion inhumane must not limit our efforts to the ballot box, which will not by itself make abortions rare. For that to happen, there must be a revolutionary change of mind and heart, which can only happen through investment in others, particularly investment in their spiritual formation.
Today, we’re looking at Jesus instructions that we should not judge/condemn other people. We’ll look at why we are so prone to disobeying Jesus in this regard and we’ll see what it was that he had in mind – it may not be what you think!
Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us our daily bread and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.
I want to bring Jesus before your minds: Jesus, mocked and humiliated, tortured and beaten. He is paraded through city streets to Golgotha, where soldiers strip him naked, and nail his hands and feet to a cross. When the final nail is pounded, they raise the cross perpendicular to the earth, maneuver it expertly, and drop it with a thud into the hole prepared for it.
While they are doing this (stripping him naked, forcing him down onto the cross, driving the large spikes into his hands and feet) – while they are killing him – they hear him pray: “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing” (Luke 23:34).
We are often told that we should forgive because, if we don’t, our resentment will eat us alive; it will make us miserable. But Jesus did not forgive because he was worried about being miserable. He was not trying to rid himself of negative feelings. He extended forgiveness because those men were in desperate need of it. He forgave them because he is “the image of the invisible God,” and forgiveness is what that God does.
It is also what his people do. It is one of their chief identifying marks. They forgive people who do not deserve to be forgiven. Even though people hurt them, they genuinely desire what is best for them and, to the degree it is in their power, they give it.
Forgiveness is an identifying mark of God’s people, but it is not branded on them like cattle; it is not stamped on them in a moment. The mark grows clearer as they spend time with Jesus and learn from him. It is also why the people who get closest to Jesus are the ones who act most like him. That is why people whose Christianity is impersonal and transactional – doctrine-focused rather than Christ-centered – never seem to be able to forgive. It is hard to overstate how relational and personal the Christian life is.
Though God is ever the initiator in that relationship, it is not one-sided. It flows back and forth like the point/counterpoint in a Bach concerto. God acts: that is point. We respond: that is counterpoint. And that becomes the soundtrack of our life. Point: “He first loved us.” Counterpoint: “We love him” (1 John 4:19) Point: “He laid down his life for us.” Counterpoint: “We ought to lay down our lives for our brothers” (1 John 3:16). Point: “The mercies of God.” Counterpoint: “Present your bodies as living sacrifices” (Romans 12:1). Point: “Forgive us our debts.” Counterpoint: “As we forgive our debtors” (Matthew 6:12).
When point is present without counterpoint – God acts but we don’t – the soundtrack of our lives loses its power. Our talk about God rings hollow. Our children and our friends tune out.
We are thinking about the Lord’s Prayer and particularly about the request, “Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.” Can you hear the point/ counterpoint in that? It is always present when forgiveness is extended. Jesus gives us numerous examples. “For if you forgive men when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive men their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins” (Matthew 6:14-15). “And when you stand praying, if you hold anything against anyone, forgive him, so that your Father in heaven may forgive you your sins” (Mark 11:25). “Do not judge, and you will not be judged. Do not condemn, and you will not be condemned. Forgive, and you will be forgiven” (Luke 6:37).
St. Paul understood the point/counterpoint of forgiveness. “Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you” (Ephesians 4:32). “Bear with each other and forgive whatever grievances you may have against one another. Forgive as the Lord forgave you” (Colossians 3:13).
Our ability to forgive others depends on and plays off of God’s forgiveness of us, the way harmony depends on melody. Counterpoint does not exist in isolation. It derives its power from point. Just so, our forgiveness of others does not exist in isolation. It derives its power from God’s forgiveness of us.
Marcus Doe spent more than a decade dreaming of revenge. His father was a member of the Liberian Secret Service. When a coup removed the president from office, people calling themselves “freedom fighters” began killing the president’s men, including Marcus’s father. So, he made it his life goal to find the man who killed his dad and make him pay.
He came to America as an adolescent—an adolescent dreaming of revenge. As a young adult, Marcus turned to God during a time of personal crisis. He trusted Christ, and something in him began to change. He still wanted to find his father’s killer, but now he wanted to find him to forgive him. He even began to practice saying, “I forgive you.”
