h1

this I believe. maybe.

February 6, 2010

This I Believe: The Personal Philosophies of Remarkable Men and Women is a best selling collection of essays named after the radio program of the same name, started in 1951 by Edward Murrow. The editors decided to bring the concept back 50 years after it ended, inviting people from all walks of life to post essays online about their core beliefs.

This is not my essay.

But I find the collection interesting and useful. It’s a good read, with over 80 perspectives. There’s even an app for that, with 65,000 essays now available on your iPhone. The rules are interesting as well. Be positive. Avoid dogma. Focus on one idea.

For Sarah Adams that one idea is “Be Cool to the Pizza Dude.” Adams, an English professor at Olympic College writes clearly and expressively about this philosophy of life. Her essay shimmers with generosity and perspective. This is, among other things, a practice in empathy, she writes, grateful for the fact that when she had such a job she didn’t have to share her Cheerios with the cat.

Coolness to the pizza dude requires her to be humble and forgiving, honoring the virtue of work itself and the equality of all peoples. Tip the pizza dude, she advises, “for that which you bestow freely and willingly will bring you all the happy luck that a grateful universe knows how to return.”

That sounds like dogma to me. Karma anyway.

And there’s more. Unlike the greedy executive, the pizza dudes “sleep the sleep of the just” she insists.

Unfortunately her pizza dude is at least as likely to be greedy as the executive, he just lacks the power to harm as many people. She may be forgiving when he cuts her off in traffic, but that sort of proves my point. Our fallenness betrays us all.

I’ve got nothing against pizza guys. I want to be as forgiving and as gracious toward them as I can be. Being cool to the pizza dude can be and should be a discipline of life; for Adams he is clearly a device for remembering how important kindness is.

But in the end her ideals are rooted in her dogma.

They always are.

h1

Humility and how I achieved it….

February 4, 2010

“The essayist is a self-liberated man, sustained by the childish belief that everything he thinks about, everything that happens to him, is of general interest….Only a person who is congenitally self-centered has the effrontery and the stamina to write essays.”
- E.B. White

In a recent post, pastor and author Kevin DeYoung referred to the “fetid pool” of self promotion in social media. He writes:

With all the tools of social networking and all the trappings of evangelical celebrity culture (whether in a hall with thousands of people or in your own circle of friends), we must all be vigilant against shameless self-promotion. Especially those of us who have a blog.

Now, aside from the fact that anyone using the word “fetid” is just looking for attention, he raises some interesting questions about the dangers of pride, especially for writers in a world where publishers and editors insist that promoting our own work is a necessity. As my colleague Mary Darling’s editor told her, her Midwestern humility was charming but she was going to have to get over it.

Carl Trueman’s rant on the subject seems a little over the top. He describes some of the self-promotion he sees, particularly by Christian authors, as “madness, stark staring, conceited, smug, self-glorifying madness of the most pike-staffingly obvious and shameful variety.”

It’s not a new problem, of course. Calvin seldom spoke of himself and was buried in an unmarked grave. Spurgeon, however, perhaps the most prolific preacher of all time, spoke of himself often and people lined the road for miles at his funeral. The Apostle Paul, while downplaying his pedigree defended his apostleship vigorously.

So here I am, trying to build a readership for my blog, sending out announcements on Twitter and posting an announcement on our church website. How does one think about this? Where does one draw the line?

At the ever-present risk of rationalizing, I do feel responsible for the stewardship of a gift, long recognized and encouraged by others. And I feel responsible for my message as well, and for the discipline of crafting it carefully.

So when someone links to my blog on Facebook or Twitter I’m happy. If they subscribe to my blog or forward the email I’m happy too. But is that the same thing as pride?

OK, so I admit that checking the metrics on my readership every fifteen minutes is a little obsessive, but shouldn’t I want people to read what I’m writing? And how will they hear without a Twitter?

Seriously, I could be just as proud of not asking people to read my blog. DeYoung notes: “Whatever humility I evidence, I bet half of it comes from not wanting to look proud.” But once we become proud of not promoting ourselves we’re right back where we started.

I like DeYoung’s solution- to look at Christ much more often than we look at ourselves. Ultimately a successful Christian blog depends on the integrity of the message and the messenger. Motives always matter. And readers will respond.

Speaking the truth in love will go a long way. But will it double your readers? Only if those who find it and like it refer it to others.

h1

The Genesis file, part 1.

