Ready to Receive
In the car yesterday, I was flipping through my iPod and ended up playing all my Morten Harket songs. My favorite is from Wild Seed, called Ready to Go Home, the first bit of which is
On the street below these walls
Where I used to walk
Now I can barely crawl
All this darkness rising tall
Lord, shine a light for me
I’m waiting to be called
I’m ready to go home
I’m ready to receive forgiveness for my sins
I’m ready to begin
The line that struck me anew is “I’m ready to receive forgiveness for my sins”. Our culture has gotten off into the weeds on the concept and reality of forgiveness. The biggest error is when people say things like “I can’t forgive myself for…” The reason you can’t forgive yourself is because it is impossible! There’s no sense to the statement; but that it is so commonly said points to the mass confusion or maybe the mass delusion in our Western culture (actually I don’t know if it is a Western culture confusion or just an American culture confusion).
So let’s go back to the basics. Forgiveness is a transaction between two people (similar to promises but that’s another post). This truth is easiest seen in the banking realm, so consider Person A goes to Bank B and asks for a loan which B grants A. So A executes a promissory note (there’s that promise post trying to intrude) in favor of B which specifies the terms of the loan – the interest rate, the frequency of payments, the length of the loan, and so on.
If A ends up not meeting the terms of the promissory note and is unable to pay B back the principle and interest, it is possible (but not frequent in banking) that B can forgive A the loan. Which means that A from that point forward no longer owes B anything. So the essence of forgiveness is that A owes B something (explicitly or implicitly, for example parents owe their children love and care whether they actually ever explicitly pledged it – it is owed because of the nature of the relationship) and B can choose to forgive A that what was owed was not delivered.
To say that you want to forgive yourself is like taking money from your grocery budget and putting it into the electric bill category… no money has actually changed hands, to forgive that ‘loan’ doesn’t change the overall amount of money in the budget.
Of course when folks say that they can’t forgive themselves they aren’t talking about money, because if they did they’d realize how ludicrous it sounds. No they are talking about things they did or didn’t do to others, or poor choices they made and regret, or other aspects of their pasts that they in retrospect wish had come down differently.
Back to Morton’s lyrics. What struck me is that when people say they can’t forgive themselves, perhaps they are saying that they aren’t yet ready to receive forgiveness. They don’t want to yet leave debtor’s prison. Why would any of us prefer to stay bound up rather than be free?
The problem with freedom (another post begging to be written) is that with freedom comes responsibility, and people are uncomfortable with the weight and reality of responsibility. If you are truly free, blaming someone for the outcome or the current state-of-affairs is as ludicrous as thinking you owe yourself some money and deciding not to pay it. But being bound up in the impossible task of trying to forgive yourself is the perfect excuse to remain embedded in your self focus and self pity.
Embracing your freedom and running with it is a gift to the world, and results in a feeling of worth and vitality. Try it today. Ready go.
January 11, 2013