How to Forgive People

if i can wake up and say every morning like lord you know lord jesus christ son of the living god have mercy on me a sinner that i've sinned if that's not a daily practice then i'm going to become pretty brutal to people that offend me but if it is a daily practice my heart softens and i can become much more generous to those who have offended me welcome back to the word on fire show i am brandon vot the senior publishing director at word on fire i'm joined here with bishop barron as we continue our discussion on forgiveness a couple episodes back we began by discussing an article by the popular protestant pastor tim keller his article was titled the fading of forgiveness tracing the disappearance of the thing we need most i've linked to the article in the show notes and i encourage you to read it last time we spent all of our time on the first half of tim's article which was mostly diagnosing why we've lost this practice of forgiveness it was kind of negative and discouraging but this discussion we're going to focus on the second half where he proposes how we can recover this lost practice specifically as christians but before we get there bishop exciting day at word on fire because for the first time in a long time we are launching a new film series and study program this used to be our bread and butter over many years we'd release one every single year you could you could count it as on a clock but the pandemic kind of slowed us down a little bit but here we are back with a new program this one is on the creed the creed it's a beautiful six-part study program filmed at some of the most gorgeous california missions out there where you are and it's accompanied by a great book titled light from light theological reflections on the nicene creed which you've been working on for some time tell us about both of these new resources yeah i'm excited about them you say kovid in one way set us back but it also allowed me to finish that book i had begun that book a while ago at the prompting by the way of father paul murray some listeners probably know him great dominican spiritual teacher he's at the angelicum in rome and he had said to me on one of our trips over there the next book you should write is on the creed and so i took that to heart it begun work but then you know i was caught up in all the million things i do here but then kovid opened up a little more space i had more time and so i knuckled down and finished that book and then once it was done we went to uh three beautiful places one in montecito one in santa barbara and one in ventura and we filmed talks based upon the book and um you know in the past i always had an audience that i spoke to but during covet we couldn't do that so i did more of a direct to camera approach so it's a i think beautiful looking film it'll be helpful in paris settings adult education rcia and the book my hope brandon is that that book which i wrote in a pretty serious level could be used at colleges universities maybe reintroducing a lot of people to christianity the reason i wrote the book is that i just am convinced a lot of people don't know what the christian faith really is they're going on caricatures and and distorted understanding so that's my hope for the film series maybe in paris especially the book and universities colleges so anyway i'm proud of it you can find everything at the website wordonfire.org creed there you can pick up the book you can pick up dvd or blu-ray versions of the film but i also want to add that if you're a member of the ward on fire institute you have instant streaming access to all of the film episodes right now so if you're not a member of the institute that's a great reason to sign up you not only get all the great stuff within the institute and our evangelization and culture journal but you will also get access to this new creed film so sign up there at wordonfire.institute or just to purchase the items individually you can find them at wordonfire.org creed all right let's get back to the topic of forgiveness again last episode we discussed why forgiveness has faded out of practice today but let's move on to how to recover it so keller begins by quoting hannah arendt who is a well-known jewish political philosopher writing after the holocaust and wrote a lot about post-holocaust issues she had this very powerful line she said the discoverer with a capital d mind you the discoverer of the role of forgiveness and the realm of human affairs was jesus of nazareth remember a jewish political philosopher making this recognition the fact that jesus made this discovery in a religious context she says and articulated it in religious language is no reason to take it any less seriously in a strictly secular sense do you agree with her bishop that jesus was the discoverer of the role of forgiveness in the realm of human affairs yeah i think so look at tom holland's book you know dominion where he goes into this theme of how powerfully christianity has influenced western culture and so deeply that we often don't even notice it so we take certain values for granted that that aren't just naturally in the human arena but came precisely from christianity look in ancient greece and rome would you say forgiveness of one's enemies our high values no way no way look to be honest in judaism and islam forgiveness of enemies look in in the eastern religions you don't find that stress and you do find it