In 2010, he went back to Liberia to search for his father’s murderer and discovered that he had died in Liberia’s civil war. He forgave him anyway and began proclaiming forgiveness to the aggrieved and embittered people of Liberia. He told them that it is possible and that it comes from Jesus.[1]
Could you – would you – do what Marcus did? You would need God’s Spirit dwelling, and his character forming, in you. And along with that, you would need to believe rightly about God, about yourself, and about forgiveness.
Wrong beliefs prevent us from experiencing and extending forgiveness; they make it impossible. If, for example, we believe that God does not really want to forgive or that he will only forgive once or twice before he writes us off, we will be afraid to come to him, ashamed of asking him yet again.
Dane Ortland tells this parable: A compassionate doctor traveled deep into the jungle to provide medical care to a primitive tribe suffering from a contagious disease. He diagnosed the problem and had a helicopter drop off the medical supplies needed to treat it. But the sick would not come to him. They stuck to their traditional (and ineffective) healing methods. People continued to die. Finally, one brave person came to him, was healed, and people saw that the medicine works.
“What would the doctor feel?” Ortland asks. Joy. And that joy would increase with every person who came and was healed. That’s why he’d come.
Christ is like that doctor. “He does not get flustered and frustrated when we come to him for … forgiveness.” He wants us to come. He longs for us to come.[2]
We need to think rightly about God. He doesn’t need to be goaded into forgiveness. He wants to forgive. And he is good at it.
We also need to think rightly about ourselves. When someone sins against us – and all of us have been sinned against since our earliest years – something happens to us, happens in us. Sin, whether committed by us or against us, is disorienting. What I mean is that sin orients us away from God. It knocks us out of orbit. Instead of our lives circling around God, drawing strength and order and purpose from him, our lives begin to circle around our sins – the ones committed by us and against us.
Order then becomes disorder. The gravity that was intended to keep us in orbit around God keeps us in orbit around sin. When that sin is committed by us, that gravity can trap us in addiction. When that sin is committed against us, that gravity can trap us resentment. Apart from God’s intervention and the impartation of his Spirit, we will never have sufficient power to escape the gravity of our sins.
When we think rightly about ourselves, we know that we are not strong enough to rise above our sin – to forgive and be forgiven. Try as we may, we cannot achieve escape velocity from our sins – the ones we commit, and the ones committed against us.
We need to believe rightly about God and about ourselves, but we also need to believe rightly about forgiveness. When we don’t understand what it is, or think that it is something it is not, forgiveness will seem impossible. We must learn to recognize and renounce false ideas about forgiveness and replace them with truth.
What are some of the false ideas about forgiveness that keep us from receiving it and extending it to others? I will mention five.
First, many people confuse forgiving sin with excusing it. Let’s say that someone you know has been spreading rumors about you. Old friends have started avoiding you and won’t take your calls. When you confront the person, they deny doing anything wrong. You have been sinned against and you are hurt.
You know that God has instructed you to forgive, but you can’t do it. You think that to forgive them is to excuse what they did, to say that it doesn’t really matter, that it’s alright. But it does really matter, and you know it.
Forgiving and excusing are different things. We do not forgive people for things that don’t matter; we don’t need to. We forgive people for their sins – sins matter! I can excuse you and in fact, it is my moral duty to excuse you – if what you did is excusable. But there is no excuse for people who sin; there is only forgiveness—thank God there is forgiveness. Sin, whether we commit it against others or they commit it against us, is inexcusable—but not unforgivable.
If I think forgiving and excusing are the same thing, I won’t be able to forgive, for I will believe that means minimizing what has been done to me. But forgiving is not minimizing. When I forgive, I am calling what was done to me what it really is: sin.
Likewise, when I receive forgiveness from God or seek it from others, I am admitting that what I did was a sin. I am not asking to be excused, as if I didn’t really do anything wrong. I am admitting my guilt. I sinned! I am a sinner in need of forgiveness, not a decent guy in need of understanding.
