At the level of the individual, there is wisdom in my friend’s aversion to marriage, which she stated the other day as “I don’t know why people would want to get married.” I prefer to reword it as: “Don’t make a commitment you don’t think you can keep.” But at the level of society, there needs to be a complementary wisdom: Cultivate people who are capable of making lifelong commitments.

If the universe is 13.8 billion years old, Earth 4.5 billion years old, life 3.5 billion years old, and homo sapiens 200,000 years old, then God is in no hurry. Neither then should we (unless He say otherwise).

Pardon is only one half of the initial work of reconciliation.

The below is an outline of a word of instruction I gave sometime in the months after news broke of Bill Hybels’ sexual misconduct.

Where does this topical teaching, submitted under full subjection to you, come from?

• a response to some mishandling of sexual misconduct I’ve heard about in the church,
• inspired by my reading of Fleming Rutledge’s The Crucifixion, and
• a realization of what has worked in my own battle against my own sin (especially against my wife).

The starting point: The sin Jesus directly addressed via the Cross was our sin against God and did not include our sin against one another. This is never stated explicitly directly in Scripture, but consider:

• Our sins are forgiven (e.g., Ephesians 1:7), but we are to forgive one another (Ephesians 4:32).
• I repeat: Our sins are forgiven (e.g., Colossians 2:13), but we are to forgive one another (Colossians 3:13).

So there are still sins that can remain unforgiven after the Cross. Against whom? There is only one possibility: Against one another.

Therefore, after sinning interpersonally, there’s one thing we can say and one thing we cannot:

• Can: God forgives me my sin and I am reconciled to Him.
• Cannot: The person I have sinned against forgives me my sin and I am reconciled to them.

Here’s the primary point of this teaching: Human-to-human forgiveness and reconciliation will require work on the part of the sinner.

Even reconciliation to God isn’t automatic after the Cross. It probably requires:

• confession (1 John 1:9) and
• repentance (Acts 3:19, Mark 1:15, Luke 24:47).

Not to mention: It required the Cross! (Granting us forgiveness with total impunity would not have been good for us.) Wouldn’t reconciliation to people require similar things?

So, when we sin against someone else, instead of assuming a quick apology will be enough for interpersonal forgiveness to be automatic, what should we do?

• Leave your offering and be reconciled (Matthew 5:24).
• Understand the gravity of sin:
  • If you call somebody a good-for-nothing, you’re guilty enough to “go before the court” (v 22).
  • If you call somebody a fool, you’re guilty enough for Gehenna fire (same verse).
• “Bear fruit in keeping with repentance” (Matthew 3:8) and “perform deeds appropriate to repentance” (Acts 26:20).
• Imitate Jacob (Genesis 32-33), whose brother was justifiably angry with him.
  • Notice he lets his victim—who had in return threatened his life—call the shots. Jacob submits himself to Esau.
• Imitate Zacchaeus (Luke 19:8-9).
  • Notice the extravagance of the restitution he offers.

The point is: Offenders must work at reconciliation.

• Not restoration to ministry.
• Not celebrating and flaunting God’s forgiveness.
• Yes reconciliation when possible.
  • “So far as it depends on you, be at peace with everyone” (Romans 12:18).
  • “Make every effort to live in peace with everyone” (Hebrews 12:14).

Obviously, there is a major emphasis in the New Testament on the duty of the offended to forgive, e.g.:

• Matthew 18:21-22,
• Mark 11:25, and
• Colossians 3:13 & Ephesians 4:32 like we just read above.

But it’s like in some corners of Christian culture, including the corner I come from, we have successfully internalized this duty of the victim to forgive without also internalizing the duty of the perpetrator to bear fruit in keeping with repentance and to be truly reconciled.

So, the next time we encounter abuse, let’s not approach it as if the main objective is to coerce a statement of forgiveness from the victim. Let’s instead look at Luke 17:3-4’s additions to Matthew 18: “If he repents, forgive him…”

Cheap grace from God would be no good to us. Likewise, our extending cheap grace to offenders is no good to them. If there are no consequences and we all proceed parading an ersatz reconciliation instead of the real thing, the victim is left harmed and offender is left degraded.

[also posted to scottstilson.substack.com/p/forgive… with links; the date is half made up; I probably wrote this and delivered in January of 2019, actually]

A set-aside half-hour or so every day for pure leisure (no work or duty, even social duty, so probably solo). And the eventide for resting and relating!

clotheshorse noun : 1 : a frame on which to hang clothes 2 : a conspicuously dressy person

I looked this one up because having decided last year that at the beginning of this year I would spend 75% or 80% of my apparel budget, I have slowly allowed myself to become consumed with systematizing it all and finding the perfect options and shopping ethically (i.e., sustainably, locally, etc.). I am convicted by Jesus’ words on the subject. And I am mildly surprised to find out that a clotheshorse is a slightly derogatory term for someone who obviously concerned with wearing fashionable clothing. I’m not so much that, but I am allowing my mind to be consumed by clothes right now.

“Don’t worry about…your body, what you’ll wear. Isn’t…the body more than clothes?

— Jesus

I am convicted by this verse today.

It appears that middle-class U.S. friendships are not generally expected to bear the weight of deep and diffuse obligations to care. More like pleasure crafts than lift rafts, they are not built to brave the really rough waters—and [dementia is] rough, corrosive, bitter waters indeed. Dementia seems to act as a very powerful solvent on many kinds of social ties. I doubt that many friendships survive its onset.

