“Judge not, and you will not be judged; condemn not, and you will not be condemned; forgive, and you will be forgiven;” Luke 6:37 ESV
In his book, 100,000 Hearts: A Surgeon’s Memoir (University of Texas Press), Dr. Denton Cooley writes of the rift that resulted between him and Dr. Michael DeBakey over Dr. Cooley’s implantation of the world’s first totally artificial heart. DeBakey claimed Cooley stole the device from his Baylor laboratory in a race to the first to implant such a device, while Cooley maintains it was a redesign of an artificial heart prototype made by Dr. Domingo Liotta and rejected by DeBakey.
There is much more to the story in Dr. Cooley’s book (which I heartily recommend). The result of Cooley’s implantation of the world’s first total artificial heart was a bitter feud between him and DeBakey that lasted forty years. “It was so bad,” Cooley writes, "If we happened to attend the same medical meeting, he would act as if I didn't exist." The two world-famous heart surgeons finally reconciled in 2007, less than two years before DeBakey’s death.
Why do we hang on to bitterness the way we do? We nurse our resentments and cultivate them as though they are doing us a favor. We harbor grudges, often remembering offenses for years. We act as if our mental punishment of someone else will somehow bring them to justice. But we deceive ourselves. Bitterness eventually eats away at our lives, stealing our joy and eroding our sense of peace, while never—not even once—hurting the one we resent. Someone has wisely observed that unforgiveness is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die.
This is such a painful human tendency, and we have all done it. We let offenses—large and small, real and imagined—rob us of the joy God means for us to have. How can we possibly understand God’s forgiveness this way? Our unwillingness to forgive reveals how little we understand the forgiveness we ourselves have received When our focus is on judgment and condemnation of others, how can we ever understand God’s mercy toward us? We often imagine that those who have wronged us deserve justice, while we deserve mercy. Yet before God, we are all debtors. Our offenses against one another, painful though they may be, cannot compare to the infinite debt our sin creates before a holy God. Do we really think that those who have wronged us have greater sins than we have, that God punishes theirs but overlooks ours? The truth is our offenses against one another pale in comparison to the separation our sins—large or small—create between us and our Heavenly Father.
In Matthew’s gospel, Jesus tells a parable of a man who owed the king such a ridiculously large amount that it could not possibly be repaid. He was forgiven his debt, only to demand payment from those who owed him comparatively insignificant amounts. The ending is not pretty (See Matthew 18:23-35). We don’t have to read very far to see ourselves in the story, because we underestimate the offense of our sins against God, while overestimating the offenses of others against us.
Every time we pray, "Forgive us our sins, as we forgive those who sin against us," we are reminded that forgiveness is not merely something we ask from God—it is something we are called to extend to others. The more deeply we grasp the magnitude of God's mercy toward us, the less tightly we will cling to the wrongs committed against us. People who know they have been forgiven much find it increasingly difficult to withhold forgiveness from others. When we consider how God’s love and mercy is in forgiving us, how can we continue to hold grudges?
Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you. Ephesians 4:32 ESV
Prayer: Heavenly Father, take away the arrogance and hatred which infect our hearts; break down the walls that separate us; unite us in bonds of love; and help us to forgive one another as You have forgiven us. Amen.
Fr. Steve+