February 2, 2010

This is part of a new project, an occasional commentary. It’s something I’d like my kids to have someday. I’m just highlighting phrases as I read, because they delight me. Or scare me. If I left out your favorite phrase or image feel free to chime in.

This feature will show up about once a week, tucked in with the other posts on faith and culture. I wouldn’t be making any doctrine out of this stuff if I were you.

Genesis 1:20. …and let the water swarm with swarms of living creatures.
I know about this. I grew up on the coast in South Florida, where fish ran in schools and fiddler crabs swarmed along the shore and shrimp “ran” with the tide at night. In swarms, a picture of the richness of creation and the immeasurable grace and glory of God.

Genesis 2:18. …I will make him a helper fit for him.
Thank God for that. A helper fills in what is lacking in the “helped,” which in my case is a lot. This is a good thing, God says. And being alone is, well, “not good.“

Genesis 3:11. Who told you that you were naked?
A rhetorical question, maybe the first. It was the cool of the evening after all. I like the way no one actually answers the question. Eve gave me a piece of fruit? That’s not an answer. But the shame was palpable. It was the end of our transparency and the beginning of our vulnerability. (This word, naked, is pronounced with an “e” where I come from, by the way. As in “neck-ed.”)

Genesis 4: 1. I have gotten a man child with the help of the Lord.

Eve was fallen but not stupid. She recognized immediately that every good thing we get is with the help of the Lord. She says this when she has Cain. Then she lost Abel and had Seth. When Seth has a son of his own we’re told “At that time people began to call on the name of the Lord (4:26).” Few things are more miraculous than a birth, nor as thought provoking as a grandchild. Tabitha, Timothy, Andrew, Sarina—they all provoke this response, recognizing the help of God and calling on the name of the Lord.

Genesis 5:29. …this one shall bring us relief.

“This one” is Noah. What a wonderful name Lamech gives him. It sounds like the Hebrew word for rest, although if you were (are) outside the ark, the cure is worse than the disease. But Noah found favor in the eyes of the Lord. We all can, but we all don’t.

Genesis 6:2. The sons of God saw the daughters of man were attractive. And they took as their wives any they chose.
Saw and took. Adam and Eve saw and took too. Leads to trouble, apparently. In this case, the Nephilim, the “Fallen Ones.” These would be the bad guys. Mighty warriors in an “earth filled with violence (6:11).” It would be a mistake to think the taking here was civil. “Any they chose” does not suggest reciprocation. Rape, maybe. They start with something good and twist it into something bad. We haven’t learned much.

Genesis 6:9. Noah was a righteous man, blameless in his generation.
How do we do this? Same verse: Noah walked with God. The formula hasn’t changed and it’s not any easier. You have to build a boat and wait for the rain.

Genesis 7:9. …and the Lord shut him in.
I’m a little claustrophobic, but I like being shut in in this way. In the ark. In the covenant. In the place God wants me to be. Please Lord, shut me in.

Genesis 8: 1. But God remembered Noah…..
And here we are, still being remembered.

Genesis 8: 21. …for the intention of man’s heart is evil from his youth.
See also 6:5. Clearly we’ll need more than a boat. I first saw this when I read Lord of the Flies in ninth grade. I finally faced it when I saw myself in a mirror as a young college student who had emotionally defrauded a young woman. I’m just beginning to understand it. Thankfully, there is more grace in this book than in the other one.

Genesis 9:3. Every living thing that moves shall be food for you.
Sorry, PETA. Can’t go there.

Genesis 9:7. Teem on the earth and multiply in it.
Swarm all over the earth, recognizing the “help of the Lord.” And here’s a rainbow, by the way. And a covenant, too. Here’s more grace, swarms of it.

You’re going to need it.

————————-
All references from the ESV.

h1

Happy birthday Katie

January 29, 2010

The joys of heaven will surely compensate for the sorrows of earth. Hush, hush, my doubts! death is but a narrow stream, and thou shalt soon have forded it. Time, how short—eternity, how long! Death, how brief—immortality, how endless! Methinks I even now eat of Eshcol’s clusters, and sip of the well which is within the gate. The road is so, so short! I shall soon be there.
—Charles Spurgeon, morning thought, January 29.

Happy Birthday to Katie.

I won’t tell you how old she, although she wouldn’t mind. I just don’t want to put up with all your comments about how rude it was of me to say, projecting your insecurities on her.

But I will say this. We got married when I was 21 and we’ve been married 36 years. (Notice I didn’t say how old she was when we got married.) The point is we’re both getting to the age where we finally understand how much more we have to learn and appreciate how little time we have to learn it.

