Posted on 04/26/2020 8:18:51 AM PDT by CharlesOConnell
A man became diabetic, before that he had no desire for sweets, afterwards he started hiding candy around the house like an alcoholic hides bottles. Before my heart attack, I never wanted salt, never liked it. But afterward, "mmm, gimmie that salt, GOOD!!!". It's a variant on "the grass is always greener on the other side of the hill", that whatever we can't have is precisely what we want.
How do we regard the idea of "healing" from the effects of sin? This is in an age when the chief sin, is disbelief in sin. When we are going along to get along, with this age, we recognize spiritually-related ills, but they are something that "just happens to us", we are not personally culpable.
But like the desire for those harmful fruits that we only want because they are forbidden, there is a dividing line in the sand, between spiritual ills that we aren't responsible for, and those we are.
We are moral agents, not just monkeys with highly developed brains. No matter how many millions of monkey-years spent at a typewriter randomly hacking out letters, no monkey will ever pound out Shakespeare's Hamlet, Dante's Divine Comedy, Dostoevsky's Brothers Karamozov or Bach's Goldberg Variations.
And the smoking wick of that lamp ready to come alight with genius from the Holy Ghost (or, in Picasso's case, from Satan), is present in all our lamps, in our ability to make moral choices never dreamed of by any monkey.
It is here that the line drawn in the sand, like the lines of Jesus' drawing on the ground before the accusers of the woman caught in adultery, the "just step over this line", is the prime determinant.
We have to tell careless children who break something or hurt someone, "no it didn't just break", "no, your fist didn't hit him in the eye by itself," "You Did It". Kids want to ignore the fact that their behavior, in so many instance when "it just broke", is actually sinful negligence against their responsibility to think before acting and take due precaution against their actions becoming harmful.
This is where we cross the line in the sand. Spiritual "healing" from the effects of evil is primarily our evil, on our responsibility, when we actively sinned, because our minds are dark and our will to love is weak. (And our capacity infinite, to self-justify by making up stories about what we did wrong, as if it were normal, natural and inevitable.)
To a prayer called "the Act of Love", we first pray, for divine caritas to come down to us from God, "O my God, I love You above all, with my whole heart and soul, because You are all good and deserving of all love". (We can't catch this divine wind in our tattered sails, unless the Holy Ghost sends His winds, from where we know not. We have no wind of love on our own.)
The second part of the prayer, after God about our neighbor, is "I love my neighbor as myself for love for You".
The third part relates to our sinfulness and need for forgiveness, before we can become healed so as to grow in virtue in our workout in Love's gym, strengthening our will to love, to prefer the good of another over ourselves.
We say, "I forgive all who have injured me, and I ask pardon for all whom I have injured".
But there is a distinction here. We can't receive forgiveness from Christ, unless we permit Him to forget the sins He forgives. In the details, we do have to distinguish those errors for which we aren't responsible, from those sins for which we are.
So, here, we might say, about our forgiveness of others, both inadvertent harms and responsible sins against us, "I forgive all who have injured me, and I ask pardon for the sins I have committed against others".
This is why the most perfect prayer is the one Christ gave us. "…as we forgive those who trespass against us". Like the big servant caught embezzling millions who throttled a little chump-change debtor on the way out from being forgiven, we are super-rich in the forgiveness of our mega-sins against the infinitely innocent God. And so we will not be forgiven if we do not forgive.
I remember the day that part of The Lord’s Prayer hit me like a 2x4 to the head...
Pray: “Lord, help me to forgive those who trespass against me as I would be forgiven my trespasses against you.”
Or: “Lord, help me to forgive my debtors as I would be forgiven my debts against you.”
We can forgive, but that does not mean the sinner is free of punishment!
Sometimes “turning the other cheek” is no longer an option.
“This is in an age when the chief sin, is disbelief in sin.”
Sin seems to more and more celebrated as we progress toward that inevitable judgement.
It’s hard to be humble enough to own up to every sin we are convicted of, but acknowledging our sins, specifically, is what our gracious and forgiving Lord requires.
One version in the Bible says “forgive us our sins”
..,. It’s hard to be humble enough to own up to every sin
Humility is the foundation of all the other virtues hence, in the soul in which this virtue does not exist there cannot be any other virtue except in mere appearance.
Saint Augustine
What we “get” for our sins on this earth is a very small fraction of what we deserve. Sometimes, part of what we “get” is doled out by our fellow man. Unjustly, it might appear to us. What does my fellow man know of my past sins? But when you take the higher view, forgiveness can and does flow.
God places prerequisites for forgiving our sins, that we acknowledge our sins, apologize, and ask for forgiveness. I interpret that God’s instructions to forgive people as we have been forgiven means that we should place the same prerequisites on people who have trespassed against us.
The purpose of the Sermon on the Mount (where we find this prayer) isn’t so much to enlighten us as to convict us. The moment I read the SOM I instantly realized that I had never lived up to this standard even a day in my life. If this is what it takes to earn your way into heaven then I’m lost - it’s hopeless. My only chance is a Savior.
It almost requires that “those who trespass against us” believe in the same things. It works real good then, not as much with sociopaths.
Our good Lord said that we will be shown mercy according to how much mercy we showed others.
Sociopaths are to be avoided at all times. But, if one is confronted by one them, then courtesy is always the best defense.
But, if one is confronted by one them, then courtesy is always the best defense.
True, but it's always a NO-WIN against a sociopath but at least one said the right thing. The good is for oneself.
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