Check Yo’ Self | Have Mercy On Me, Oh God
We’re going to take this a different direction than usual.
If you’ve read my previous “landmark” posts (here and here and here), which call for moments of perspective and reflection, you know that I tend to get a little…excited. Fervent, some might say. Off-kilter, probably a few more would say…
Regardless of how you might describe those posts, they’re undeniably intense. They’re meant to dig deep, to get to the roots of our very being and make us question things we otherwise would have overlooked. That process of brutal self-honesty is a good one. I think it should be integrated more often and readily in our lives than just with three posts throughout the school year.
That being said, I’m not going to spend a fourth post doing that. That was my original thought, but I won’t.
I don’t know about you, but Lent is dog-tough for me. I mean, just knuckles-bared, teeth-grinding difficult. And that’s not because I do anything special, no. I spent from 7:30 AM to 8:00 AM this morning laying in my bed, convincing myself I didn’t have to go Liturgy. I was so exhausted with church, guys. I was just at the end of my rope and wanted to sleep.
I went, probably more out of guilt and fear and pride than anything good. As I stood in church I felt the rejuvenation, and I knew I had made the right decision. But man, I did not want to make the right decision at all.
I think that sentence there really encapsulates one of the greatest struggles I face. I can walk you through every step of my decision-making process, no sweat. How I came to recognize the choice before, how I evaluated my options, how I discerned the best one–the whole kit and caboodle. But when it comes time to make the right decision, I often…don’t.
And it’s weird, because the entire time–before I make the wrong decision, while I’m making the wrong decision, and after I make the wrong decision–I’m thinking to myself, “This is the wrong decision. Stop.” But it feels like I have just no free will at all, no control over my body or my mind. And I just…poof. Make the wrong decision.
Image from Wikimedia Commons
In reality, of course, I did have free will, but I didn’t turn to God to help bolster me, to strengthen me when I was faced with that decision. I elected to face it alone, to make a solely man-made decision. The first man-made decision, of course, was Eve’s, and most of the other man-made decisions have been pretty crummy since then. Without God present in our choices, sin takes us.
“So the grand point of your whole ‘I’m going to take this a different direction post’ is: ask God for help? That’s super revolutionary, Ben.”
Let me finish, Fictional and Sarcastic Interrupter.
The thing is, when we’re about to make the wrong decision and we realize we could and should and must ask God for help, you know what we do? We compound our wrong decision by making another one. We recognize the opportunity to ask God for help, and we neglect it, casting it off to the wayside. Why? Because that wrong decision just looks oh-so-tempting.
What then is the solution? We’re trapped in a vicious circle wherein we can never make the right decision to start rectifying all of our wrong decisions. How do we escape the rabbit-hole?
Mercy.
Lord have mercy. Roughly 300 bajillion times.
You know how you don’t pay attention to the words of your prayers some (most) of the time? You gloss over them because they’re familiar or unfamiliar; repeated to the point of hackneyed or foreign to the point of unintelligible? Psalm 50 is my jam, but I always miss that first verse:
Have mercy on me, oh God, according to thy loving kindness; and according to the multitude of Thy tender mercies, blot out my transgressions.
I can’t tell you how hard that smacked me in the face this Lent. I’ve been so focused on the push, on the dogfight, on the toughness and grittiness and hard-nosed fast–on this romantic image of me standing up to Satan and to sin–that I’ve literally got zero clue what’s going on. I am a little hamster, convinced he has traveled many miles, when really his wheel is just turning a touch faster.
I was so focused on some grand battle that existed in my Pharisee head (not good Pharisee, who’s smart and knows stuff about the Bible; but bad Pharisee, who makes up stuff about God and doesn’t recognize Jesus at all) that when I heard that my God was supposed to have mercy on my “according to the multitude of His tender mercies,” I was flabbergasted.
Lent is a period of preparation–for what? For Pascha. The sacrifice of the Lamb of God, the redemption of Adam, the correcting of that first, uber-crummy, man-made decision. Pascha, the extreme humility of God, the mercy of God that he showed his fallen people by giving his only-begotten Son as a ransom to death–that is the solution to the vicious circle of wrong decisions. A God who became man for us, that he could understand that struggle, so that he could be merciful unto us—THAT’S what the Incarnation, the Ascension on the Cross, and the Resurrection is all about.
But I missed the forest for the trees. I made Lent about me and my effort–not about Christ and His glory.
What does this mean for you?
Well, hopefully you did better than I. If not, that’s okay. I’ll be begging for mercy right next to you for the next two weeks–and probably a few weeks after that, too.
-B
Love the Sinner, Hate Your Own Sin
How do we tell someone they sin in a loving way?