Each morning we get up and have tea together, reading books out loud. We just finished Piper’s This Momentary Marriage and we’re looking for a new book, probably a novel this time. (I’m thinking a L’Engles’ A Wrinkle in Time, no pun intended.) We’re also reading Spurgeon’s Morning and Evening and talking about whatever Scripture we may be reading on our own.

Quite frankly most mornings one or both of us has wiped a tear or two away, not because we’re sad but because we are overwhelmed with the grace of God and the opportunities we have to share in his work and contemplate his glory.

We’ve been thinking about our kids, talking about how we might encourage them in their marriages. And we’ve talked about people in our church or college students we know who may need encouragement as well.

Hospitality is a large part of this, and it seems like two or three times a week we are feeding strangers and friends, other pilgrims besides our son Pilgrim who is still at home.

And I think the thing that’s most overwhelming is that we have the strength and resources to do it. We’re grateful. And we’re grateful that God might use our faithfulness to each other to display something about his own covenant keeping love with his people.

But all week I’ve been mostly celebrating Katie. Peggy and Jim prepared a wonderful brunch for us yesterday and we had tea with Pilgrim and some of his friends today. Tomorrow we’re headed to Chicago to spend time with our son Michael and his wife Karina.

I had done some sneaking around to surprise her today with some artwork she had admired. She thought I was at the office Tuesday but I was in Ann Arbor picking it up. She was delighted.

I am too. Katie is a rare treasure, more wonderful than she ever imagines, which is part of her beauty.

I’ve been listening to her talk about Deuteronomy most mornings, grasping the big picture of God’s holiness and our need. She asks a lot of questions, which is better than having all the answers. And she is perfectly fine when I don’t know the answers either.

We’ve long since become co-journers, if I can coin a word of my own. We started our journey together aware that we were looking for a city, which hath foundations whose builder and maker is God. Frankly, the skyline of that city becomes clearer everyday.

Looking forward, Spurgeon says in his devotional for this morning, “the believer’s enlightened eye can see death’s river passed, the gloomy stream forded, and the hills of light attained on which standeth the celestial city.”

And so age is not our enemy. And fear is not our friend.

There is much joy to be had, in this life and in the one to come.

h1

Throwing the First Amendment under the bus

January 26, 2010

It’s a happy story with a happy ending.

Doctors recommended that Pam Tebow terminate her pregnancy when she contracted an infection on a mission trip to the Philippines. But she carried her son to term.

That would be Tim Tebow, the star quarterback for the Florida Gators who led his team to two BCS championships and won the Heisman Trophy in 2007. She’s glad she chose to have him. He’s glad too.

But CBS is being pressured to not air a 30-second commercial during the Superbowl that tells this story. The ad, sponsored by Focus on the Family, is offensive to women, some claim.

Here’s what they are saying, according to Fox News:

“This organization is extremely intolerant and divisive and pushing an un-American agenda,” said Jehmu Greene, director of the Women’s Media Center, which is coordinating a campaign to force CBS to pull the ad before it airs on Feb. 7.

“Abortion is very controversial, and the anti-abortion vitriol has resulted in escalated violence against reproductive health providers and their patients,” Greene said.

“The Women’s Media Center is coordinating a campaign with the National Organization for Women and other women’s groups to launch an online petition and letter-writing campaign targeting CBS,” Fox reports. It’s an extension of their “don’t throw women under the bus” campaign for abortion rights in government supported health care.

So apparently this pro-choice organization doesn’t think Pam should talk about the choice she made.

There’s not a little hypocrisy here, not to mention a complete disdain for the First Amendment. No one in these organizations has seen the ad to which they are so vehemently opposed.

Most of the ads banned from the Super Bowl have been because they were too racy or suggestive, including one by PETA that featured scantily clad women. But some advocacy ads have been shelved before, like one by the United Church of Christ that showed them “admitting” a gay couple.

But in a world where the Supreme Court just ruled that limiting campaign donations by corporations was an infringement on free speech, perhaps even CBS wouldn’t want to take a chance on limiting Focus on the Family’s freedom to “Celebrate Family-Celebrate Life,” as the ad is named.

But just in case, you can thank CBS for airing the ad here.

And feel free to pass this post along.

h1

Why are men so angry?

