Response to Evil: A Personal Odyssey

R. T. Kendall has written a book call Total Forgiveness. I have not read it. I do not know all that is in it. But I completely agree with it’s mesage because the Lord has personally taken me through it. I’ve learned for a fact that I cannot pray concretely without being radical in forgiving every person who causes me offense. Those with eyes to see and ears to hear can clearly see this just from the Disciples Prayer:

Matt 6:12

12 And forgive us our debts [sins], as we forgive our debtors [those who sin against us].

The God we pray to tells us by His Son that He will hear our prayers for the forgiveness of offenses against Him,only if we are in the habit of forgiving those who offend us. If you want to have daily free and clear communications with God, you must be willing to be daily conformed to the image of His son when you pray. “Can two walk together, except they be agreed?” asked the prophet Amos (Amos 3:3), who thus puts the matter in summary.

If you walk with God, you walk with the only truly magnanimous Being there is.

But to walk with Him along the path of forgiveness comes at a tremendous price. (But also with tremendous benefits.)

The first response to evil, if it has been directed at us, is fear. The second response to evil, whether it is directed at us or we are just witnesses to it, is anger. The ultimately sad thing about anger that is drawn out of us by evil is that we can in turn become enslaved to it whether we want to be or not. It is very much the kind of anger that are our adversaries are enslaved to for which they inflict their evil on us.

There was this time when I fell into such a pit of depression that I thought it would be the end of me. It was triggered by a long-term accumulation of anger which had finally been capped when I heard news reports about yet another typical atrocity in the world.

Yes, it is a little strange that a newspaper report should have done that to me. My life has been so constituted that I have known few people personally who have suffered evil. So possibly that disposes me to being deeply affected by horrors that happen to people I don’t know. Or possibly it’s just the curse of being a writer that does that to me. But it’s how I am so constituted.

Before I saw this event in the news paper, I don’t think I had ever been as angry as I became afterward. The side affect of anger that does not go anywhere is that it turns into depression. And there has never been any good place for my anger to go. In electronics, there is a device called a heat sink. Its purpose is to collect the accumulated heat that electronic parts give off and dissipate the heat into the surrounding air, and thus keep an electronic gizmo from frying itself. I think I have spent a good part of my life being an anger sink. But one that had no means of dissipation. So I drifted into the dark world of depression.

What kind of things have made me angry? Some of it was the petty personal stuff that came with growing up hard-of-hearing. ( “Thou shalt not curse the deaf, nor put a stumblingblock before the blind” Leviticus 19:14).

But a lot more of it has been the one thousand and one atrocities and injustices our minds have all been treated to by our media over the years. The vast anonymous unending toll of kidnappings, rapes, tortures, murders, serial killings, massacres, mass maimings and mass deaths. The steady drip, drip, drip of all these things on the mind, day by day, month by month, year by year. This is the peculiar curse of the modern age. In the ages before mass communications, it would have taken a thousand years for the average human being to have learned of as much evil as one learns of in one year in the modern age.

And then there was 9-11. I saw the whole horrible thing on television from the second collision to the final collasp of the towers. And I entered a profound depression for months.

And then much later on, out of the blue, I learned of this new atrocity, the one that broke the camel’s back.

There is nothing wrong with anger in and of itself. “Be ye angry, and sin not” (Ephesians 4:26). It’s meant to give energy and cause action that results in justice. “If one be found slain in the land which the LORD thy God giveth thee to possess it, lying in the field, and it be not known who hath slain him: Then thy elders and thy judges shall come forth ...” (Deuteronomy 21:1,2).

But in our complex modern society, we give these kinds of tasks over to specialists and professionals. But we are still left with the motivating anger. The “sin not” part becomes very difficult. “Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord.” (Romans 12:19). And that’s primarily because “the wrath of man worketh not the righteousness of God.” (James 1:20). We are such fallible creatures that we can hit the wrong target. Iraq was invaded primarily because of 9-11. And even with the best will in the world, the initial bombing campaign still produced at least two big truck loads of dead women and children (if some initial and subsequent reports are to be believed). And now the relatives of those women and children will one day extract vengeance for that.

