love—to the point of sacrifice and forgiveness and generosity—it will be very
hard for you to access, imagine, or even experience God’s kind of love.
Conversely, if you have never let God love you in the deep and subtle ways that
God does, you will not know how to love another human in the deepest ways of
which you are capable.
Love is constantly creating future possibilities for the good of all concerned—
even, and especially, when things go wrong. Love allows and accommodates
everything in human experience, both the good and the bad, and nothing else
can really do this. Nothing. Love flows unstoppably downward, around every
obstacle—like water. Love and water seek not the higher place but always the
lower. That’s why forgiveness is often the most powerful display of love in
action. When we forgive, we acknowledge that there is, in fact, something to
forgive—a mistake, an offense, an error—but instead of reverting to survival
mode, we release the offending party from any need for punishment or
recrimination. In so doing, we bear witness to the Ever Risen and Always
Loving Christ, who is always “going ahead of you into Galilee, and that is where
you will see him” (Matthew 28:7). Un-forgiveness lives in a repetitive past,
which it cannot let go of. But forgiveness is a largeness of soul, without which
there is no future or creative action—only the repetition of old story lines,
remembered hurts, and ever-increasing claims of victimhood for all concerned.
An eagerness and readiness to love is the ultimate freedom and future. When
you’ve been included in the spaciousness of divine love, there is just no room
for human punishment, vengeance, rash judgment, or calls for retribution. We
certainly see none of this small-mindedness in the Risen Christ after his own
rejection, betrayal, and cruel death; we don’t see it even from his inner circle, or
in the whole New Testament. I really cannot imagine a larger and more spacious
way to live. Jesus’s death and resurrection event was a game changer for history,
and it is no surprise that we date our calendar from his lifetime.
The Crucified and Risen Christ uses the mistakes of the past to create a
positive future, a future of redemption instead of retribution. He does not
eliminate or punish the mistakes. He uses them for transformative purposes.
People formed by such love are indestructible.
Forgiveness might just be the very best description of what God’s goodness
engenders in humanity.