Forgive and Forget

So last week at Journey (our high school youth program) we talked about the Paschal Mystery, and how Jesus offered for us the Paschal sacrifice so that we could be with God for all of eternity. This upcoming week, we are going to be talking about the Passion and Resurrection of Christ (Merry Christmas?). As I was preparing for both of these topics, I felt the overwhelming feeling of God’s love, and let’s be honest, who could possibly read the Passion of Christ and not see the love of God. I took this to my personal prayer time, and I cannot express how happy I was. I mean, when you really begin to pray about how much God loves you and how much he provides for you, you just cannot help but smile. Continuing on with my personal prayer, I opened up my latest spiritual reading (currently The Problem of Pain) and found this highlighted section where C.S. Lewis says:
I have been trying to make the reader believe that we actually are, at present, creatures whose character must be, in some respects, a horror to God, as it is, when we really see it, a horror to ourselves...I notice that the holier a man is, the more fully he is aware of that fact.

Now, this is of course just a quote taken out of one chapter of this book (this chapter being happily called Human Weakness), but it also reminded me of a quote from Blessed Teresa of Calcutta who said:
Some saints described themselves as terrible criminals because they saw God, they saw themselves—and they saw the difference.

As you can see, this kind of clashed with the way my prayer time began. It started with the warm fuzzies of the love of God and ended with a condemnation (awkward). I’ve realized now that I went through it backwards. When praying, I personally say, start with condemnation, and then move into God’s love, because I had never experienced an awkward silence in prayer until that moment.
The great thing is, that our God is the best at breaking awkward silences, and he took complete advantage of this one. If you really sit down and think about our nature, you cannot help but sit disheartened. There is not a day that goes by that we do not sin, that we do not fully trust God, that we do not love God completely. We can barely move without offending our loving Father and Creator. We can barely open our mouths without saying a lie. It’s not a very optimistic view of human nature, I’ll give you that, but it is honest. However, the beauty of salvation promises us that it does not end there (thank God).
Some Christians have gotten this idea that when Christ rose from the dead, it gave him spiritual amnesia, meaning that Christ rose from the dead, and simply forgot the sins of the world. Well, I’m going to call “heresy” on that one, and we’ll just close that case. Christ did not forget our sins. If you were beaten, scourged, and crucified because of the sins of the world, would you be quick to forget it? If you want a surefire way to test this theory (you little doubter), then consider this: when Christ rose from the dead, did he not still have the wounds of the cross? Ever since the moment sin entered the garden of Eden, it became a permanent barrier placed between ourselves and God. The beautiful thing about God, is that as soon as we ask, he jumps over it.
Here lies the fine line between forgotten and forgiven. The most popular synonym for the word “forgotten” is unremembered. The most popular synonym for the word “forgiven” is pardoned. It is impossible, thanks to the beauty of our brains, to completely forget something, especially if it was offensive to you (short of hitting your head really hard). It just is not how our minds work. But to forgive someone, is quite simply to love that person more than they deserve. God has not called us to amnesia, he’s called us to repentance and forgiveness. He’s called us to share in his image of mercy and love. I can say first hand that I originally thought that forgiveness was a feeling that you gave another person for something they did. Then as they say, you forgive and forget (one of the dumbest statements of humankind). But forgiveness isn’t a feeling, it’s an action. And we cannot just forget that we were hurt or offended. I also used to think that once forgiven, always forgiven. However, I quickly learned that because our minds refuse to forget, a single offense requires multiple actions of forgiveness. It is all too easy to begin dwelling on how we were hurt or offended, and then the entire initial forgiveness is useless. That’s why we have to continually forgive. We have to constantly offer our mercy when the wounds reopen.
Now, I say all of this, because human nature is just a muddled reflection of God’s nature. I believe if you really look at God’s love, you see that he has not forgotten that barrier, but chooses to look past it. He’s willing to jump over it, as soon as we ask. He’s willing to suffer and die on a cross, not because he will forget it in three days time, but rather, because he will remember that although the pain was overbearing, it was worth spending eternity with us. That’s why when Christ appeared, and Thomas doubted, he didn’t give him a hug and fill him with warm fuzzies. Jesus offered his wounds and showed Thomas what he was willing to do for the sake of his soul. Every moment that we choose to sin again, and we shove God to the other side of the wall, he looks through the renewed barrier and waits for us to call back to him. The cross was never intended to be a timeless magic eraser. The cross is the instrument that God uses to jump the wall. The suffering and death of the Son of God and Man is the means of our salvation. It most certainly is not an easy love, but it is perfect, and if there is one thing that God promised to us, it’s that he would love us perfectly and not out of a poor memory.