The Cost of Forgiveness

By Paul Gregory

'Cost of Forgiveness' explores Old Testament and New Testament insights to offer contemporary applications of forgiveness.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Paul Firmin
• Release date: Mar 23, 2020
• ISBN: 9781838006013

Book preview

The Cost of Forgiveness

The Cost of Forgiveness

Paul Gregory

To everyone who seeks

and to everyone who gifts forgiveness

The cover illustration is by Pieter Fransz de Grebber (c.1600-c.1652) - The Prophet Elisha rejects the gifts of Naaman – original painting in the Frans Hals Museum, Haarlem, Netherlands – Public Domain.

First published in Great Britain in 2020

Copyright © 2020 Paul Gregory

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the author.

ISBN 978 - 1 - 8380060 - 1 – 3

Typeset by author

All Scripture quotations, unless otherwise indicated, are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV®. Copyright ©1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.™ Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide. www.zondervan.com The NIV and New International Version are trademarks registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office by Biblica, Inc.™

Sir, you have done enough, and have perform’d

A saint-like sorrow. No fault could you make

Which you have not redeem’d; indeed paid down

More penitence than done trespass. At the last

Do as the heavens have done, forget your evil,

With them, forgive yourself.

- Cleomenes - in Shakespeare ‘The Winter's Tale’: Act 5, Scene 1

1 - Setting out on a Journey

An 'open and shut' case

She had enjoyed it whilst it lasted. It had been a stolen afternoon of love. His touch had been warm, and his words had been soft. The poets of old knew how to arouse. She had wished it would go on forever. Now the words she heard had a bitter edge. Raw hatred filled the air as accusations flew at her from the small crowd now gathering around. 'Whore’ - 'Slut’ - 'Adulteress’ - the words struck home, each one like a slap on her face. More words followed - and she hid her face, now contorted by fear, behind her arms. 'Stone her!’ 'Stone her!’ 'Stone the adulteress!’

Their hands filled with hardness as they picked up the rough-hewn stones with which they would soon extinguish her life. She waited.

Then some more men joined the angry gathering. What did it matter - there were more than enough to fulfil the sentence of the law.[1] One of the newcomers came forward, sat down quite near her and he began to write in the sand. The silence—it could have been little more than a moment, but it seemed like hours.....and then a sneering question, 'Well, what do you say we should do’? Teacher, this woman was caught in the act of adultery. In the Law Moses commanded us to stone such women. Now what do you say?’

They were using this question as a trap in order to have a basis for accusing him. But Jesus bent down and started to write on the ground with his finger.

Then he spoke, very softly. 'Whichever of you is without sin, let him cast the first stone’. There was silence. Then the air began to fill with some vivid oaths, whispered loudly under the breath. One by one the gathering subsided, the older ones left first, then the younger, till at last she was alone with this man and his friends as she supposed them to be. They stood back and watched and wondered what his response would be.

He paused from his doodling in the sand and looked at her. 'I see there is no-one to condemn you - and neither do I’. His voice was gentle, but firm. He had an authority she had never experienced before. His hand moved, gently waving her to depart. She did, wordlessly and gratefully.

His voice caught up with her as she moved away.......

'Go now and leave your life of sin’.[2]

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[1] Leviticus 20.10 & Deuteronomy 22.24

[2] John 8.11

Setting out on a journey to forgiveness

‘Madam, you are charged that on the afternoon of Wednesday last you did enter into a liaison of an immoral nature with an unnamed person. Do you plead guilty or not guilty?’

‘Guilty your honour!’

I suppose it really was an open and shut case. She didn't plead innocence and the law was quite clear about the sentence; an adulteress was to be stoned. But was this how it should have ended? Was there not a better way?

Over the past few years I have encountered a number of virtual stonings. On these occasions the stones haven’t been granite or sandstone, but harsh words and attitudes. No doubt there have been reasons for these. Perhaps there were jolly good reasons - and perhaps even justly deserved. But I have also witnessed words and attitudes of forgiveness - working in and transforming lives. I would suggest, right here at the start, forgiveness is always better than a stoning.

Stonings don’t really give an opportunity to correct the evidence or to make amends if amends are needed. Stonings are brutal and one-sided. Stonings hurt, even kill, but they don’t put anything right. Forgiveness is predicated by the need to put something right, even if – perhaps especially if - there is no way of turning back the clock. I would also suggest forgiveness isn’t as easy as throwing a stone.