indeed in the teaching of jesus and then in the church i'm not saying all christians exemplify it god knows we don't but that jesus is the inventor the discoverer of this teaching i'm with hannah aaron sure so keller affirms there was a major turn when it came to forgiveness with the incarnation of christ and his teachings on forgiveness and he begins to sketch out this uniquely christian view of forgiveness and six different themes we're going to walk through them one at a time the first one he says is that forgiveness in christianity is a set of practices he emphasizes it is not therefore primarily and originally an emotion forgiveness is granted before it is experienced the practices can slowly shrink the internal anger over time and that is a great good to be expected he says but forgiveness is practiced before felt not felt before practice he's a post-liberal that's very much the language the post-liberal philosophers tend to use um modernity is very much predicated upon the primacy of experience and the primacy of interiority that the real me this goes right back to descartes comes up clearly through someone like kant the real me is deep down in here the real me is what experiences things deep down the post liberals recovered the more ancient sense of the body of exteriority of practice of the public dimension of life um hannah aaron by the way was very sensitive to that she was very sensitive to how the modern has departed from earlier ways of understanding for example our political life um and i'm very sympathetic with that so i i made sort of the post-liberal turn at one point in my life i was trained very much in a liberal approach to theology that's what my generation got but i began to read those post liberals and took that very seriously that practice comes first that you practice the faith another by the way interesting philosophical influence there is wittgenstein so wittgenstein in the by the 40s and 50s is making that similar move in philosophy so i really i'm very sympathetic with that that forgiveness is something you do not something you feel deep down within you now there is a subjective dimension to it which we can talk about but it shouldn't be something i wait around to happen in here before i do anything rather i quite agree with that the opposite i tend to do certain things which then produce in me certain changes interior changes but it's a set of practices look at my book years ago called the strangest way uh at that point i was reading howard watson baxter and aleister mcintyre and wittgenstein and many of the post-liberals and that book is all about that it's the three paths these three sets of practices that we engage in and i in fact included in that book forgiveness of enemies as one of the practices distinctive to christianity it strikes me bishop that this is a distinctive mark of christianity in general and not just the specific practice of forgiveness that it's ultimately a set of practices not fundamentally a set of experiences or beliefs you know i talked to many atheists who say like you know i can't believe in god and i i said well like what do you mean by that they say well like when i try to pray i just don't feel anything i don't feel like he's there i i don't have any sense that god is real but it's this same uh proposal that no it's it's not fundamentally about your beliefs or your feelings but if you as christi as a cs lewis said if you if you put on the cloak of christianity and try to live that way then your feelings emotions beliefs often follow that uh that engine go back to something like horowats we mentioned a couple of times whose father was a bricklayer and so he often compares things to that learning the craft and art of laying bricks how do you become a bricklayer you don't do it in a classroom you don't cultivate interior feelings about bricklaying you start laying bricks and you make mistakes and you submit to mentors and you accept correction and you try it again and then you develop maybe your own style of doing it that's a very wittgensteinian sort of approach to things it's also like um the famous origin story i tell you know when gregory thomaturkus came to him and said i want to learn your doctrine he said well first come and live our life and then you'll learn our doctrine from the inside that's i think a very good christian instinct you you do certain things that's why isn't it lovely that christianity go back to the acts of the apostles is referred to as the way so not church even or not not set of ideas or philosophy it was a way it was a way of life our doctrines at their best it seems to me come up out of the way of life it's very interesting isn't brandon that one of the if one of the practices is forgiveness of enemies what will that do to our beliefs it will in fact affect our beliefs in a very deep way but so i i'm very much with that practice comes first so that's the first quality of the christian view of forgiveness that uh forgiveness in christianity is a set of practices tim keller says the second quality is that forgiveness is always a form of voluntary suffering that brings about a greater good here's what he says whenever you are wronged the perpetrator owes you it may be literal and financial but in any case he or she has wrongfully robbed you of some good whether of reputation or relationship or health or of something else to forgive is to deny oneself revenge it is a commitment to not to try