Right here is where we see the connection between forgiving our debtors and being forgiven. People who want to be excused rather than forgiven downplay their own sins. They make excuses for themselves and blame others – but they won’t do that for the people who sin against them. They will not forgive, and they cannot be forgiven. They are trapped by the gravity of their sins.
A second misbelief about forgiveness, related to the first, is this: We think that some sins are forgivable while others are not. So, we forgive this minor wrongdoing but not that major one. We say of it, “I can never forgive that!”
Strictly speaking, we don’t need to. We don’t forgive the sin; we forgive the sinner. Forgiving the sinner never implies that what he did was okay. When God forgives us, he does not say, “This one’s no big deal.” Sin is a big deal, which is why sinners must be forgiven. So it is with us: we do not minimize the sin; we forgive the sinner.
A third misbelief about forgiveness is that forgiving means forgetting. This one has caused endless trouble to people. They tried to forgive. They thought they forgave. But then they woke up in the middle of the night thinking about what had been done to them. Or they saw the person who hurt them at the store, and a sudden surge of emotion ran through them. If they haven’t forgiven until they’ve forgotten, then they haven’t forgiven.
But forgiveness is not forgetting – not even for God. Someone will remind me of Hebrews 8:12 (which is itself a quote from Jeremiah 31:34): “For I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more.” We need to be careful here. God is not saying, “I can’t remember what they did.” God is not getting forgetful in his old age. He does not suffer from dementia. What he says is, “I will remember their sins no more.” That is a choice on God’s part.
It is also a choice on our part. It is not that we forget what was done to us but that we choose not to remember. We choose not to recall that person’s sin to use it against them – either in our own minds or with others. When it does come to mind, as it will for a while, we affirm our forgiveness and we move on.
Clara Barton, the founder of the American Red Cross, was at an event with a friend when someone who had wronged her came into the room. Her friend saw the woman and brought up what she had done to Clara. Clara didn’t seem to remember, but her friend wouldn’t let it go. She kept talking about it and said, “You must remember what she did to you!” Finally, Clara replied: “No, I distinctly remember forgetting that.” She was not suffering amnesia. She was choosing to forgive.
A fourth misbelief is that genuine forgiveness relieves us of feelings of anger or hurt. We think, “If I had really forgiven, I would not feel this way.” But forgiveness is not a feeling – though it can change our feelings. Forgiveness is more like surgery than anesthesia. Forgiveness removes the problem, not the pain. It may even initially, like surgery, increase the pain. But once the problem is gone the pain will begin to diminish. Recovery takes time – after surgeries and after forgiveness.
When I forgive you, I do so before God and with God. I enter into an agreement, a covenant of forgiveness, in which I choose not to use your sin against you. I do not seek vengeance against you because of what you did to me. I refuse to hurt you by showing contempt to you, by talking badly of you to others, or by rehearsing your guilt to myself. I trust God to make right what happened and I do to you as I would have others do to me.
Another misbelief (this is number 5) that makes forgiveness hard comes from the false notion that forgiveness restores trust. Let’s say you lend me money with the understanding that I will pay you back next week. But next week comes and you don’t hear a word from me. Next month comes and goes, and many months after that, but I don’t pay you back. Let’s say you forgive me and write it off as a loss. You say, “I’ll just consider it a gift and move on.”
But what happens when I come back to you in two years and ask to borrow money again? If you really forgave me the first time, shouldn’t you trust me the second time? How can you say that you have forgiven me when you won’t lend me more money?
That is a small matter compared to what some people face. I have met women whose own fathers abused them as they were growing up. Some of them, as adults, have forgiven their father. But does that mean they must now trust him to be around them or to be around their kids?
It does not. Forgiveness and trust are two different things. Forgiveness is not and cannot be earned, but trust is earned. Because you have forgiven someone does not mean you must place yourself or others at risk of injury from them. It is always wise to forgive. It is not always wise to trust.
Let’s bring all this back to the Lord’s prayer. We pray, “Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors,” and we have Jesus’s word that if we forgive others “when they sin against [us, our] heavenly Father will also forgive [us]. But if [we] do not forgive others their sins, [our] Father will not forgive [our] sins” (Matthew 6:14-15).