When we see a person commit sin, we often feel compelled to point it out to them. We may feel that they need us to recognize the sin for them so that they can correct it or we may want to shame them into changing or perhaps we have been hurt and we want retribution. Maybe we have good intentions and desire simply to see our brother turn away from destruction and get on a healthier path. What can we do?
Perhaps if God’s commandments were arbitrary and without consequence, then He would need the righteous (those who followed the arbitrary rules) to point out the sins of the unrighteous (those who ignored them). But that’s just not the case. God’s laws are not without purpose or meaning. They are given to us to shape us into persons of love, to draw us away from the stinking death that is the consequence of a life of sin and to lead us instead along God’s path of freedom and communion to the loving embrace of the Father Himself. He even endows each of us with a conscience to lead us on this path, if only we will listen to it. When a person chooses to disobey the commandments of God, the natural consequences are emptiness, fear, isolation, and spiritual death.
It is also often the case that sin begets sin and suffering begets suffering. Life is a complicated matter, an intricate web of relationships, experiences, and decisions, and the path that leads a person to commit the most grievous sins may be a path that was riddled with suffering, pain, and loneliness caused by the sins of others. A person who has only known brokenness may feel trapped and their actions may be a reflection of their own abuse and an imitation of the examples they have been given. He may lash out against being broken by others by adding to the brokenness of the world, and he may start to believe that he is unworthy of any other mode of existence–even when his conscience tells him that sin and death are tearing him apart.
The sinner starts to forget that he is loved by God and that he is made in His image and likeness. Instead, a person who has fallen into sin finds himself drawn back to the dust from which he was formed–though he may not reveal it on the outside–he stands at the edge of the abyss.
It is mercy, not judgement, that pulls our neighbor out of the abyss.
When a person expects or even deserves justice, it is precisely mercy that offers a space for repentance. Think St. Dionysios and the murderer or Bishop Myriel and Jean Valjean. Mercy, in all its forms–silence when one could point out another’s sin, ignoring a desire to exact retribution, making light of a situation by which another is burdened by guilt, assuming good intentions–transcend earthly justice and draw us, and more importantly, our neighbor toward the heavenly realm. Mercy, more than pointing out another’s faults, invites a sinner to turn around, to change his ways. Mercy, more than judgement, recognizes Christ in our neighbor and reveals Christ in us.
Love covers a multitude of sins means not only that when we love another person, we are less inclined to see their sins against us, though that is certainly true, too. Love covers another’s sin like a soothing, healing balm covers a burning, festering wound. Why deepen the wound that sin causes with our own infectious judgement or “righteous” commentary? Love and mercy are the salves we can offer each others’ brokenness. Love and mercy shed Light in the abyss.
Does this mean that we have no voice against sin in the world? In an age when moral relativism tells us that we are expected to accept what is done as what should be done, this is a legitimate concern. We often get tongue-tied when it comes to morality even when we know clearly the commandments of God: in order to avoid offending anyone, we accept anything and everything anyone ever does (or at least we pretend we do).
There is a way of life and a way of death and between the two ways there is a great difference. –Didache
Being merciful, abstaining from judgement, doesn’t mean losing our moral compass. We don’t have to pretend there is no way of darkness. You don’t have to think stealing is an ok thing to do to have mercy on a thief. You don’t have to buy into the culture’s image of sexuality to love your friends who do buy into it.
Sounds like the common adage, “Love the sinner, hate the sin.” Right? Well, not quite. I’d like to amend that statement to say, “Love the sinner, hate your own sin.” What spiritual benefit can come from hating an abstract sin? Hate the sin you commit. Hate the moments when you contribute to the brokenness of the world. Hate the times that you have thrown yourself or your brother into the abyss. Hate the thoughts that you have that slash open the already bleeding wounds of others. Hate your own denials of Christ, and do not condemn Peter.
It’s a hard task to be merciful to others when we think we ourselves are righteous. But if you don’t make time to contemplate and point out the sins of others and spend your time rather working out your own salvation, you’ll find that you yourself are in desperate need of mercy and love. If you look to yourself in the instant you are tempted to look at another, you will encounter your own brokenness and can ask for God’s mercy. Make an effort to remember that you, too, stand on the edge of the abyss and, but for the love and mercy of Christ, would plummet downward. Run to embrace the source of Light and Life.
Do not be disgusted by the sin of your brother–be disgusted by the darkness that lurks within your own heart. Do not find opportunities to convict your neighbor–find opportunities to convict your own wayward soul. Do not deepen the wounds of those suffering from sin–uncover your own hidden wounds, and while you allow God’s mercy to bandage and heal your broken life, be His healing hands on earth by learning to love your neighbor. For God desires mercy and not sacrifice, and He desires it of you.