Anger becomes a very strange animal once you’ve been living with it for a long while. It calls up animalistic feelings. And imaginings.

Long before 9-11, I started to be afflicted with something I had come to call “Anger Flash Mind Movies,” or AFMMs. I’d hear or see about some atrocity some malefactor had committed, and my mind would instantly take me into a 3-D sight and sound movie theater in my head, were I would see what the malefactor did to his victim(s), and then part of my imagination would go off and construct all kinds of interesting ways of paying him back for what he did and have that replay in my mind for a dozen times or more.

And here’s the animalistic part. Sometimes this stuff would not stop with the malefactor. Sometimes the AFMMs would take in all the members of his family and sometimes even all his distant relatives. This is, of course, very like the way the Colombian drug lords think. It’s the kind of atavism that reaches back to before the law of Moses with its injunction that eye must be for eye, only, and tooth for tooth, only. (compare Daniel 6:24 with Exodus 21:23,25). This is the defiling part of anger where the one offended becomes worse then the one who committed the offense. It does indeed “worketh not the righteousness of God.”

And the thing about having AFMMs is that after a while, instead of you having them, it is they that have you. It was getting to the point where on any given day, some innocent train of thought in my head would encounter an association with one of the situations I was angry about, and then an AFMM would fire off in me and consume my whole attention for the space of a few seconds that seemed like an eternity. Usually an eternity of self-defilement.

I’ll give one example. One time I was at a party for one of my nephews, and it got to the time when the kids started rapping the pinata. The pinata reminded me of Mexico. Mexico reminded me of El Salvador. And El Salvador reminded me of the massacre at El Mozote in which the Atlacatl Battalion systematically slaughtered a whole village full of captive men, women, and children. Children like ones at my nephew’s party. And most of the battalion had gotten clean away with it. An AFMM fired off in my mind directed at all the members of the Atlacatl Battalion and anyone connected to them.

Over time a lot of these little AFMMs accumulated. And it was getting to the point where I would be momentarily distracted by being consumed by one, and then come out of it with my heart pounding and my blood pressure up, and my legs shaking. The AFMMs were not only starting to take over, they were putting me through activation states similar to autogenic training.

So here I was, past 9-11 and with this evil thing having been done to an innocent. I was dealing with depression and with rage. “The wrath of man worketh not the righteousness of God.” Especially my wrath. I could finally conceive of why a young teenage girl would strap a bomb onto her body and blowup herself up along with a roomful of other young teenagers like herself, as happened in Israel. Living on AFMMs will do that do you. Eventually.

And then I had one of those events happen to me where I received something that I needed right when I really needed it.

I was lying down reading a novel called “Blue Shoe” by Anne Lamott. And what did I get? A conversation between two Christians:

Daniel? Has there ever been anyone you couldn’t forgive?”

He thought about this. “Yeah, there was this guy, it took me three or four years. ... I hated this guy. Hated him. But I prayed for him anyway. One morning I woke up, and the first thing I did was to feel around for my hostility toward him, like for my wallet, and in that instant, I saw that I had become his jailer. But being his jailer was making me his prisoner.”

I’m Nicky’s jailer, Mattie said to herself. ...

So she did exactly what Daniel had done. She went around praying for Nicky and Lee, and when one of them called, she made herself be sweet. ... “I pray for you both to have everything that will make you happy.” She did it even thought she really felt no peace, just hatred and jealousy and self-loathing. Then one morning she woke up in the cold and the dark, and the ugly feelings were gone.

“But I say unto you,” says Christ to his disciples “Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you; That ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven: for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust.” (Matthew 5:44,45).

I now wonder, briefly, if those of us who reverence Christ aren’t doing ourselves a degree of disservice by reverencing him so much. It can be a false reverence when we listen to what he says, nod a holy nod, and then go about our normal everyday business.

It seems to me that an irreverent person would be closer to understanding what Christ is trying to tell us to do here. An irreverent person would read those verses above and say “He’s nuts.”