Now we’ve seen what forgiveness doesn’t mean. It doesn’t mean excusing sin or saying that it’s no big deal. Forgiveness is not the absence of hurt or anger or distrust. It doesn’t mean that we forget what was done to us or put ourselves back in the place where we it can be done to us again.
Well, what does it mean? It means that before God and with his help, I choose not to use your sin against you. I will not harm you because of it. I will not seek revenge, either by talking badly about you, or going over and over your sin in my mind, or by avoiding you or by getting even. I will commit you to God and treat you as I would want to be treated if I were you.
That is how God treats us and how he wants to help us treat others. Doing so will bring us freedom and bring God glory. Is there someone God wants you to forgive? Will you obey him now?
[1] Marcus Doe, “Orphaned by War,” CT magazine (November, 2016), pp. 95-96
[2] Dane Ortlund, Gentle and Lowly: The Heart of Christ for Sinners and Sufferers (Crossway, 2020), p. 36
We all have an image of ourselves which we protect, whether we realize we are protecting it or not. This is a built-in function of the human machine. Humans were programmed with image-protection because they were made in the image of God. The preservation of that image is essential to creation’s welfare.
This makes sense when we realize what the Creator intended to do with his human images. He meant them to be placed all over the earth. In ancient times, kings placed images of themselves along the borders of their land to remind people who was in control.
There is a parallel in the contemporary world. Leaders like Mao Zedong, Kim Il Jung, and Saddam Hussein all placed giant banners of themselves in major cities, or erected statues of themselves at busy intersections. These images were intended to remind people who was in control, to assure the doubter and intimidate the rebel.
God’s intention was not to frighten the world with his living images but to bless it. They were to be a source of comfort and encouragement to all who saw them, both humans and animals. Unlike a tyrant’s images, God’s images were alive, and he intended to rule the world through them. In the Book of Genesis, God states: “Let us make man in our image, in our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.”
Because God’s image was central to the security and welfare of creation, he programmed “image protection software” into his image bearers. But that image was defaced by our father Adam’s – and our own – subsequent rebellion, and it continues to deteriorate. Yet the built-in image protection system remains operational.
With the image of their creator damaged and growing less distinct, humans create their own image and then fight to protect it. Much of the insanity that happens in our world stems from men and women trying to protect false images of themselves. People will live in denial, “deceiving and being deceived,” as St. Paul put it, rather than see their image defaced.
This is even true when the image is not a flattering one, for images are not always fashioned to exalt. They are more often fashioned to protect. Think of Paul Simon’s, “I am a rock, I am an island. And a rock feels no pain. And an island never cries.”
Because this is true, people will fight even to protect the images that thwart their happiness: the loner, the rebel, the outcast, and the curmudgeon. “Victim” is an unflattering image, but many people cling to it. It affords a kind of status to some and provides an excuse to others.
A person’s image protection system may lead them into foolish behaviors to prop up their image. Hence, people who image themselves as “the smartest person in the room” may be incapable of admitting that they do not know something. Instead of listening to others, they do all the talking. If they happen to lead an organization, their image protection software has the potential of ruining many people’s lives.
It can get worse – and has. Imagine the leader of a nation with a faulty image protection system. He has for years imaged himself as the tough guy. Now his mind supplies reasons to maintain that image even though doing so means going to war against another country. He is unable to consider evidence for or against war objectively. It is all filtered through his own distorted image.
The self-righteous person will for the same reason be unable to admit being wrong. The “loser” will not be able to admit having won. The “winner” cannot acknowledge having lost.
The way to repair this problem is not to disable the image protection software, but to restore the original image for which it was designed. This is the point of spiritual formation through discipleship to Jesus. Its biblical goal is nothing less than for humans “to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.”
What did Jesus mean when he said, “Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors?” Will we not be forgiven if we don’t forgive? And for that matter, why do translations have “debts” when we pray “trespasses”? This message is the first of two parts on forgiveness – why we do forgive and how we do it.