January 25, 2010

The current economic downturn has been called a he-session, since its effect on jobs has been largely in industries dominated by men, such as finance or construction. You can imagine a bunch of guys sitting around in their underwear, eating mac and cheese and playing with handguns. The sales of both are up.

Scott Nelson is writing a book called Crash: An Uncommon History of America’s Financial Panics. In an essay last week in the Chronicle of Higher Education, Nelson argues that American culture is shaped by the anger of such men, showing the contexts which gave us things like the Constitution, bankruptcy protection and the national guard.

And he thinks the current anger will result in better policing and improved intelligence networks among credit rating agencies to identify bad risks. (I feel safer already.)

“The American political system has been jiggered and rejiggered through two centuries of angry, impulsive violent men,” he writes. “Sometimes political institutions have been calibrated to deploy that violence, sometimes to redirect it, sometimes to squash it.”

Theologically this could be referred to as common grace—the way in which government and family, both institutions of God’s design, keep us from destroying ourselves.

But angry men are a problem in every sphere. And I don’t mean men as in the human kind but men as in the male kind. Workplace and school shootings, domestic abuse, road rage—all usually men. Where does the rage come from?

There is even a name for it: intermittent explosive disorder. An improperly functioning brain chemical supposedly affects 16 million of us, mostly young men.

I’m pretty sure my dad didn’t have it.

I can count on one hand the number of times I saw him angry in his whole life. When I start counting my own outbursts I have to take off my shoes, but I’m not an angry man either. My wife agrees, and she is in the best position to know. Neither are my three sons, for which I’m thankful.

Now I have a lot of sympathy for people with chemical imbalances. But quite frankly I don’t think 16 million of us have bad brains. I do think many of us have bad role models. And all of us have bad hearts.

I’m grateful for the good example my dad provided and its influence on me and ultimately my sons. But anger is rooted in our nature. We are selfish, rebellious and angry from the beginning. We are angry because we don’t get our way. You don’t have to teach a two year old to throw a temper tantrum.

And men in particular, emaciated by things they can’t control, respond by shooting things and yelling at everyone. The one gender-specific instruction that Paul offers parents is “Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger.”

We overcome this anger only through the grace of God. Dad had reason enough to be angry. The child of divorced, alcoholic parents, he lived on the streets for a while—the sort of person who often ends up in prison.

The gospel transformed him, however. And with the “new nature” that it promises, he was able to do what Romans 13 requires: casting off the works of darkness and putting on the armor of light.

I don’t think it was always easy for Dad. Or for any of us, as far as that goes. But that’s how the gospel works. God had every reason to be angry with us. Instead he sacrificed his own Son, opening a stream of grace and forgiveness. To accept this is to be changed by it, little by little, day by day.

In the long run, it’s more powerful than Prozac.

h1

A reluctant recycler

January 22, 2010

We recycle at our house. We wash the cans and bottles and remove the labels. We stack the Wall Street Journal by the door and carry out the compost.

The “we” here means Katie. I’m extremely reluctant to wash something that was designed to be thrown away, although I will carry things off to the recycling centers and landfills. Sometimes we do this together and call it a date.

But I keep telling her when she dies I’m calling the garbage company right after I call the undertaker. Then I can throw everything in one big can like everybody else.

This is a joke. I would probably keep doing what we’re doing. Stewardship is an important biblical mandate and it makes sense to reduce and reuse our waste.

But we are not Green with a capital G.

Take the Gaia people, for example, a new age movement devoted to Mother Earth. For them floods, fires and other natural disasters result from our eco-hubris. (I’m not sure about earthquakes.)

They are easy to make fun of, and Brendan Neill, an agnostic critic over at spiked-online.com does a nice job, although he is mocking Christians at the same time. He writes: “These days it is not acceptable to present terrible acts of nature as manifestations of God’s divine fury, but it is de rigueur to depict them as some kind of climatic payback for our greed and addiction to consumerism.”

But in “Green Guilt“, a more reasonable essay in the Chronicle of Higher Education, Stephen Asma argues that environmentalists can come across as self-righteously as the most repressive religionist.

A philosophy professor at Columbia University Chicago, Asma writes:

Instead of religious sins plaguing our conscience, we now have the transgressions of leaving the water running, leaving the lights on, failing to recycle, and using plastic grocery bags instead of paper. In addition, the righteous pleasures of being more orthodox than your neighbor (in this case being more green) can still be had—the new heresies include failure to compost, or refusal to go organic.