If we all said he was nuts instead of thinking his words were “holy words” meant only for church on Sunday, we might, some of us, go on to wonder what he really meant by saying those words. We might start to wonder if a lot of things he said were not so much nuts as counter-intuitive.

I’ve become convinced that that phrase, “counter-intuitiive” is what we should keep in mind when we read Christ’s words. The phrase means that something works even though everything about it screams out at us that it will not work the way it has been proposed to us. Counter-intuitive.

I thank Anne Lamott for making me see that Christ’s words were an experiment that I could try.

So in my prayer note book, I started adding F-pages. It already had R-pages for requests for myself. S-pages for supplications I made for others, and T-pages for thanksgivings I wanted to remember to say. Now I added F-pages, which were lists of people I needed to forgive before my anger over what they had done choked me to death.

I added prayers not only for their forgiveness by God, but also for their continued happiness, life, and heath, as well as a clear, unequivcal statement that I had forgiven them myself.

Onto these lists went the names of a goodly number of the people who have been the subjects of my AFMMs. The kids in school who used to whisper insults behind my back because I couldn’t hear them. The members of the Atlacatl Battalion. The fanatical and hating Jihadists and terrorists in general. Osama Bin Laden in particular, and even Saddam Hussein.

I was not saying here that justice should not be dispensed at some point. I was simply telling God that I was refusing to take from Him what was His. Vengence belonged to Him, and I would not steal it from Him

C.S. Lewis one advised someone who was having philosophical problems with the idea of forgiveness, that, perhaps, the best way for her, was to start with her next door neighbor before working up to the Gestapo. I, on the other hand, required extremely desparate measures if my soul was to survive.

Did I like the idea of saying these new prayers? Absolutely not! It felt like I was committing the worst sort of perversion. I felt like I was being asked to eat a pu-pu platter made with poo-poo. I would rather have died than do that!

But that turns out to be part of the agenda.

“Then said Jesus unto his disciples, If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me.” (Matthew 16:24).

Lest we perceive those as holy words for a Sunday’s church-going, I will update them for the modern day. The cross then was not the symbol it is today. It was a method of execution. Here’s are some modern day equivalents.

“Then said Jesus unto his disciples, If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his noose, and follow me.”

“Then said Jesus unto his disciples, If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his electric chair, and follow me.”

“Then said Jesus unto his disciples, If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his lethal injection, and follow me.”

The meaning here is as counter-intuitive as what has gone before. You just can’t say those kinds of prayers unless something very vital in you dies. It’s just not possible. Only the grace of God, and one’s own crying need, makes it possible.

But there is one help to help you in this. It is the faith of Abraham.

“Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?” (Gen 18:25). That was the foundational faith of Abraham. And that is what assures us that we can indeed let vengeance belong to God who alone owns it. He may act himself (Genesis 18:20-21). Or He may delegate it to the State (Romans 13:1-5) or even to the workings of States among themselves (Daniel 4:34-37). Or He may reserve it to His final Tribunal, The Great White Throne of Revelation 20:11. But He alone owns it. Vengeance is His.

It was really, really hard to say those prayers the first time. And those kinds of prayers can not be said only once and grudgingly. For prayers of this kind to reach up from the temporal into the eternal, and from our minds and into our hearts, they have to repeated repeatedly.

Yes, as we’ve just seen, there is such a thing as “vain repetitions” (Matthew 6:7). But there is also the parable of the unjust judge (Luke 18:1-6), which teaches us to keep on bugging God until we get what is asked for. And these things are what must be asked for if our souls are going to survive.

And what did I get for saying these hideously perverted prayers? A kind of death, yes. But also a kind of resurrection.

My AFMMs finally left me. After all these years. My seething anger no longer has me. I have been given back control of it. That doesn’t mean I don’t still get angry. It just means that my anger went back to being my servant instead of my master. And that’s a wonderful feeling to have.

Verily I say unto you - He ain’t nuts, and He ain’t kidding.

Why?