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From time to time, we see an actor on TV or in a movie say, “I can never forgive that!” From time to time, we hear a friend or acquaintance say the same thing. Perhaps we have said it ourselves: This thing is so heinous and hurtful, so intentional, it does not deserve to be forgiven – can’t be forgiven!
When people say that kind of thing, it is clear that they feel justified in not forgiving. They feel righteous. But Jesus taught his followers to pray, “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.” We’ll go into that in just a moment but, before we do, I just want to point out that Jesus’s wisdom diverges from the wisdom of television writers, friends, and family on this issue. Jesus teaches his people forgiveness while society at large teaches its people resentment. Who do you think is wiser?
This message is for all of us who pray the Lord’s prayer. More specifically, it is for all of us who know that we need mercy. And it is for all of us who have been wronged and injured – whether last week or years ago – and whose lives have been damaged by that wrong. That surely includes each of us.
Years ago, a woman came to me for pastoral advice. She had done something she knew was wrong and had sensed that her self-destructive behavior was somehow rooted in the sexual assault she had suffered as an adolescent. Here’s the thing: she was around 70 at the time.
For nearly six decades, her life had been dominated by the sin committed against her. It had affected her relationship with her husband, her kids, with men, with God. She was wounded and had not experienced the healing available to her. One step in that healing – and there are others – would have been to forgive.
But does Jesus really want this disciple of his to forgive her assailant? Yes. Perhaps you don’t believe that. Perhaps you don’t believe it is even possible for a person to forgive something like that. But that is because you do not understand forgiveness in the way Jesus understands it. We will look at that more closely next week.
This dear woman was hardly the only person in our church family whose life has been harmed by unforgiveness or whose unforgiveness has manifested in disruptive behavior. You have suffered offenses just as real as hers and, in some cases, just as hurtful. Some of us have been conformed to the image of our injury rather than to the image of Christ. Instead of Christ being our life, as he intends, our injury has become our life—God help us. (He has.)
We have all been wronged. We have all been hurt. But let’s not forget that we have all done wrong and we have all caused hurt. We have sinned, and we have been sinned against. Some of the people we have sinned against sit at our dining room table, and some sit around us in this room. And some of the people who have sinned against us are those same people. God knows that we will be shaped to the image of our injury unless we are forgiven, and we forgive.
I suspect that a principal reasons for the church’s ineffectiveness in our day (and at other times in history) is that Christians don’t forgive each other as Jesus taught us to do. God will not – cannot – bless or even condone our unforgiveness. We become human storage units filled with anger, evil thoughts, and resentments. Mistrust abounds. We can’t work together. The church is incapacitated. This principal difference between Jesus’s people and others, which should shine like a beacon in the darkness, has been shut off—and we’re the ones who pulled the switch.
Unforgiveness is an obstacle to what God wants to do in our lives and church. Unforgiveness dams up the current of God’s love in our midst. We must not allow that to continue. If you are a genuine disciple of Jesus and think that you cannot forgive, you are mistaken. You can forgive; it is possible (though I don’t say it is easy).
We have a lot to get into, and we should begin with what Jesus actually said. When we recite the Lord’s Prayer, we often use a word that is not actually in the prayer. Jesus gave two version of this same prayer, one to the crowds on the mountainside in Matthew 6 and one to his disciples in Luke 11. In Matthew 6, he told people (literal translations now) to “…pray thusly … forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.” In Luke 11, he said, “When you pray, say …forgive us our sins for we also forgive all who owe us.”
If Jesus used the words “debts,” “debtors,” and “sins,” how did we end up with “trespasses” in the Lord’s Prayer? Trespasses slips into the prayer from verses 14 and 15, which form Jesus’s own explanation of the request. But in the actual text of the prayer, Jesus uses the word “debts.” It could be translated, “cancel our debts.”
What is he talking about – “cancel our debts,” “forgive us what we owe”? What debts? I pay cash on the barrelhead. I’ve had a credit card now for about twenty years and have never paid a cent of interest. What is Jesus talking about – “Forgive us what we owe”? I don’t owe anyone anything.