to exact repayment from them by inflicting on them the things they did to you it's the lex talionis we discussed last episode therefore he says forgiveness is always costly to the forgiver however the prophets at least within your own heart and at best in the restoration of the relationship the profits outweigh the cost what do you think about that you know look if if we're we're together now those who are watching this can see what i'm doing my two my hands together here two people are together they're they're face to face well then someone offends the other right and he absents himself well injustice the just thing is well come on man you broke the relationship well heal it you come back but he doesn't but forgiveness is now i take the initiative even though i've been the one offended i'm going to pay this extra price by going the distance that he should have gone i'm going to go to him to be reconciled costly you bet certainly at the emotional level and think of the pride you have to swallow to do that think of the your sense of being a victim that you have to overcome you are a victim but you're not going to claim it as your honor in fact you're going to overcome that it costs here's a connection actually keller makes it one of his sermons i've always appreciated why do we say that god's forgiveness of the world happened through the cross of jesus why couldn't god just come on just forgive us you know well it's this principle isn't it forgiveness if it's real forgiveness always costs the one who does the forgiving we say that jesus paid a price on the cross there's a redemption involved right is is what we're seeing iconically on the cross the manifestation of the cost that god bore the price that god paid in forgiving us god's journey into our dysfunction and so on so i i like that and um the christians got to be willing to bear it for the sake of the world and let me say this before i forget brandon remember this is also big in the post-liberal thinkers christianity is not primarily for christians it's for the world you are the salt of the earth you are the light of the world jesus says to the followers it's not uh oh yeah thank you i now have these wonderful spiritual principles so i can become a happy person well in fact you will become happy person but the point of your being a follower of jesus is to bring others to christ you you live your christianity for the sake of the world not for your own sake you're a beacon unto the nations and so as we fade away that's the sad thing that i think he's identifying the disaffiliation of so many if christians aren't in the world those who are are shaped by the by the cross of jesus we're not in the world what's going to happen is the world's going to start going down these weird paths that we identified last time and so people willing and able to pay the price of forgiveness start having a leavening impact on the world as the christian gospel is preached less and less as the christian life is publicly lived less and less and that's let's face it what disaffiliation means trouble for society will follow uh so i want my fellow christians listening to this to realize that you're not a christian for yourself you're a christian for the world you've been chosen by christ baptized and confirmed and drawn into his mystical body not for your own edification but that you might now become a lumen to the gentes right a light to the nations so watch as forgiveness fades away as a publicly lived reality what takes its place this fierce fierce honor shame brittle hard-edged violent society we have now next tim keller notes that forgiveness practices have an upward and inward and an outward aspect and each of those three is crucial so by upward he means embracing divine forgiveness inward he means granting yourself inward forgiveness and outward he means forging a reconciled relationship with others and he says that if any of those dimensions lack forgiveness it will become manifest in the other two dimensions as well you need to have forgiveness present in all three relationships absolutely people forgive when they know they've been forgiven uh look i've been offended look we're all offended all the time let's face it you can't go through human life you can't go through a day without someone offending you especially now with our microaggressions i'm offended every time i walk out the door but see if if i bracket god so i i've i've never needed forgiveness or there's no one to forgive me well then i'm going to become very harsh to those who are who are cruel to me but if i have a deep deep sense of despite my having offended god over and over and over again that i've been forgiven well if i have that sense then i'm going to be much more generous as i reach out to other people who've offended me you know so again if that fades away i i don't know if there even is a god or if there is i have no relationship to him well then i'm never going to feel forgiven and then i'm going to become before you know it a kind of barracuda to other people who are offending me but if i can wake up and say every morning like lord you know lord jesus christ son of the living god have mercy on me a sinner that i've sinned if that's not a daily practice then i'm going to become pretty brutal to people that offend me but if it is a daily practice my heart softens and i can become much more generous to those who have offended me you kind of anticipated tim keller's next