Forgiveness is sometimes seen as an event, a duty, a process or a journey. It is probably an amalgam of all these….. and more. For now, though, I’d like you to make your way from here through to the last page. I’m going to call it a journey, even if such a description has its shortcomings.

Together we shall set out from a clearly defined starting place. This place will be a definition and recognition of what I shall call ‘Sin’. Then we shall seek to examine the effects this sin has upon us as we journey through our lives. From time to time we shall pause on the way to make a few more detailed excursions. Eventually we may reach a destination.

I am going to call our destination 'Forgiveness' - and it is my hope we might reach an understanding of sin and the havoc it wreaks upon our lives. I also hope we might be able to reach a point where we can both forgive and be forgiven.

It will not be easy. For most of us the very act of sinning is so commonplace sometimes we hardly recognise it. For others the pain endured because of sin is so unbearable it makes any hope of forgiving or being forgiven seem to be out of reach. We’ll see.

This is not intended to be an academic work – more an exploration in life than in libraries – although I will explore a few areas in greater depth. There are a number of very good works on forgiveness – I have included a brief and by no means exhaustive bibliography. I have not set out to make this book a critique of the views of other people. I hope for three outcomes. I hope it will help to prevent stonings. I hope it will help to explore sin and forgiveness. I hope it will add to the tools leading to forgiveness.

.........Bon voyage!

Smoking nuns!

Some years ago, my Uncle Bob[3] was Musical Director at the Palace Theatre in London. It was where the stage production of Rogers and Hammerstein’s 'The Sound of Music' was playing during its London run. As a fairly small boy I can remember being wide-eyed with wonder going back-stage during the interval and after the performances.....I think I saw the show about a dozen times.

Three things stick firmly in my mind from those days.

The first is being hugged by one of the stars of the production, Olive Gilbert.[4] These days few people may remember her, but she could sing. Her voice would knock most modern pop-stars’ voices into a cocked hat! The second was always a plateful of sausages and chips after the show in the pub across the road from the theatre. The third was seeing the 'nuns' sitting around backstage in the interval, adjusting suspenders, doing their make-up, smoking and simply not being nun-like. These were the women of the chorus-line and they were universally beautiful …. At least they looked beautiful to an eight-year-old.

I learnt a lesson. Things are not always as they seem to be and the same goes for our word sin. Ask a hundred people what they mean by a sin and I expect you will get one hundred different views. They may coincide in some places, but quite clearly there will be discrepancies. If we try to start our journey, and we don't know where we are starting from, we will not get very far. We must therefore try to seek a recognisable understanding of what we mean by a sin.

There may well be a struggle to agree on a meaning. It may be rather like getting hold of a bar of soap in a bath. A short-list of concepts could include the following: Right or Wrong, Truth or Lie and Good or Bad. If your view of something leads you to think it is good and I think it is bad, we have an impasse.

We will have to work through the boundaries of whether our definition is subjective or objective – Do I simply think it in my own individual mind, or is there clear and communal agreement?

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[3] Robert Lowe was successively Director of Music at The Theatre Royal Drury Lane, The Palace Theatre and The London Palladium from the 1950’s – 1980’s.

[4] Olive Gilbert 1898-1981 – Played the part of Sister Margaretta in The Sound of Music

Looking for a place to start

We must therefore search for a starting place. It must be one that can be understood relatively easily and one that can stand up in a pretty robust way against critical comment. If we start from an understanding of sin no-one understands or no-one thinks is valid, our journey will be a waste of time.

I would suggest in any exploration of sin we have to include the following factors:

Firstly - Our starting place should have objectivity.

Secondly - It should have a sense of universality.

Thirdly - There should be some recognition of constancy.

If our starting place falls short in any of these criteria, then we are going to be lost on our journey before we take even a single step.

When I encounter a new word or try to get to grips with the meaning of a word I usually start in a dictionary - as this will usually tell me a lot more than I already know. The Merriam Webster Collegiate Dictionary defines sin in this way:-

1a.  An offence against religious or moral law.

1b. An action that is or is felt to be highly reprehensible.

2a.  A transgression of the Law of God.

2b.  A vitiated state of human nature in which the self is estranged from God. (Where 'vitiated’ means impaired, corrupted or debased) ….. Part of the fun of looking up a definition in a dictionary is having to look up the words used to explain the one I am exploring!

So far …. so good. But how does this definition score against my suggested criteria of objectivity, universality and constancy?