Or do I? Do I owe my wife something? I think I do. Do I owe my parents something – the people who brought me into the world (they didn’t have to), fed me, clothed me, educated me, worried over me, provided me with a thousand things to keep me alive and well? What about my church family, who has loved me, forgiven me, encouraged me, and made it financially possible for me to serve Christ in the way I do?
And what about my God? He is the life-giver. He made me. He knew me while I was still in my mother’s womb. He gave me gifts to use so that I could do good in this world. He gave me family, sons and daughters-in-law, and grandchildren. He gave me a world suited to my existence, a mind, sensations, feelings. He gave me a conscience. He gave me a Savior and gave me his Spirit.
To say, “I don’t owe anyone anything” is to utter as great a falsehood as has ever been spoken. I have lived my entire life by the mercy and pity and gifts of others – most of all God. “It is because of the Lord’s great compassion that we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail” (Lamentations 3:22).
Unless you see this truth for yourself – and we have been diabolically brainwashed not to see it and will only see it by the work of the Holy Spirit – you will never be as free and joyful as God intends you to be. You are alive only by the pity of God; you are under obligation to the God who through Christ made you and redeemed you; you are obligated not only to God but to myriads of people for the life you have and the benefits you have experienced. Only those who own this truth can pray, “Forgive us our debts” with any sense of urgency or receive that forgiveness with any sense of gratitude.
Unless you grasp this truth for yourself, you will only pray for forgiveness when you have done (or fear getting caught doing) something that is clearly wrong. The rest of the time, you will think that there is no sin for which you need forgiveness or – in the way Jesus put it – no debt that you owe. Me? I don’t own anyone anything.
In the Bible, sin is conceived in different ways. Early on, it was conceived as a burden one carries. Sin was not thought of as an abstract concept but a real thing, an evil thing, which weighs us down and causes us and others trouble. St. Paul spoke of it as “sin living in me,” which sounds like some scary science fiction movie. St. Peter, sticking to the image of sin as a burden or weight wrote, “He himself bore” – he carried – “our sins in his body on the cross, so that we might die to sins and live for righteousness” (1 Peter 2:24). He took the burden that was crushing us and that we could not carry.
Later in the Old Testament, and throughout the New, sin is described as a debt. When we sin, we withhold what we owe – our lives, our love, our goodwill – from God and others. We act as if we owe nothing to anyone except ourselves. We think of ourselves as “self-made men” and women – which is ridiculous on so many levels – the masters of our fate and the captains of our soul. And thus, like Adam, we defraud God and people. Humanity lives (and dies) in Adam’s sin and the result is a world that bears a crushing weight of isolation, anger, mistrust, and malice. It is not the world God made; it’s the world we’ve made.
If that is what sin is like, what is the forgiveness of sin like? J.D. Greear explains that forgiving “somebody means that you are agreeing to absorb the cost of the injustice of what they’ve done. Imagine,” he says, “you stole my car and … wrecked it, and you don’t have insurance and/or the money to pay for it. What are my choices? …I could haul you before a judge and request a court-mandated payment plan. …
“But I have another choice. I could forgive you …. What am I choosing to do if I say, “I forgive you”? I’m choosing to absorb the cost of your wrong. I’ll have to pay the price of having the car fixed.” (Or bear the burden of not having it fixed.)
He goes on to say: “You have no debt to pay—not because there was nothing to pay, but because I paid it all. Not only that, I’m choosing to absorb the pain of your treatment of me. … I’m choosing to give you friendship and acceptance even though you deserve the opposite.
“This is always how forgiveness works. It comes at a cost. If you forgive someone, you bear the cost rather than insisting that the wrongdoer does. And that is what Jesus, the Mighty God, was doing when he came to earth and lived as a man and died a criminal’s death on a wooden cross.[1]
Jesus teaches us to pray, “Forgive us our debts” – cancel them – “as we also forgive our debtors.” It is about this line of the prayer – and only this line – that Jesus adds an explanatory note. These are verses 14 and 15: “For if you forgive men when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive men their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins.”
