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Biography
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"What to Do When You’re Messed Over" Then Peter came and said to him, “Lord, if another member of the church sins against me, how often should I forgive? As many as seven times?” Jesus said to him, “Not seven times, but, I tell you, seventy-seven times.” The title of my message is “What To Do When You're Messed Over.” At a bowling alley, two men were talking about marriage. One man said, “My wife and I argue a lot, and every time we argue she gets historical . His friend interrupted him, “You meant to say that she gets hysterical , didn't you?” The first man responded, “No, when my wife and I argue, she doesn't get hysterical; she gets historical . She drags up everything from the past and holds it against me.” I wonder if some of us are excessively historical in our relationships. With pinpoint accuracy, some of us can recall every bad thing that has ever happened to us and the smallest details surrounding each event. Perhaps you cannot anticipate the future or enjoy the present because you are imprisoned by the pain of your past. Like re-runs on cable TV, some of us have hurtful memories playing repeatedly on the screens of our minds, and these mental re-runs can make us hysterical. There is often a fine line between being too historical and being hysterical in our relationships. The unwillingness to move beyond episodes where we've been messed over can create spiritual dysfunction that hinders us from enjoying God's peace, power, and prosperity. Thus, the question before us is this: When people have messed over us, what are we, as God's people, to do? Jesus provides an answer, “Forgive.” In Matthew 18, the Apostle Peter poses a question to Jesus. “Jesus, if another member of the church sins against me, how often should I forgive? As many as seven times?” Jesus responds, “Not seven times, but seventy-seven times.” In other words, forgiveness is not a product that we should seek to quantify. It is a practice that enriches the quality of one's character. The ability to forgive is a Christian's birthmark—a sign that we have been born anew spiritually. To be a Christian is to be forgiven. To be a Christian is also to be someone who forgives. Godly forgiveness is counter-cultural. We live in a culture that says, “If you mess over me, I will sue you or worse.” Ours is an age of countless lawsuits, continual retaliation, and cold, calculated revenge. Matthew 18, however, compels us to take our cues from Christ, not from culture. We are in the world but not of the world. Permit me to offer a working definition of Godly forgiveness: Forgiveness is the disciplined, lifelong commitment to offer Godly reactions to ungodly actions. Forgiveness requires discipline. We must work at it. Like a muscle, forgiveness will be flabby and weak unless we exercise it. Forgiveness also requires a lifelong commitment . It is not a sporadic occurrence: 7 times. It is a lifelong commitment: 77 times. As a lifelong commitment, forgiveness involves every aspect of our existence. Furthermore, forgiveness requires us to focus on our reactions, not the actions of others. We cannot control other people's actions, but by the power of the Holy Spirit we can control our reactions, even our reactions to unrighteousness. As I explore what forgiveness is, I also need to explain what forgiveness is not. Forgiveness is not condoning wrong. God does not expect us to ignore injustice or injury. Sin must be acknowledged for what it is both by the victims and the perpetrators. Too often, Christians equate forgiveness with passively accepting or ignoring wrong. That's why so many victims end up bitter and angry. When the church preaches that forgiveness requires persons to put themselves in situations to be victimized, the church dispenses cheap and lethal grace. For example, the church should never send battered women back to their homes to be beaten. Genuine grace creates new life and does not condemn us to old patterns of death. When Christians fail to insist that perpetrators confess, repent, and make restitution for injustice, we short-circuit the transforming power of forgiveness. Rather than condoning wrong, forgiveness responds to wrong in the right way. This kind of response involves courage so that genuine justice can lead to genuine grace which can lead to genuine healing. Forgiveness also should not be simply equated with forgetting. The slogan “forgive and forget” is a recipe for denial, not a formula for forgiveness. Forgiveness does not require spiritual amnesia. There are some hurts and scars from our past that need to be remembered. Getting historical can bring healing. Healing is not found in forgetting; it is found in holy—not hostile—remembering. We remember the hurts of our past not to repeatedly play the role of victim or to hold the perpetrators hostage with guilt. Instead, through a holy remembering, we are empowered to make wiser choices in the present and the future and to help perpetrators do the same. Remembering the hurts of South African apartheid, Archbishop Desmond Tutu declared that forgiveness draws out “the sting in the memory that threatens to poison our entire existence.” We remember the evil done to us in the past in order to liberate the past from evil. Once the sting of evil is removed, the past is redeemed to impart to us wisdom for today and tomorrow. Forgiveness does not condone evil; nor does it require us to forget. What it does require is “release,” the release of the negativity and hostility associated with being messed over. In Matthew 18, the Greek verb translated “to forgive” also means “to let go.” Even if justice for our injuries is delayed or denied, Christ compels us to forgive so the desire for revenge will not poison our souls. Like the Apostle Peter, many of us have asked Jesus, “Lord, how many times should we forgive?” Just as Jesus' response likely puzzled Peter, it baffles us as well. “Seventy-seven times is a whole lot of