— Janelle Taylor, “On Recognition, Caring & Dementia,” as quoted by John Swinton in Dementia: Living in the Memories of God

There is no doubt that it can be difficult to be with someone you know who has forgotten who you are and, indeed, who they are. At times it takes a leap of faith to remember them as the person that you know. But no matter what, your friends remain your friends, don’t they? The ease with which people with dementia can be unfriended raises a dark question: What is it that we actually love in those we claim to love?

— John Swinton, Dementia (105)

What did I get out of Swinton?

• Time is not money. It is the gift of God. Live in the moment and assign value to the present. Be with people.
• Visit the sick, especially demented folks.
• Dementia sucks.
• Hospitality among strangers is an important concept to bring to bear on all relationships, especially those with demented folks.
• We are all contingent, embodied people.
• Hanging out and friendship can change the world.
• God remembers us in the present even when we forget who we are.
• [edit June 9, 2023] Our windows into the conscious experience of folks suffering from dementia are quite foggy, so we can’t assume to know what they’re thinking and feeling. Even if someone’s dementia is so far progressed that they can’t even talk or move, their inner life might still be quite rich. And even if they’re expressively tetchy, they might be hating that on the inside and unable to express as much. Don’t assume. Always with interact with tenderness and patience and love. One of the main things they need is plenty of good company.

God still speaks today as he spoke to our forefathers in days gone by, before there were either spiritual directors or methods of direction. The spiritual life was then a matter of immediate communication with God.…All they knew was that each moment brought its appointed task, faithfully to be accomplished. This was enough for the spiritually minded of those days. All their attention was focused on the present, minute by minute, like the hand of a clock that marks the minutes of each hour covering the distance along which it has to travel. Constantly prompted by divine impulsion, they found themselves imperceptibly turns toward the next task that God had ready for them at each hour of the day.

— Jean-Pierre de Caussade, as quoted by John Swinton in Dementia (256)

This excerpt floored me because it sounds just like how Carla does things. And it strikes me as right. It’s how I want to walk through life.

One of the things that can serve as a guideline to discerning God’s leading: Do I feel hurried? It’s probably not God’s way. Do I feel obsessed with something about the world, like finding an Airbnb to stay in for on our way trip to Florida or finding good, vegan walking shoes again? It’s probably not God’s way. I might have to do that thing, but I don’t have to do it in that way. It’s not being in the present.

Swinton has rearranged how I approach time: It’s a gift that I have received, all my time. Freely I have received, freely I shall give, waste, live my time with others.

After reading page 169 of Swinton’s Dementia, it strikes me again that all the different parts of creation are like different organs and cells and organelles in God’s body. We are literally the body of Christ, the body of God. In Him indeed we live and move and have our being. How indeed can the eye say to the foot, “I don’t need you”?

God acts in the big stories in history—those of the Exodus, the Cross, and redemption. But God also acts in and through the smaller stories of human life. If we take time to listen and to reflect, we can discover God’s practices of revealing and acting in the strangest of places.

— John Swinton, Dementia (26)

Amen.

“If riches increase, do not your heart on them.”

— Psalm 62:10b

Once again I gravitate toward the moral performance side of this beautiful Psalm about looking only to God for strength and salvation and love. It’s a good precept, but why not journal about the God-as-source part?

Thank you, God. That’s what I need to do: Thank you.

There is a tired → grumpy → tired → etc. loop that I need to write more about and recognize. Here’s a quick take: If I am tired, then I find I don’t have the energy for some tasks. But my default setting is do-do-do, so then I get grumpy about not accomplishing things, especially if I feel like I have no right to be tired. But trying to think my way out of these things with a tired mind makes me grumpier and more tired.

My new motto is: “Live every day like it’s your last.” And no, that does not mean find a hospital, go there, find a room and lay down, eyes twitching…

— Sullivan

“One who allows himself license in little things is ruined little by little” (Augustine, as quoted by the folks at Renovaré.

You want biblical models for how the offender should behave in pursuing forgiveness? Try Jacob and Zaccheus on.

Guilt is good. (The feeling, not the fact.)

The sin Jesus addressed via the Cross was our sin against God, not our sin against one another. The latter still requires the hard work of reconciliation. If we understood this, our track record in handling abuse situations would be vastly improved. Jesus’ work on the Cross is not license to bludgeon victims toward cheap forgiveness of their abusers.

God does not need us to “make good” to him in order for him forgive us. However, humans may need us to do so. There is such a thing as manifesting (bringing forth) fruit of repentance. This makes hyper-Protestants nervous. It need not be so.

Here, Crosby makes the point I’ve been approaching by asserting that the sin God deals with on the Cross is our sin against Him, not our sign against others.

God has given (perfect middle participle– a present reality affecting us at the moment) us, everything necessary for life and godliness (2 Peter 1:3). We just need to get on with well-executed consistency in basic things, rather than lusting for some ill-defined new level of spiritual catharsis or illumination (Stephen Crosby, “It’s 2019 and God is Not Taking You to New Levels”).

That articles like these still speak to me proves that I’m still a post-Charismatic.

Provided we forgive others, God forgives us if He observes our:

• repentance,
• hopeless ignorance, or
• incapacity.

We should do the same.

Perhaps journaling has lost its shine to me because it’s naturally ego-boosting—and by that I mean it enlarges one’s sense of self—and thus, in a time when I have a strong sense of self and am quite happy to boot, it seems superfluous and self-centered. There are times when journaling is good—like through my doubt of God—and times, like now, when it’s not really a must. I could tell you about all the good that’s happening in my life right now. But what good would that do?

Yesterday on our drive home from Sullivan’s band concert at Park Forest Middle School, Carla asked what our distinguishing traits were within the family. We ended up calling her hilarious, Sullivan inventive, Éa strong, and, after “stinky” was offered, “kind” and “loving.” How about that! My life is complete.