Authenticity Part 3b: Forgiveness and Anger
A second issue about authenticity swirls around the nexus of anger and forgiveness.
(As an aside, and in the interest of transparency and authenticity, these first two issues are close to home for me. I tend to use more than my fair share of colorful (*ahem*) language and have been known to rage from time to time. The are neither the observations of a neutral observer nor a call to be just like me nor theological justifications for me to be just who I am. Now back to our story…)
I take these two together because… well… Jesus does. I’m such a fundamentalist. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus is talking about murder. He slides into a discussion about anger by telling us that when someone is angry it is as though the have killed the other person: they are liable to the judgment.
Here we have another indication that being “true to ourselves” isn’t always an indication that we’re living into the righteous life that God desires. In fact, the point of so much of this portion of the sermon is that who we really are can show us how bad our problem really is.
But this isn’t just about showing us we suck, Jesus wants to form us into a community that lives into the narrative of a Father who has brought forth children by the self-giving life of Jesus. And this, I think, is the turn that Jesus’ instruction takes.
After warning people not to be angry or call names, Jesus talks about life in the family of God. The family language is not accidental: “If you’re offer your gift on the altar and there remember that your brother or sister has something against you, leave it before the altar and go–first be reconciled to your sister or brother.”
Two things here: First, did you notice that our worship of God is given back-seat to our relationships with God’s children? Against our individualistic tendencies that see worship as a matter between me and God, or my heart alone before God, this passage says no, the quality of your community as a place that is living into the reconciled relationships that God himself establishes with us is our first priority.
But surely this attending to the other needs to be done because otherwise our hearts won’t be right in our own worship?
Nope. Here’s the second point. We don’t go and be reconciled because we remember that we’ve got to forgive someone else. We go and reconcile because we realize that they have to forgive us. Our identity as a people of forgiveness is so vital to our life before God that God demands we leave aside all pretense of piety until that issue is worked out.
Sometimes, the importance of authenticity has one redemptive function: to show us and the people around us where we need to live into the narrative that we are otherwise denying in our hearts and lives. To not forgive, or to not pursue forgiveness, is to live in denial of the story that makes us who we are. About anger in particular, James later warns us that this does not bring about (much less evince!) the righteous life that God desires.
Authenticity is not enough.
Indeed, continuing to live into the foundational moment of our story, not merely receiving forgiveness but extending it to others, is the sine qua non of continuing to participate in the story of God’s family: “If you forgive people their transgressions, your heavenly Father will also forgive you, but it you do not forgive people, neither will your father forgive your transgressions.”
Our call is not merely to be authentic, but to become authentically Christian, authentically children of our forgiving and loving heavenly Father.
I’ve never noticed the way worship of God takes a backseat to relation with one another. It seems most days of studying that the Christian is more difficult than I could possibly want to imagine. With this overwhelming realization, an equal hope sets in with the story of Christ and Paul’s drive. It makes life difficult, but what else is there?
DanIEL, (are you annyoed by this yet?)
Worship with God takes a “back seat.” I get your main point here. I don’t know you well enough yet, but I wonder if you are trying to stir your readers’ minds a bit here more than anything else. But my initial thought is that I don’t know if I agree with the “back seat” language. I don’t know if Jesus would ever place worship of God as a back seat sort of thing. I understand that worship as understood by popular American Christianity in terms of an individual between me-and-God-thing misses what true worship is about. But, I wonder if Jesus here is simply making it clear that the worship of God is never disconnected from one’s relationships and actions toward others among God’s people. Could it be that one of the take-home points in this passage is not that worship of God takes a back seat to forgiveness and just relationships with others, but rather that worship of God is defined by this sort of living that Jesus is proposing? To borrow your words, is Jesus perhaps saying that true worship of God is this: participating in a community that “is living into the reconciled relationships that God himself establishes with us.” Putting it this way, worship takes no back seat. Jesus just defines what worship is really all about, as did the prophets (Isaiah 1:13-18; Amos 5:21-24). But this time the center is Jesus himself.
Thanks for the post. I’ll be thinking about it some more….
Kyle
You ask a good question, Kyle. I think that your instinct is right: I sometimes say things to be provocative.
What do you mean that this time the center is Jesus himself?
It may be that our individualistic world of worship is a defining trait of what “worship” is that I’m responding to. Seriously, would anybody in America think that they should skip Sunday morning just to go be reconciled with someone who’s mad at them?