It is the weekend of Thanksgiving, and as is our tradition, we have traveled to northern Alabama to celebrate with Amber’s family. I loaded up Isaac, Jude, and Ian and headed into the heart of the Bible Belt. Amber came straight from the land of the Nor-people, traveled through barren Iowa cornfields, under the St. Louis Arch, and over the Memphis bridge before arriving in her hometown. Our family has not been under the same roof for more than two weeks, and we reconvene in a sturdy brick home perched on a cliff that marks the southernmost boundary of the Appalachian foothills.
Amber comes from decent folks, members of a more conservative denomination of Christianity that does not suffer imbibers of whiskey or wine. This is a relief inasmuch as Thanksgiving dinner will not be accompanied by the libations of my more moderate family, and though I’m for moderation, it seems that, in this season, it’s easier to be around the teetotaling sort.
The Carothers of northern Alabama are a good and loving lot of giants. Paul, Amber’s father, is an imposing character who ducks under door frames when entering a room. Her mother is no slight woman either, she being over six feet tall. Amber’s two younger brothers are as tall as their daddy, and her sister is almost six feet tall. Amber, standing at five eight, is the runt of the litter.
They are as long on opinion as they are in the leg, and from time to time our exchanges regarding politics, religion, and history generate more heat than the cast iron furnace in the living room. They are more Republican than prayer in public school, more conservative than a nun’s undergarments.
I am the NPR sort; they are the Fox News Channel sort. I am more prone to see the middle ground. Often we do not see eye to eye.
The more heated political exchanges often occur as we wait for either breakfast or supper. (Perhaps it should come as no surprise that the first course of both of these meals tends to be a healthy dose of Fox News Channel viewing.) Often we find ourselves thick in disagreement there in the living room, and as things reach a respectable boil, Amber’s mother will call from the kitchen, telling us it is time to eat. Shelving political banter for the time being, we gather in the neutral zone between living room and kitchen, and we hold hands in prayer.
“Forgive us our sins,” Paul prays, as if recognizing that we’ve been teetering on the edge of some great familial divide, that we need to extend forgiveness to each other, “and we pray that you’d heal Titus.” It is the humblest, quietest prayer. I can sense the stilling of spirits, the calming of emotions. We gather under the banner of Jesus’ forgiveness, seeking common healing.
Titus sneaked into the guest bedroom at five thirty this morning in a droopy diaper—spindle limbs and exposed ribs—and he woke me. With hands cupped around my face, he said, “Juice, Dadda, juice.” I threw my leg from the bed and swung him up with my arm in a fluid motion. He put his head on my shoulder, nuzzled into the soft spot just under my collarbone. Shirtless, I felt his bones against my ribs, and I reached and tickled his side. He jerked, laughed, and said, “Again, Dadda, again.”
I missed my son while he was at the Mayo Clinic.
He had gained no weight since his visit to Mayo, and though this should not be surprising, I felt his frailty as he wriggled away from his morning tickles. I felt the heat rising in the whispers of my inner dialogue. “Where is the healing of your abiding God? Where is your faith?”
There is always a catalyst for fire, always the potential for cracking open the perforated cap of a gin bottle, for throwing the cap to the wind and crawling into a drunken bliss. This morning was an opportunity for the roots of relapse to take hold.
I opened the door to the refrigerator and reached for the juice.
“Father, you will never leave me nor forsake me.” I repeated this like a mantra, and I felt the steel in my legs. I felt the regulation of emotion. I unscrewed the lid to Titus’s sippy cup and prayed, “Lord, forgive my unbelief.”
Forgive my unbelief. It slipped out as routine until I realized what I was asking. Such a grand request, isn’t it?
The Jesus of the Gospels was a forgiving Christ. In the gospel of Luke, we see a paralytic brought to Jesus. Jesus greets him, tells him to take heart, and offers, “Your sins are forgiven.” The Pharisees overhear, harbor accusations of blasphemy against Jesus, whisper among themselves. After all, what man can forgive the sins of another man? What man can restore standing between another man and God? Jesus, the Christ of X-ray vision, sees to the heart of the matter, asks the high-horsed teachers which is easier, to heal a man or forgive his sins? Then almost as an afterthought, Jesus turns to the man and says, “Get up, take your mat and go home” (Luke 5:17–26).