But why does this freedom happen?

It happens because in the Son, the Father has executed the vengence that belongs to Him alone so that what is left behind may be love alone.

I Jn 4:10-11

10 Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation [satisfying of God ] for our sins.

11 Beloved, if God so loved us, we ought also to love one another.

(KJV)

It is on this basis, and no other, that the apostle Paul taught what Christ taught:

Rom 12:19-21

20 Therefore if thine enemy hunger, feed him; if he thirst, give him drink: for in so doing thou shalt heap coals of fire (i.e. his own conscience) on his head.

21 Be not overcome of evil, but overcome evil with good.

(KJV)

Christ bids you to forgive as radically as you can, as much as you can. It’s for the sake of your own soul. For if you do not forgive, your must face the tormentors:

Matt 18:21-35

21 Then came Peter to him, and said, Lord, how oft shall my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? till seven times?

22 Jesus saith unto him, I say not unto thee, Until seven times: but, Until seventy times seven.

23 Therefore is the kingdom of heaven likened unto a certain king, which would take account of his servants.

24 And when he had begun to reckon, one was brought unto him, which owed him ten thousand talents.

25 But forasmuch as he had not to pay, his lord commanded him to be sold, and his wife, and children, and all that he had, and payment to be made.

26 The servant therefore fell down, and worshipped him, saying, Lord, have patience with me, and I will pay thee all.

27 Then the lord of that servant was moved with compassion, and loosed him, and forgave him the debt.

28 But the same servant went out, and found one of his fellowservants, which owed him an hundred pence: and he laid hands on him, and took him by the throat, saying, Pay me that thou owest.

29 And his fellowservant fell down at his feet, and besought him, saying, Have patience with me, and I will pay thee all.

30 And he would not: but went and cast him into prison, till he should pay the debt.

31 So when his fellowservants saw what was done, they were very sorry, and came and told unto their lord all that was done.

32 Then his lord, after that he had called him, said unto him, O thou wicked servant, I forgave thee all that debt, because thou desiredst me:

33 Shouldest not thou also have had compassion on thy fellowservant, even as I had pity on thee?

34 And his lord was wroth, and delivered him to the tormentors, till he should pay all that was due unto him.

35 So likewise shall my heavenly Father do also unto you, if ye from your hearts forgive not every one his brother their trespasses.

(KJV)

On an island in the Pacific, in the 18th century, there was a Polynesian society as yet untouched by Christian missionaries. We usually think of Polynesian societies in Gauganish terms of innocence and sweet simplicity, unspoiled by Christian notions of sin.

The reality was quite the contrary. This society was riven by a chain of vendetta and revenge going back centuries. Someone became angry and killed someone. The dead person’s relatives would then slay a relative of the killer. Then the relatives of that dead person would seek their revenge. And on and on and on the cycle went, century after century.

One day, an island chieftain saw his daughter murdered before his eyes from a great distance. But unlike all the long centuries before, this chieftain gave place unto wrath, and committed his cause to God who judges righteously. He did not exact revenge, because he had become a Christian. Because of his act of faith, a century-long chain of vendetta and revenge finally came to an end at his feet. It had stopped with him. And it is for this reason that Christ asks us to do the impossible:

Matt 5:38-45

38 Ye have heard that it hath been said, An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth:

39 But I say unto you, That ye resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also.

40 And if any man will sue thee at the law, and take away thy coat, let him have thy cloke also.

41 And whosoever shall compel thee to go a mile, go with him twain.

42 Give to him that asketh thee, and from him that would borrow of thee turn not thou away.

43 Ye have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbour, and hate thine enemy.

44 But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you;

45 That ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven: for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust.

(KJV)

Matt 5:23-24

23 Therefore if thou bring thy gift to the altar, and there rememberest that thy brother hath ought against thee;

24 Leave there thy gift before the altar, and go thy way; first be reconciled to thy brother, and then come and offer thy gift.

(KJV)

Is it when we walk with Christ in prayer that we can be made to do the impossible.

Don’t forget the F-page.