I can think of no verse that has received the old theological brush-off more often that verse 15. We assume that Jesus didn’t mean what we hear him saying – we have no place for this in our theological system! But if you have to choose between your theological system and Jesus’s own words, you’d do well to choose Jesus’s words. If we don’t understand them, let’s admit it, but let’s not write them off as meaningless. Jesus meant something by them, and we’d better take them seriously.
I think that people brush this off because they hear Jesus saying that people merit forgiveness by forgiving others in a sort of quid pro quo arrangement. But Jesus says nothing here about meriting forgiveness—or meriting anything. We do not merit forgiveness by forgiving. It is not a matter of cause and effect.
A millennium ago, people believed that having lice was good for one’s health. They based that on the observation that people who didn’t have lice – and in the Middle Ages everyone had lice – usually got sick. But the real reason was that lice are extremely sensitive to a host’s body temperature. Before a person realized he had a fever, the lice had already left in search of another host. The absence of lice did not cause the sickness but resulted from it.[2]
When we hear Jesus’s words and conclude that God won’t forgive us because we won’t forgive, we are making a similar kind of error to the one our ancestors made. Our lack of forgiveness does not cause God not to forgive; it indicates that we are not in a forgivable state. A person who refuses to forgive others has not seen nor repented of his or her own sin – and as such is not forgiven. People who don’t forgive are people who think they don’t need forgiveness.
But sometimes it is not that we refuse to forgive; it is that we assume that forgiveness is not possible. Why even think about something that can never happen? How many marriages have ended in divorce and resentment because Christians assumed that forgiveness was impossible? How many siblings have endured lifelong separation for the same reason? How many churches have been ruptured because Jesus’s own people did not believe him when he spoke about forgiveness? But forgiveness can happen. It does happen.
It is possible to enter and live in the mercy of God. It can envelop us, and we can begin to bring others into it. Relationships can be healed. Forgiveness can be extended and received. Every sin and trespass and unmet obligation – from sibling unkindness to marital unfaithfulness to murder – can be forgiven. Jesus’s people are able to do that. The life, energy, and drive that enabled Jesus to forgive the people who were killing him is in you if you are his. If you are not his, forgiveness will remain out of your reach; but if you are, forgiveness is possible.
I’ve known Christians to forgive the person who sexually abused them. And Christians who have forgiven the spouse who was unfaithful to them. And forgiven a fellow Christian who damaged their reputation through lies and rumors. And forgiven a family member who cheated them out of their inheritance. And on and on.
Randy Frazee stopped in at a church member’s business and saw a picture of the man and his wife prominently displayed on his office wall. He said, “Nice picture.” But when he turned to the man, he saw that his eyes were welling up with tears, so he asked him what was wrong.
This was the man’s answer. “There was a time in our marriage when I was unfaithful to my wife, and she found out about it. She was so deeply hurt and injured she was going to leave me and take the kids with her. I was overwhelmed at the mistake I had made, and I shut the affair down. I went to my wife in total brokenness. Knowing I did not deserve for her to answer in the affirmative, I asked her to forgive me. And she forgave me.
“This picture was taken shortly after that. When I see this picture, I see a woman who forgave me. I see a woman who was willing to stand with me … So, when you see this picture you say, ‘Nice picture.’ But when I see this picture, I see my life given back to me again.”[3]
That woman – injured to the core of her being – was able to forgive her husband. She bore the weight of his sin, absorbed the price of his infidelity, and gave him back his life, their marriage, and their kids. Christ makes that possible.
When 16-year-old Shannon Ethridge was on her way to school one morning, she hit and killed a woman named Marjorie Jarstfar, who was riding her bicycle along a country road. The guilt and shame ate Shannon alive. She was on the verge of committing suicide three or four times. The person who saved her from that was Marjorie’s husband Gary.
He forgave her. He asked that all charges against her be dropped. He bore the cost that she should have paid. He simply asked that Shannon follow in his wife’s godly footsteps. He told her, “You can’t let this ruin your life. God wants to strengthen you through this. In fact, I am passing Marjorie’s legacy on to you.”[4]
Many such stories can be found in the history of Jesus’s people, and in the history of our church. They may be less common now because even Christians have bought into the societal narrative of resentment and revenge, but they still happen. Forgiveness – both receiving it and extending it – is possible. It is possible for you in your situation.
