Jesus loves you but...
Authors: John Schofield, in conversation with Sian Lewis
John is a former Principal of an Anglican Ministerial Training Scheme
Sian is a psychologist |
Though this may seem a strange place with which to begin this discussion of guilt, blame and self-forgiveness, our starting point (following Maggie Ross in her book Silence: a User’s Guide[1]) is with a ninth century development of Eucharistic doctrine. Paschasius Radbert, a French theologian, argued in De Corpore et Sanguinis Domini(foreshadowing the idea of transubstantiation) that Jesus was physically, corporally and historically present in the Eucharistic bread and wine. This was part and parcel of a movement away from the eucharist being understood as a shared meal towards it becoming seen as a sacrificial action that one watched rather than one in which one was involved. Maggie Ross argues that this:
magnified deep anxieties among believers; questions of worthiness, of judgment and guilt, of needing to inflict suffering upon themselves so as to share the agonies of the Passion and therefore become worthy, and to judge themselves as they were made to imagine that Christ was judge…all of this magnified the spectrum of human fear.[2]
Even though the Reformers of the sixteenth century moved away from such a literalist position on the Eucharist (with perhaps the exception of Luther, witness his contretemps with Zwingli at Marburg), there remained and remains an approach to Christianity and the work of God in Jesus on the cross which lays a burden of guilt on people. This is distinctly at odds with the revelation of the love of God manifested in Jesus. Any version of Christianity that starts by making the individual feel guilty and then finds a magical answer in Jesus dying for our sins is, in our minds, a false and mechanistic interpretation of 2 Corinthians 5.19-20.
...in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself,
not counting their trespasses against them,
and entrusting the message of reconciliation to us.
So we are ambassadors for Christ,
since God is making his appeal through us;
we entreat you on behalf of Christ: be reconciled to God.
This aberration is found in that style of evangelical preaching and theology which has God punishing Jesus instead of us (substitutionary atonement theory), and in Catholicism’s development of sin lists, often each with its appropriate penance (punishment?). Even those who haven’t grown up with such traditions find that the sense of guilt, the power of guilt and the fear of ‘being on the wrong side of God’ is so engrained in so much of Christianity, that the overwhelming, undeserved love of God for us is lost.
We believe that Jesus did not die as a substitute in an act which makes God a reprehensible tyrant demanding the death of his Incarnate Son (and who can love such a God?), but in solidarity both with humanity and with God. It is the 'both' that affects the reconciliation: God’s self-sacrificial dying in solidarity with God's (admittedly wayward) creatures. This takes the breath away. It is the ultimate expression of love. True love does not generate guilt; but it does cover a multitude of sins - and when the actor, the lover, is God, what is that but forgiveness? But moving this knowledge from the head to the heart is so difficult because the weight of so many centuries of being made to feel guilty rather than loved is amazingly difficult to bear, is a barrier between us and God, especially when it comes to forgiving oneself.
This burden of guilt is indeed a heavy one, despite an emphasis on the 'Jesus loves you' message, oftentimes somewhat superficial (think 1970's stickers). So there’s a mixed message there at the very least. And it is that mixed message, that confusion, which is so damaging - because it often translates into ‘Jesus loves you but…’ Ultimately, people can find themselves in a control system: you have to follow the rules which ‘we’ (whatever church or group ‘we’ is) tell you. But the love of God is not a tool for control, rather a shaping for liberation and growth.
The antidote to guilt, to the acknowledgement of sin, is forgiveness. But at a cost! ‘On that cross, as Jesus died, the wrath of God was satisfied.’ The American Presbyterian Church wanted to modify that verse in the hymn ‘In Christ alone’ to read ‘the love of God was magnified.’ The authors wouldn’t let them, and as a result the hymn was dropped. But we contend that this Presbyterian version is more in accord with the critical verses from 2 Corinthians 5 quoted above.
There the emphasis is on reconciliation – never an easy option, and certainly not for Jesus, as the cost of reconciliation fell on him, caught in the middle, as it were, between humankind’s preference not to live in alignment with God and God’s outstretched arms of love.
Reconciliation is about reconciling yourself to yourself (accepting oneself) as well as to God and to others. It draws our attention to the fact that we have the potential in God to become more than we are currently. And through it we discover that
...forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us
is an invitation to let go, rather than something that is conditional upon increasing our capacity to forgive others. It is a recognition that to forgive others you also need to forgive yourself, that both are part of the same process rather than part of a conditional promise.