It even manifests itself in apocalyptic visions (see the Gaia people above) and neurotic guilt. He has students who believe the earth would be better off without us. He writes “in this extreme form one does not seek to reduce one’s carbon footprint so much as eliminate one’s very being.”

Asma, whose six-year-old son now turns the lights out on his father, even when he is using them, believes this creates a world where we can vent our aggression “as long as its justified by piety and the defense of [environmental] virtue and orthodoxy.”

In the end, Asma, author of the upcoming book Why I Am a Buddhist, wants to save the planet after all, as long as we temper our “natural propensity toward guilt and indignation.”

As for me, I’m content to let God save the planet, or at least the people in it. And I’ll be responsible for his creation without being neurotic about it. What’s a few more cans to wash in the grand scheme of things? I just think there are more important stories to tell and more dangerous sins to overcome.

But it kind of makes me want to call the garbage truck after all.

h1

What Robertson actually said

January 20, 2010

First of all, let me say I’m not a big fan of Pat Robertson.

His theology is a little too experiential for me, and his ego a little too large. I’ve met the man and I have friends who have worked for him. He insists on a level of loyalty I find frightening. And when I had the opportunity to work for him once I decided not to.

That’s not to say he hasn’t done anything good or important. The university he founded, for example, is the source of much thoughtful, Christian scholarship. I just don’t look to him for leadership.

His thoughts about Haiti may have been misconstrued, however. I understand the media may do this. In fact I expect it. It’s easy to find what one conservative says and let that represent what all conservatives think. I resent the stereotype and the over simplification.

But in this case Robertson didn’t actually say that God sent an earthquake to Haiti because they made a pack with the devil. He suggested they made a pact with the devil, which they did, and that this had resulted in deep poverty. He hoped that in this tragedy they might turn to God, which any thinking Christian might also hope.

Here is what he actually said:

Ever since [the pact with the devil], they have been cursed by one thing after another, desperately poor.…. They need to have, and we need to pray for them, a great turning to God, that out of this tragedy, I’m optimistic that something good may come. But right now we’re helping the suffering people, and the suffering is almost unimaginable.

You can see the video here.

He referred to a historical event and said it resulted in deep poverty. Voodoo, with its fatalism and spiritualism, is in fact culturally pervasive in Haiti. Many thoughtful people would agree that it contributes to their impoverishment.

But Robertson says he is optimistic something good could come out of the current situation, encouraging Christians to pray and acknowledging the suffering, while raising $2 million in relief funds.

And so the media piles on. In an interview with the Haitian ambassador, who twice referred to Haiti’s “pack with the devil” as having positive consequences for the U.S., Rachel Madden says Robertson is “an unintended consequence of the First Amendment.”

But Christians are piling on to.

Many of them point to a post by Donald Miller, author of Blue Like Jazz. Miller, who “doesn’t want to debate the theological implications of Robertson’s statement” because he likes to “speak of faith the way I speak of personal matters.” He says he “pities” Robertson for trying to show us how “tough” he is.

I suppose you should judge for yourself.

But while I might find Robertson’s timing off or wish he was more empathetic or wish the media didn’t assume I shared every aspect of his theology (see my views here), it would be hard for me to describe his tone or demeanor in this video as “tough.” Or condescending or judgmental or any of a number of things he is being accused of.

Miller pities Robertson.

I pity us all.

h1

What happened in Haiti?

January 18, 2010

The mountains quake before him
and the hills melt away.
The earth trembles at his presence,
the world and all who live in it.
Nahum 1:5

Now that Pat Robertson has weighed in on Haiti, relating the tragedy there to a pact the Haitians made with the devil, the media is weighing in on his pronouncement, often at the expense of any thoughtful theological response.

In the New Yorker, for example, George Parker says the earthquake’s “malignant design” reflects a history of suffering for the Haitian people “so Job-like that it inevitably inspires arguments with God, and about God.”

He contrasts Robertson’s response with a humanitarian one, and all the long-term international obligation that entails. “To patch up a dying country and call it a rescue would leave Haiti forsaken indeed, and not by God,” he concludes.

Writing in the Wall Street Journal, Kevin Rosario, author of The Culture of Calamity: Disaster and the Making of Modern America, takes a more comprehensive view. When Lisbon collapsed from an earthquake in 1775, the religious response was that it was a judgment from God, while more “fashionable thinkers” argued it was a blessing in disguise, part of God’s benevolent design, allowing new growth and prosperity by wiping away the old and making room for the new.

