the importance of being foolish (V)

Chapter 5: A Heart of Forgiveness

"The Teacher whose attitude toward sin was so inexorable, the rigid moralist who surrounded marriage with the lofty bulwark of indissolubility, the austere judge who condemned the mere intention to do evil, the sacred man whom no breath of suspicion ever touched was not only called to be but actually was 'the friend of publicans and sinners.'"

"Jesus' gentleness with sinners flowed from his ability to read their hearts and to detect sincerity and essential goodness there. Behind people's grumpiest poses or most puzzling defense mechanisms, behind their dignified airs, coarseness, or sneers, behind their silence or their curses, Jesus saw a little child who hadn't been loved enough and who had ceased growing because those around him had ceased believing in him."

Manning says that there are "two curious phenomena [that] dapple Christian life in America today." He identifies the first as "our tendency to criticize more than complement... Many hypercritical Christians quickly deny the presence of any value anywhere and overemphasize the dark and ugly aspects of a person, situation, or institution at the expense of the noble and valuable facets. They delight in exposing the flaws and imperfections of others and glory in the absence of goodness."

The second is "the preponderance of the negative self-esteem." He says, "As Christians, those of us with negative self-esteem see ourselves as basically unlovable. We negate our own worth, are haunted by feelings of inadequacy and inferiority, and close ourselves off from the value of others because they threaten our existence. The exaltation of another is experienced as a personal attack. When a colleague is appreciated, we become upset and irritable, belittle their motives as vainglorious, and decry the perniciousness of personality cults... We select from our reality only those aspects that confirm our dim view of ourselves. We single out the dimension of a situation that points to rejection... [When] we go to bed we ignore the pleasant, even beautiful experiences of the day and instead go to sleep dwelling on the one incident that enhanced our negative self-portrait. Consequently, every such encounter becomes a total proof or disproof of our entire being. Every incident becomes a blanket condemnation of self a reaffirmation of worthlessness."

A negative self-image flows into our love for others, because as Jesus commanded, "Love others as you love yourself." Failing to love ourselves (and not in the narcissistic way) renders loving others a greater challenge. "The tendency to continually berate ourselves for real or imaginary failures, to belittle ourselves and underestimate our worth, to dwell exclusively on our dishonesty, self-centeredness, and lack of personal discipline, is the influence of our negative self-esteem. Reinforced by the critical feedback of our peers and the reproofs and humiliations of our community, we seem radically incapable of accepting, forgiving, or loving ourselves... The ability to love oneself is the root and foundation of our ability to love others and to love God. I can tolerate in others only what I can accept in myself."

Manning quotes Francis McNutt (and I really like this): "If Jesus Christ has forgiven you all your sins and washed you in his own blood, what right do you have not to forgive yourself?"

"When Jesus' eyes scanned the streets and hillsides, he felt compassion because the people were leaderless. He wept over Jerusalem. His words were not full of blaming and shaming, castigating and moralizing, accusing and guilt-inducing, ridiculing and belittling, threatening and bribing, evaluating and labeling. His mind was constantly inhabited by God's forgiveness... He was merciless only with those who showed contempt for human dignity; he had no compassion for those who laid intolerable burdens on the backs of others and refused to carry them themselves. He unmasked the illusions and superficial good intentions of the Pharisees for what they were and called them hypocrites, 'a brood of vipers'... He had no mercy for those who showed no mercy and an utter lack of compassion for the uncompassionate."

"A Christian who doesn't merely see but looks at another communicates to that person that he is being recognized as a human being in an impersonal world of objects, as someone and not something. If this simply psychological reality, difficulty and demanding as it is, were actualized in human relationships, perhaps 98 percent of the obstacles to living like Jesus would be eliminated. For this is the very foundation of justice: the ability to recognize the other as a human being with the sign of the Lamb glowing on his brow."

"To be compassionate is to understand the conflicts other people have created in themselves without getting caught up in their poignant drama; you realize your compassion will be most effective if you stay centered in loving acceptance."

"To live and think as Jesus did is to discover the sincerity, goodness, and truth often hidden behind the gross, coarse exteriors of our fellow human beings. It is to see the good in others that they don't see in themselves and to affirm this good in the face of powerful evidence to the contrary. It is not a blind optimism that ignores the reality of evil but a perspective that acknowledges the good so repeatedly and  so insistently that the wayward must eventually respond in agreement."

"The axis of the Christian moral revolution is love (Jesus called it the sign by which the disciple would be recognized). The danger lurks in our subtle attempts to minimize, rationalize, and justify our moderation in this regard. Turning the other cheek, walking the extra mile, offering no resistance to injury, being reconciled with one another, and forgiving seventy times seven times are not arbitrary whims of the Savior. He did not preface his Sermon on the Mount with, 'It would be nice if...' His 'new' commandment structures the new covenant in his blood. So central is the precept of love that Paul called it the fulfillment of the Law."

"Thomas Merton stated that a 'good' Christian who harbors hatred in his heart toward any person or ethnic group is objectively an apostate from the Christian faith."