point here he says forgiveness includes two inner resources that the experience of the gospel gives us for a life of forgiveness first he says and this is the one you anticipated realistic humility about your sin he says those who won't forgive show that they have not accepted the fact of their own sinfulness but if we can say there but for the grace of god go i if if we recognize ourselves as more of a wretched center than others forgiveness becomes easier second he says a joyful assurance of your acceptance in christ i thought this was so pastorally perceptive that you can't be gracious to someone if you are mainly dependent on the approval of others to shore up your own weak sense of self-worth but if you derive your self-worth from god it frees you up to forgive others yeah they're both important points you know i think of my mentor cardinal george one of his famous quips he's a bit like chesterton that way cardinal george had a lot of these little quips we live in a society that permits everything and forgives nothing and i think that a lot is dead right so we we pride ourselves on our toleration i mean everything's permitted you want to you're a man you want to be a woman okay it's all right with me everything's everything's tolerated but then nothing's ever forgiven and i think that's absolutely right uh we're harshly critical of one another offenses are carefully counted up and remembered where does it come from our capacity to forgive people precisely from this point that i have felt so forgiven in my own life bracket that it fades away my capacity to be the least bit gentle to those around me also fades away and see a lot of that branding comes down to prayer doesn't it because that's where you really you sense the forgiveness of god now i say as a catholic para excellence in the in the sacrament of reconciliation but also every mass i mean my venial sins are forgiven at every mass if every morning and i pray that jesus prayer every day lord jesus christ have mercy on me a sinner prayer is where we cultivate that sense of being forgiven i stopped praying where am i going to find that sense of being forgiven and yeah the self-worth thing too is so important the whole world hates me well okay but if i'm loved by god if god is for me you can be against me if that's where my sense of worth comes from then i'm free then i'm free i can accept this that's like ignatius biola i can accept you know success and failure i can accept wealth and poverty i can accept they love me they hate me so what because my self-identity is not grounded in either of those situations i've used that image of the center of the wheel of fortune as the wheel of fortune changes but i'm centered in christ's love right if i lose that then i'm on the constant merry-go-round of the wheel of fortune or like how am i doing in civil society well for the moment i guess they're not blaming me too much or for the moment i'm i'm not being attacked but you know tomorrow it could all change but the love of god i can live in the center of the wheel and then watch it turn all that is is basic spiritual stuff let's look at the last point keller offers in his article he says as christians forgiveness is always our job he says matthew 5 sermon on the mount tells us that we should go to someone if we know that they have something against us matthew 18 says we should approach someone if we know that we have something against them in short he says if any relationship has cooled off or has weakened in any way it is always your move it doesn't matter who started it god always holds you responsible to reach out to repair a tattered relationship a christian he says is responsible to begin the process of reconciliation regardless of how the distance or the alienation began yeah i love that you know i think brandon as you say that so much of our attention today is focused on the past what i mean is offenses that happened you know in the in the past and then somebody goes oh yeah but you know that was prompted by an earlier offense oh yeah but that's only because someone else oh yeah but don't forget and back and back and back we go tracing the origins of the offense in a way it's like look that's good that's bluebeard's closet again that's not going to get us any place rather look i know terrible history blame can go all around let's move forward let's today you and i move forward and i'm going to take a step and i know i know we can argue till the cows come home about the past and who caused this finally who cares who cares let go of it let's move forward think of jesus but you know the one that sets his hand of the plow doesn't look back you set your hand of the plow and you move forward and so write seek reconciliation don't be dissuaded don't be distracted by a constant reference to this sort of never-ending history of of offense but right now today move forward i think that's very wise all right bishop let's close with this we've spent two episodes now almost an hour talking about forgiveness yeah but it's really important though it's really important because it is central to the christian uh even say ethics to me as almost too dismissive it's it's central to the christian way you know jesus made it so so basic to his articulation of what his followers should be about so i think it's very important that that precisely as christians we become students of forgiveness we we we become expert in it and then better and better