For some time now, we have been struggling with the question of how to forgive ourselves. For despite a sense of being at peace with God and with family and friends who have been hurt, there remains an internal unrest. The memories of wrong and hurtful actions, decisions and wrong paths taken will not go away. Perhaps they never should? But neither should they burden us with unmanageable guilt and blame.
A useful way of beginning to address this issue is to be found in the idea of self-compassion. While we understand the idea being compassionate towards others, we neglect self-care. We don’t always see [compassion and kindness] as core values for our relationship with ourselves … Self compassion is not an indulgence; it is necessary for true discipleship.’[3]
Self-compassion is not the same as being kind to oneself which people often talk about and which can be helpful for many. But being kind to yourself could become an indulgence, a way of escape. Self-compassion, on the other hand, is quite hard, because while it is cleansing (and therefore part of what it is to forgive oneself), it does contain the word ‘passion’. Compassion is no simple act; it involves, in some degree or another, suffering with the one who evokes the compassion, realising and acknowledging hurt (not only to others but possibly to ourselves as well). So with self compassion; there is an element of suffering – passioning, were there such a word – with oneself involved. There is a danger, too – the danger of self-absorption, of wallowing in the remembrance of the sin. But if we behave compassionately towards and with ourselves, we are on the way to healing, to forgiveness, to wholeness. We may always limp[4]. But the limp becomes a part of us that we truly acknowledge, that we live with uncomplainingly. As Gerard Hughes says: ‘Our sinfulness is never the end of the Christian story; it is a part of it, the part that God is constantly inviting us to collaborate in transforming.’[5]
If we recognise that some form of imperfection is a starting point (without necessarily accepting the traditional notions of original sin), it follows that we are necessarily and inevitably open to making mistakes. These may be the result of good intentions, or simply because that’s how life is, or the result of not doing the good I want, but the evil I do not want[6]. In the Christian understanding we can expect the mistakes we make, and acknowledge, to be forgiven. Alongside forgiveness there is the purpose of amendment, which is of far greater significance that doing penance, though the two are not unconnected as an outcome of amendment (turning to face a fresh direction). Such a change is an outward sign of penitence. We do, as we have already suggested, ‘limp on’, but this is also a strength, so long as self-blame is not allowed to cripple us or prevent the self-compassionate exercise of self-forgiveness. Certainly we often did (or should) have known better, as we usually have the capacity to act differently. So in self-forgiveness we have to acknowledge that that we are only human and imperfect (simul justus et peccator). In this situation self blame is inappropriate, though we can learn to take responsibility, to resolve to learn more, to change, to be more self-compassionate.
Part of the transformation that accompanies self-compassion and self-forgiveness is what Jesus and Paul both call fruit, fruit that will last[7]. Despite our many failures and shortcomings, there is, for instance, fruit to be discerned in the form of lives that have been touched by God through us, as well as the fruit that results from our own self-compassionate act of forgiving ourselves and facing a new direction. This should not be a cause of pride; but it is a corrective to the overwhelming tendency to be hard on oneself, a cause for rejoicing, another step along the way of living reconciled with oneself.
We must not overlook the corporate element to this. We cannot do this alone; others are part of the process, whether explicitly or implicitly. The social psychologist G H Mead suggested that we learn who we are through the responses of others to us. Being a Christian involves seeing ourselves as part of a body with other people, which means that when we forgive others we necessarily forgive ourselves. An individualistic notion of Christianity avoids the generosity of forgiveness within the body, a generosity which reflects the generosity of God towards us in the Eucharist, the generosity of sharing. Our relationship with God is not simply a one to one, direct relationship; it is lived out within community – community, which, to be fully functional in whatever of the many metaphors we use to describe the experience of being ‘in Christ’, has to live with the necessity for generosity and forgiveness, freely given to us by God.
[1] Maggie Ross, Silence a User’s Guide, 208ff
[2] Maggie Ross, Silence a User’s Guide, 210
[3] Chanequa Walker-Barnes, quoted in Richard Rohr’s Daily Meditation, 19/9/23
[4] See Genesis 32.22ff, and the physical effect on Jacob of his struggle with the man who wrestled with him until daybreak, and blessed him.
[5] Gerard Hughes, Cry of Wonder, 31
[6] See Romans, 7. 11
[7] John 15.17; Galatians 5. 22-23
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Photo by Alex Shute on Unsplash |
Author:
John Schofield, in conversation with Sian Lewis
John is a former Principal of an Anglican Ministerial Training Scheme
Sian is a psychologist