Christ came to restore the paralyzed man’s motor skills, yes. But was this his original intent? Is the Christ of the Scriptures ever concerned with our physical maladies? Sure. But perhaps he is even more concerned with repairing spiritual breaches.
I have been such a wounded, malnourished faith-bearer. I have questioned God’s presence, have questioned his ability to reach into my life. I have refused to take him into the darker caves of the soul, and this morning I felt the need for forgiveness for my utter and hopeless lack of faith.
I considered my need. I once internalized childhood pain, allowed a small wound to fester, to become gangrenous.
Lord, forgive my unbelief!
I nurtured pain like a mother nurtures her only child.
Lord, forgive my unbelief!
I constructed walls around my soul, adopted views of the Holy Spirit that did not allow for healthy conversation. I set up structures to keep God at arm’s length, to keep him from taking me into the pain.
Lord, forgive my unbelief!
When the structures failed, when Titus’s sickness threatened to undo life, the nerves unfurled, the fires of pain shooting through the soul door like a backdraft, like an unstoppable inferno. God could not heal; he was not enough, I thought. I shall pray no more.
Lord, forgive my unbelief!
I screwed the top to Titus’s full sippy cup tight and handed it to him. He pulled it to his chest, held it tight like a prize.
Forgive my unbelief. Fill me with belief.
And that is when I heard the gentle whisper that is becoming more familiar.
“Forgiveness? Yes. But what is the nature of the forgiveness you extend toward others? What forgiveness have you extended to the faith healer?”
I heard the echo from Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount.
Jesus, in his most famous sermon, stood on the mountaintop and taught the God seekers the perfect prayer. It was short, simple, and understandable even to the frailest mind and the ficklest heart. In it, he taught that we should pray, “Forgive us our sins, as we forgive those who sin against us.”
As we forgive, like we forgive, in the same way we forgive—we ask you to forgive us.
If Jesus had stopped here, it would have been conviction enough for a lifetime. Jesus, though, doubled down, concluded his teaching with the coup de grâce of forgiveness statements: “If you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you, but if you do not forgive others their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses” (Matt. 6:14–15 ESV).
Each of the Synoptic Gospels contains a similar teaching. In Mark, Jesus taught, “And when you stand praying, if you hold anything against anyone, forgive them, so that your Father in heaven may forgive you your sins” (Mark 11:25). In Luke, after his teachings on mercy, Jesus preached, “Do not judge, and you will not be judged. Do not condemn, and you will not be condemned. Forgive, and you will be forgiven” (Luke 6:37).
In the eighteenth chapter of Matthew, Jesus addressed the topic of forgiveness in a parable. A king, he said, desired to settle his accounts, and brought a servant to him who owed an enormous amount. The servant pled for mercy, begged for more time so that he could pay the king back. The king listened to the groveling servant and in pity canceled the debt and sent the servant on his way. Leaving the court, the forgiven servant ran upon another, a man who owed him a much smaller amount. The forgiven servant demanded payment in full. The other had no money, pled for mercy. The king’s debtor, though, showed no pity and had the man thrown into debtors’ prison.
In Jesus’ parable, the king hears of the wicked servant’s deed and summons him to court. “Didn’t I forgive you your debt?” the king asked. “Shouldn’t you have had mercy on your fellow servant?” Irate, the king threw the man in prison and required that he be tortured until he paid back all that was owed.
I ask God for forgiveness of my unbelief, of my dependency on liquor, of my failure to offer penitent prayers. I ask and ask—forgive me, me, me—but how often do I consider extending forgiveness to others? Have I forgiven my fellow man for wielding theologies like blunted swords? Have I forgiven those God servants who created church structures to avoid interaction with a real and present God? Have I forgiven myself for holding on to so much doubt, anger, and bitterness?
No.
I say I have forgiven, yet I harbor darker hatreds and cynicism.
This was the most sobering realization.
A notion crept. The quality of my presence with God, the extent to which he might offer his healing, is proportionate to the extent to which I’m willing to extend forgiveness to others. I know I have a long, good work ahead of me.
Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner. Create in me a heart of forgiveness, and forgive my unbelief.