Is it objective? It certainly points to an external point of reference, in this case 'religious or moral law' or 'God’. This is arguably objective. But the definition also suggests, 'An action that is or is felt to be....’ I would suggest this falls short of my criteria as it seems to allow someone to decide for themselves whether they feel the action to be a sin or not. In other words, this definition appears to be subjective.

Is it universal? Oh dear. It doesn't say.

Is it constant? I would suggest it can't be if it is open to subjectivity.

Now I am not knocking the definition. In fact, as definitions go I think it is a pretty good one and it contains many of the elements we shall be looking at later. But I don’t think it is good enough for our starting place.

This journey is not going to prove easy. I think we shall have to do quite a bit of preliminary work even before we get to our starting place. And perhaps this is not a bad thing to be doing. After all, if you were going on holiday to a far-flung destination you wouldn't just go direct from the travel agency to the airport. No, you would most likely read up brochures, guides, make plans, arrange passports and money, pack, sort out the milk, papers and the myriad of preparations such a journey requires.

At this stage I am not going to suggest there are specific sins which either I – or the reader – have in mind in the preparation for this journey. John Donne[5] suggests there is a generally sinful context to his life. I think he is right. It doesn’t make him a monster; he is just an ordinary man with a skill for playing with words and a propensity to sin.

Wilt thou forgive that sin where I begun,

Which was my sin, though it were done before?

Wilt thou forgive that sin, through which I run,

And do run still, though still I do deplore?

When thou hast done, thou hast not done,

For I have more.

Wilt thou forgive that sin which I have won

Others to sin, and made my sin their door?

Wilt thou forgive that sin which I did shun

A year or two, but wallow'd in, a score?

When thou hast done, thou hast not done,

For I have more.

I have a sin of fear, that when I have spun

My last thread, I shall perish on the shore;

But swear by thyself, that at my death thy Son

Shall shine as he shines now, and heretofore;

And, having done that, thou hast done;

I fear no more.[6]

In Donne's poetry he catches the presence of God in human dealings. The pun on the poet's name registers a sense of distance that the poet's sins have put between himself and God – and he is ‘not done’. There are always new kinds of sin pressing forward as fast as God forgives those already confessed – ‘When thou hast done [forgiven], thou hast not done, \ For, I have more’. But it does not end here - the puns on ‘Son’ and ‘done’ resolve these sinful anxieties themselves – when God has done [forgiven] the writer can be assured and ‘fear no more’.

I said I have seen 'The Sound of Music' on stage about a dozen times. You may have also seen the film. Are these words familiar to you? 'You start at the very beginning, it's a very good place to start, when you read you begin with A.B.C., when you sing you begin with Doh, Re, Me’.[7]

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[5] John Donne c.1573 – 1631.

[6] From ‘Hymn to God the Father’.

[7] Maria sings this to the von Trapp children in The Sound of Music.

Let’s start at the very beginning

'In the beginning, God created’.[8] The very first words of the Bible tell us a version of creation - how God created the heavens, and the earth, light, darkness, day and night. God created the sea and the sky, the land and vegetation. God created birds and creatures of the sea. God created living creatures and finally God created humanity.

To be honest, I don't know how God did this. I don't pretend even to begin to understand. Frankly, if God took seven days or seven eons, it is for God to know and for me to wonder. All I do know is this - Genesis (which simply means ‘beginning’) tells us God created. Each time God created, God saw it was good. At the summation of this creativity God looked at all he had created and saw, emphatically, it was very good.[9]

The creation takes up the first 31 verses of the Bible, the whole of Genesis Chapter 1. Just 31 verses later, in Genesis Chapter 3 something goes horribly wrong.[10]

The man and the woman had been given a very special place in which to live and grow and have their being. God had told the man, 'You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat of it you will surely die’.[11] They ate of the fruit of the tree and, if we are honest, all hell broke loose.

The result of their action was this. God evicted them from the protection of the Garden of Eden into a hard world of pain and death. A flaming sword was placed on guard so they might not return, and I can hear the cries of anguish saying, 'but it was only a piece of fruit, how can a good God be so mean?'

I agree with you, it sounds pretty drastic, but are we dealing with 'just a piece of fruit?’ Let's investigate.

The man and the woman were given an enormous number of rights. They were given rights over the fish of the sea, the birds of the air and all the living creatures on the ground. They were given the right to eat of the fruit of any tree in the garden, except one.[12]

But rights come with responsibilities; the man and the woman had the responsibility of obeying the one rule they had been asked to obey. In failing this one task they