At the time, Voltaire rejected both views, insisting on a moral imperative whereby any civilized response would be to learn from the mistakes and weaknesses such disasters reveal and use human intelligence and sympathy to make a better world.

In fact, however, the outcome of the Lisbon disaster was a new city, a marvel of human ingenuity and imagination. Rosario believes since then it has been a cultural response in America to see such things as both a spiritual correction, calling us back to virtue, as well as the ultimate urban development project, as seen in both San Francisco in 1906 and Chicago in 1871. Creative destruction, as it were.

But Katrina’s devastation of New Orleans has shaken our optimism, revealing that the implications of any such calamity for the poor has been little understood and seldom accounted for. In the haste to rebuild Chicago, for example, more people died as a result of unsafe construction practices than died in the fire itself.

Something like this could easily happen in Haiti, and in the end Rosairo comes down on the side of Voltaire: a thoughtful, deliberate response by the nations is Haiti’s only hope.

For a Christian this is not sufficient. Haiti’s hope is in God, as is ours. But if the earth trembles at his presence, what is he doing in Haiti? While there is no completely satisfying answer, there are some very unsatisfying ones.

Consider a recent worship service at Hillsdale college where one of the musicians assured the audience that this was a natural disaster and God was not involved in any way. This is a God who is limited by his own creation, and who is not sovereign or purposeful at all.

I can only imagine one thing worse than presuming to understand the divine calculus and that would be to discount it altogether.

This much seems true. God is intentional in his dealing with Haiti as a nation. But he is also intentional in each individual life there. If he knows when a sparrow falls from a nest, he certainly knows when a child is trapped in the rubble. It’s humbling to trust him when we don’t understand him, but if I can do something and know how it will affect two or three people, God can certainly do something and know how it will affect everyone involved.

I think of a friend with cancer. I can see what God is doing in her life and in her faith. I can see what is happening in her husband’s life as well. I have some sense of how it is affecting her children and our congregation. And I have some sense of how it is affecting me. In all this I know God is working out his sovereign purpose. At times I’m not very happy about it, but ultimately I can rest in it.

Such a God is big enough to be at work in each citizen of Haiti. All I can do is believe this, and rest in it, while I continue to love him and love my neighbor as myself.

Someone died in Haiti last week because of their involvement in voodoo and its effect on others. And someone else died so their faith, and their family or friends’ faith, would bless many. And each individual who lived does so with responsibility to and mercy from a just and holy God.

So does each person who hears their cry and turns away.

h1

Look who’s sorry now

January 14, 2010

Who’s sorry now? Apparently everybody.

Elizabeth Bernstein’s column on relationships in the Wall Street Journal last Tuesday explores the growing tendency to track down people on the web and apologize for something that happened years ago.

As she points out, email or Facebook makes us braver and more impulsive. And there are even websites, such as ThePublicApology.com or Perfectapology.com to help us achieve absolution.

Forget to return a library book? Date your ex-roommates ex-boyfriend? Tell your brother-in-law not to marry your sister? No problem. One guy, she reports, contacted a university that admitted him 13 years ago and apologized for not filling out the questionnaire they sent him about why he chose not to attend.

As Bernstein points out:

We live in a self-help culture, where therapists, 12-step programs guides and talk show hosts are forever reminding us that forgiveness and gratitude are the way to happiness (and sobriety). Many times, a long overdue apology, like a confession, does more for the person offering it up than it does for the one receiving it.

That’s the problem, isn’t it. Things often get messy when we do them for ourselves. As I’ve pointed out, our fallenness is not about our inability to do anything good but about our inability to do anything wholly good. The self always gets in the way.

And while confession is good for the soul, it’s often a self-centered project. Forgiving is the really hard work.

Yes, I can see the need in some cases to set things right. A former student sent me a check last year for $150 I had loaned him years ago and, quite frankly, had forgotten about. He clearly needed to set things right for his own conscience sake, and as it turned out, I needed the money. But the point here is not about the apology- it’s about setting things right.

But what the Scripture really requires of us is forgiving others. Seventy times seven. Even when they didn’t ask. “As the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive,” as Paul so aptly puts it in Colossians 3.

The world isn’t always a better place because we track people down and tell them we are sorry, although saying we’re sorry can be a good thing. But it is always better when we stop keeping score, harboring grudges, keeping track of our emotional or material debtors, and nursing our bitterness. The word for forgive Paul uses here is charizominoi—to freely and graciously give, without expecting or exacting a payment.

We don’t need a website to do that.