forgiveness, Jesus.” To that response, Jesus replies, “Seventy-seven times; seventy-seven hundred times; seventy-seven thousand times; or even seventy-seven million times cannot compare to that one time that God forgave the whole world.” On a skull-shaped hill on a dark Friday, as Rome “messed over” him, Jesus pleaded with God from that old rugged cross, “Father, forgive them!” All of us have been messed over at one time or another. Yet Christ, our Great Redeemer, our great Liberator calls us to forgive because we have been forgiven. Conversation with Brad Braxton Lydia Talbot: A terrific, strong message on forgiveness, Brad. You started the message with the statement that people who do not forgive are imprisoned by the past. Have you ever felt that way? Brad Braxton: I have felt that way. In fact, part of my experience with forgiveness comes from my own hurts and the notion that forgiveness actually is a gift of liberation to oneself. I finally realized that in order to really be free and to have the abundance that Christ offers to us and the liberation that is promised to us in Scripture, I had to give myself the gift of forgiveness so that I could be a better Brad. Lydia Talbot: To be free. You addressed that in the Bray Lectures you were invited to give at Oxford on the 200 th anniversary of the end of the slave trade. How does that weave in? What do you say to people about that history? Brad Braxton: It's a powerful narrative that I've been involved in the last couple of months. This year represents the 200 th anniversary of the end of the slave trade in the British Empire. So groups in London, England invited me to come and help communities think about that tremendous hostility that was sowed into the moral universe centuries ago. And so one of the things that I've been thinking about is, how do you speak to those who were involved, or at least the heirs of those who were involved in the slave trade? How do you help them come to grips with that tremendous hostility? And then also, how do you speak a word of healing to those who were the victims or the heirs of the victims? So I've been moving around the country and even the world thinking about forgiveness, giving this gift of liberation so that we might have a better world, a more peaceful world, a world of release, as I mentioned in the message, where no longer are we bottled up with hostility, but we let that go for the sake of a better and more just, peaceful world. Daniel Pawlus: And to hear you talk, Brad, this is a very active process, isn't it? That we have to engage ourselves in a very conscious way. Brad Braxton: It is. Daniel Pawlus: Do you think we do that often enough or do we wait for the timing of forgiveness to show itself and then take action in that moment? Brad Braxton: I think too often religious communities have taught that forgiveness is a passive reality. But if you come at it as an active spiritual discipline, then you need to be honest with yourself and say that when you suffer a hurt, when a wrong is done to you, there is a process that one has to go through. By no means do I want to say to people that forgiveness is an automatic process. There is a place for anger. There is a place for bitterness. But what I'm trying to suggest is, it cannot stay long to take root in your heart and in your soul. So that you must actively—through conversation, through meditation, through this process of reflection—learn to get this hostility out of you lest your whole being be poisoned by this. So I think we need to do a better job of teaching that it is an active spiritual discipline. Lydia Talbot: Is acknowledgment of the injustice for the victim an integral part of that process? Brad Braxton: It is a major part of the process. Something about that acknowledgment humanizes those who have been injured. And it says, in spite of you trying to move on, that is, you the perpetrator, I have not moved on. There is something that is still hurting me and my community and I need you to acknowledge that because in acknowledging that you are actually acknowledging my humanity and now we can engage in a process of moving forward towards a new future. Lydia Talbot: You've quoted Archbishop Desmond Tutu in your message, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa. It also reminded me of the Murder Victims' Families for Reconciliation who are against the death penalty, who have forgiven those who have taken the lives of their loved ones. You said that forgiveness is a Christian birthmark. But what do you say to non-Christians? Brad Braxton: I would say the same thing to non-Christians, in the sense of those persons who are really concerned about goodness in the world, who are concerned about positive moral energy, even if they do not make any kind of particular faith claim. If they are concerned about a better world, for us and for those who come after us, it too should be a birthmark for a moral person, a person who says as long as I keep hostility within me, the world will be a place of violence and a place of warfare. But it is at this individual level that we must start. I want that birthmark, whether or not I'm a Christian; whether I'm a Jew, a Muslim or a person of no religious affiliation. It is what it means to be a moral person concerned about goodness and positive spiritual energy in the world. Daniel Pawlus: We've only got about 30 seconds left, Brad. I think of the recent example of the Amish in the forgiveness over the murders in the schoolhouse. The wonderful part of this is the end product of this transforming power of forgiveness, isn't it? Brad Braxton: Absolutely. I think about the Apostle Paul and II Corinthians 5, where he talks about a new creation. Indeed, if there is to be a new creation, forgiveness must become a regular part of our spiritual practice. As Archbishop Desmond Tutu says, “We must forgive if there is to be a future.” Daniel Pawlus: Thank you so much for being with us today, Brad. We appreciate it. Brad Braxton: Thank you. |
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