teachers of it to the wider world so anyway it's great that we're spending this much time let me close with this question i'm sure as a priest you've been in this situation countless times but suppose someone comes to you either in spiritual direction in the confessional and they admit that they're harboring deep anger resentment or hurt towards someone who wronged them who no doubt about it committed a wrong against them and they say to you how can i forgive this person what can i do it seems like there's just no way forward what do you recommend to a person like that first to pray you can always pray you can always pray that you might become more forgiving but pray for that person so pray for those who maltreat you jesus says so even if look i can't bring myself to talk to that person okay okay maybe as a first step though in the privacy of your prayer lord bless now fill in the blank whoever that person is maybe at the end of the day as as you're you're going to sleep you know lord bless all the people i love and bless my enemies too but pray that's the first step but then second i go back to my post-liberal instinct to do something it's a practice not to wait around for the feelings to come online because who knows but send a note send an email make a phone call write a letter if you're very low tech you know but do something reconcile you know means the cilia the eye lashes come back together again to be rec conciled um you're separated all right make a move oh the person didn't respond okay okay that you can't control that but do something simple phone call email note a letter but even prior to that pray i would take those first couple of steps and then see what happens well it's time now for a question from one of our listeners we love hearing from you guys so if you have a question for for bishop baron you can send it in to us at the website askbishopbarren.com today we're hearing from declan who lives in england so another of our international listeners and he's got a question for bishop aaron about the bible here's declan [Music] hello bishop baron my name's declan i live in england can you tell us what is for you the most annoying passage in the bible thanks yeah uh i'd have to know maybe more precisely what you mean like one that that bugs me emotionally or one that i i'm challenged by the most um you know i'm tempted to say brandon maybe it's it's god's answer to job you know when god first says where were you when i made the heavens and the earth because like so many other people i identify with job in his suffering and calling god into the dock and asking god and and i've written and preached on this this answer over and over again i believe it it's extremely important but nevertheless i guess at some level i i do as just from a human standpoint find that a little bit annoying when god says well where were you when i made the heavens and the earth well yeah all right lord i know but i still would kind of like an answer you know so but you know what's interesting about that cool about that question is i think that's good find the very things in the bible that annoy you and as i've said before the old adage of you know where you stumble that's where you should dig for treasure so what what trips you up what what bugs you in the bible okay that's what you need to dig and you need to ask and keep searching um so maybe that's it maybe i find that annoying but that's okay it doesn't mean i'm right and the bible's wrong it just means i chafe at that and maybe that's one reason why i've spent a lot of time with that passage and thought about it and preached on it and so on so maybe that's it but that's an interesting question i know a lot of people would probably respond to that question by referencing one of the passages we've been discussing over the last two episodes namely that we're to forgive our enemies that that seems to be the most challenging moral command jesus gives would you say that's the case yeah yeah probably enemy love you know which in the sermon is the greatest test of love um and yeah it's it's so counter intuitive it's runs contrary to our instincts yeah so where you stumble that's where you dig for treasure well thanks for joining us for this two-part episode on forgiveness i wanted to remind you one more time about the launch of two exciting resources first is our brand new six-part film and study program called the creed beautifully filmed across the california santa barbara missions where bishop baron goes over the basics of the faith as articulated in the creed you can find out more about that at wordonfire.org creed the second new resource tied to it is his book the companion book titled light from light theological reflections on the nicene creed if you've got a high schooler or a college student curious about christianity i would go so far as to say this is the book you want to give them because it's a smart detailed overview of the basics of what christians believe and why so check it out again it's titled light from light you can find that and the film at the website wordonfire.org creed well thanks so much for joining us we'll see you next time on the word on fire show [Music] thanks so much for watching if you enjoyed this video i invite you to share it and to subscribe to my youtube channel

Channel: Bishop Robert Barron

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Length: 30min 35sec (1835 seconds)

Published: Mon Aug 23 2021