If you belong to Christ but don’t believe that you can forgive, you are almost certainly thinking that forgiveness is something it is not. You can forgive; God will help. We will explore how that happens next week.
[1] J. D. Greear, Searching For Christmas (The Good Book Company, 2020), p. 52-53
It’s hard not to be cynical in an election year. My wife just brought in the mail, which includes two political messages, one produced by conservatives the other by progressives. Both are irritating.
The piece produced by conservatives is a so-called “Voter Guide.” It pictures the Republican and Democratic candidates for governor along with their “Yes” or “No” stands on eight issues. The issues are intentionally titled to put the Democratic candidate in a bad light. One title, for example, was “Abortion on Demand.” Had progressives printed a voter guide they would have titled this issue, “Reproductive Freedom.”
Progressives produced the other piece of political mail. It pictures soldiers in fatigues and on patrol and in bold print urges voters to “Make sure their vote is counted.” But the soldiers are window dressing. This proposal itself is a wide-ranging progressive wish list for voter reform. It is not all bad but, for heaven’s sake, tells us its real purpose.
Five states are taking up the abortion issue in November. In our state, there is a constitutional amendment on the ballot known as the “Right to Reproductive Freedom Initiative.” Because Americans value freedom, its sponsors made sure to get that word into the proposal’s title.
The proposed amendment is deceptive on many levels. For example, it promises protections for women having a miscarriage or an abortion. Protections from whom? There is no history of women in our state being punished under the law for a miscarriage or an abortion. In fact, the State Supreme Court ruled almost 60 years ago that a woman performing an abortion on herself or receiving an abortion was not guilty of a crime.
Proponents of this proposal make a big deal of saying that the decision on abortion should be left to a woman and her doctor. Yet the proposal does not mention a doctor but rather an “attending health care professional.” That is a big umbrella. In our state it includes dentists, chiropractors, massage therapists, acupuncturists, counselors, psychologists, and many others.
The proposal would ban the state from prohibiting an abortion when a “health care professional” considers it “medically indicated to protect the life, or physical or mental health of the pregnant individual.” One could argue that morning sickness, stretch marks, and a declining bank account all qualify as threats to “the pregnant individual” by this definition.
Further, the proposal would enshrine in the state constitution protections for “someone aiding or assisting a pregnant individual in exercising their right to reproductive freedom with their voluntary consent.” What if this “someone” is the person who got the “individual” (who could be a minor) pregnant? One can certainly imagine a teenager giving her “voluntary consent” to a manipulative older lover who protects himself from criminal action by “aiding” her to “exercise her right to reproductive freedom.”
Speaking of minors, some critics of this proposal suggest that it leaves the door open to children undergoing sterilizing gender transitioning procedures without their parents’ consent. My reading of the proposal does not make that clear, but with so many intentionally unclear statements, it raises concerns.
The most egregiously deceptive thing in this proposal is its summary statement suggesting it will: “Allow state to regulate abortion after fetal viability.” This is the opposite of what it would allow. If passed, the proposal will effectively redefine viability and create a loophole in state regulations big enough to drive a truck through. What the proposal speciously grants with the right hand it snatches away with the left.
Subtle misrepresentation of other people’s views and intentionally misleading statements about one’s own are symptomatic of a politics gone wrong. Such duplicity is the result of the commitment to beat one’s adversaries by any means. Deception is a strategically necessary tactic in that cause.
I, for one, am fed up with it. If, for example, a group is committed to making abortion available to any female, even a child, for any reason, tell voters that and let them decide. Don’t disrespect and manipulate them. This is common decency and should be the standard to which all players in the political arena – conservative or progressive – are held.
This class follows Jesus’s warning against using religion to build a reputation. The instruction he gives is straightforward: Be careful not to do your righteousness before people to be seen by them. The temptation to build a reputation – to seek the “praise that comes from people” – is a dangerous detour that does not lead to the Kingdom of God.
(Co-teacher Kevin Looper was leading a Spiritual Disciplines Retreat this weekend but will be back next week’s class.)
The Way Home 