Forgiveness is a highly recommended spiritual practice. The benefits of forgiveness are supposedly less stress and better health. Forgiveness is recommended by the church as a way to wholeness. I wonder, however, if this is always a good idea. In cases of sexual and physical abuse, I believe offering quick forgiveness can continue the wounding rather than offering healing.
I have experienced the fear of God in those whove been to hell and back in this life, from loss, or suffering, or anguish, who changed from closing to opening hearts, and who are looking to give love to those around. I sensed this fear of God in those who can say, “I know Jesus, he loves me, I love him, and we love you, no matter what”. That’s the Gospel the world needs to hear.
We are all constantly, it seems, creating, even exuding, disorder. Much of what the work of the spiritual life is about fighting these natural tendencies, it is very much a work against nature. When it comes to human life, alone or in community, kipple does indeed drive out non-kipple.
“A thousand years ago everybody knew, as a fact, that the earth was the center of the universe. Five hundred years ago, everybody knew that the Earth was flat, and fifteen minutes ago, you knew that humans were alone on it. Imagine what you’ll know tomorrow.”
By Adam Thomas Sometimes, I am too young to hear Jesus’ words in the Gospel. Or too old. Or too naïve. Or too refined. Often
Because the three persons share equally in the properties that make God divine, God is communion. Indeed, God just is the three persons and the loving relationships among them. Christians also speak of holy communion. In this sacrament, God’s good gifts are freely and abundantly shared in the body and the blood of Jesus. These gifts both reconstitute and strengthen the Church, which God brings to birth in holy baptism.
I’m twelve years old, and I have made it nearly two-thirds of the way through The Lord of the Rings. But I can no longer bear it, and I shelve the book. It’s just so boring. All they do is walk! They start in one place, walk for a bit, meet someone and chat, and then walk some more! I just want them to get somewhere!
Perhaps the desire to extend gratitude beyond the human is an evolutionary glitch–a useful social trait that got too big for its britches. Perhaps. Or perhaps we awaken one day and realize that we are not now, and have never been, masters of our own destinies; that our successes were not entirely of our own making; that our souls magnify the Lord, whether we like it or not.
My presenting sin is pride. Although I haven’t read it in a long time, I was convicted from the first time I read Walter Hilton’s Ladder of Perfection, in which he makes the case that pride is the foremost sin, and the prerequisite for all other sins. For that matter, I don’t use the shorthand “IMHO,” because I can’t claim to be all that humble about my opinions.
There is a cloak of shadow which seeks to cover up people, to reduce people, to stifle and bury people – turning them into lonely, blind and beggared souls – dropped off from the way – the way which in fact we were intended by God to journey in full lives of joy — diverted from the way God wants for us – by this force of darkness which does not love us, or what God wants, or God himself.