Crazy Forgiveness

"Bless those who curse you; bless and do not curse."

Those words of the Apostle Paul are typed in Courier New font atop my copy of The Devil in Pew Number Seven, which is the unbelievably gripping true story of a woman who saw both of her parents shot--her mother killed and father never to recover--as a seven-year-old.

While the details of the story are gripping enough, with the shooting of a mother and father in front of their two children serving as the culmination of a six-year campaign of terror waged against a rural pastor's family back in the 70's, the whole point of the book boils down to one word: forgiveness.


After devoting 12 chapters worth of ink mainly to the events leading up to and including her parents' shooting, the author, Rebecca Nichols Alonzo, spends three chapters largely describing and unpacking her on-going road to forgiving not only the gunman, but the man who had been behind the terrifying span of her early childhood that including 10 bombings of the pastor's house and church, and who ordered the final "hit" that would take her mother's life.

With incontrovertible evidence--and lawful convictions--in both cases, the two men served a combined 22 years in prison.

While her mother was shot to death in the episode, her father, the pastor, whose nerves had been stretched paper-thin in the years leading up to the fatal shooting of his wife, slipped in and out of paranoia in his remaining seven years, much of which was spent recovering physically from the two bullet wounds he suffered in the attack.

Justice was not served. Not by a long-shot.

In fact, the top investigator of the case, an agent with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, has been undone by the injustice in these cases, leaving a string of broken marriages in the wake of his 30-plus years of frustration over the shortcomings of the justice system.

Rebecca Nichols Alonzo, in stark contrast, had been taught to forgive her enemies and pray for her persecutors, both by the word and model of her parents.

When she was 16-years-old, entirely orphaned, Rebecca received a phone call from the madman who was behind all of the attacks, yet served only one year in prison.

He was out of prison at this point, but he had a completely surprising message for Rebecca: "I'm sorry".

Her response, even at 16, was completely beyond worldly explanation: "I told him my brother and I did forgive him. I told him, in fact, we had forgiven him long before he had asked for forgiveness."

As it turns out, the on-going witness of a pastor unwilling to return evil for evil had paid off, and this madman had repented and believed in the gospel after all. The pastor's life had been ruined, his wife killed, but his obedience had been rewarded.

The fact is, that we, as Christians, have absolutely no choice but to forgive. "Forgiveness is the language of heaven," Alonzo says, and she--if anyone--would have the right to shrug off such a command if it were optional to the believer.

This forgiveness is obviously shocking to the world, because it's impossible without knowing--or rather, being known by--a God who has forgiven our prideful belittling of His Glory and baseless murder of His Son. It took the death of His Son to make us His children, and we are to carry on that legacy of costly forgiveness.

A reporter for CNN that wrote a four-part series on Alonzo's book asked the author if she had been crazy to forgive the man who had drove her family to the brink of ruin and, ultimately, taken away the lives of both her parents:

"I'll tell you how I respond to that," she says. "If I had not forgiven, I would be crazy in an institution somewhere. My parents had planted the seeds of forgiveness in me as a little girl: Pray for those who persecute you and bless those who curse you."

With more time and ink to explain her road to forgiveness, Alonzo lays out her "top four" observations forged out of her thoroughly biblical lifelong path to forgiveness:

1. My sins will not be forgiven by God is I refuse to forgive those who have sinned against me. (see Matt. 18:35)
2. I miss an opportunity to show God's love to an unforgiving world.
3. I'm the one who remains in jail when I withhold God's grace by failing to forgive.
4. If I have trouble forgiving, it might be because I'm actually angry at God, not the person who wronged me.

Let me tell you, reading through this book over the last few days has served as a telescope for seeing afresh the gospel-arranged constellation standing all the way through Jesus' sermons and the rest of the New Testament--not to mention the entirety of the Old Testament, which continually calls God's people to wait upon His justice, to "leave room for the wrath of God."

God has forgiven me of the vilest, cruelest and ugliest of sin, and He commands me, as His child, to extend that same forgiveness to others, even though they may sin against me "seventy times seven."

This is the message I need to preach to myself daily, to keep the garden of my soul free from the weeds of bitterness, and to live as a free man, loved and accepted by the God of Heaven by the virtue of the death of His Son.

God Beyond the Trivia

When I was a kid in Sunday school, our teacher asked us this question:

"Can God make a rock so big that He can't even move it?"

Even though I was 12, that question struck me as bogus. One that I would later come to find out to be on par with, "How many angels can fit on the head of a pin."

The reformers had a pretty sweet answer to questions like that. There was an on-going battle of half-wit theologians who were trying to decifer what God was doing before He created the world. The reformers' answer:

"He was creating hell for people who pry into mysteries."

You've gotta love an answer like that. It like when the Pharisees came asking Jesus where He got His powers in Matthew 21. Far from playing along with their little politically charged game, Jesus poses them another brain-buster in return:

"I'll answer you that if you can tell me where John the Baptist got His power."

This was a provocative question, and the Pharisees had no answer at all for it, because neither of their potential answers would meet their self-serving purposes. If they say John's authority was from heaven, then that doesn't square with the fact that they opposed him and eventually had him whacked.

On the other hand, if they say his authority came from man (which is really what they think), then a riot is going to break out immediately, because the people overhearing this conversation believed whole-heartedly that John was a prophet of God.

Jesus then goes into a couple of parables that depict God's chosen people--Israel, and more specifically, the Pharisees--rejecting and killing not just the prophets (i.e. John), but the Son Himself (i.e. Jesus). Now that's what you call conversation domination!

What do these questions have in common? They're irrelevant, and therefore, irreverent and even sacrelgious. When God comes to us, He doesn't come in the form of a brain-teaser, whipping up gargantuan stones that He may or may not be able to lift.

He also doesn't come in the form of a decoder ring, breaking down His every thought from eternity past. He doesn't come to answer all of our self-serving curiosities.

But still, when God comes to us, questions are answered and His Truth--He Himself--is revealed. When Jesus, the eternal Word of God, takes on flesh, He is "full of grace and truth." After all, He is "the way, the truth and the life."

In Jesus, we are given "all things that pertain to life and godliness." That means God doesn't just reveal to us tid-bits or trivia about Himself, but rather, in Christ we see and know all things neccesary to know God and live for Him.

Let's put this into practical terms: When Christ is revealed, we don't receive any insight into God's creative ability as it pertains to rocks, but we do discover something about suffering.

In Christ, we see that God not only knows and cares about our pain, but He comes down and joins us in it. Christ--the very essence of God--who was eternally loved and cherished by the God the Father, took on flesh and lived among us.

It's like the song says: "What if God was one of us/Just a slob like one of us/Just a stranger on a bus..."

Well, He was one of us. He came and joined us in our suffering, and in fact, suffered much more than we could ever imagine.

Do we know the pain of watching the innocent suffer? What about the pain of losing a loved one? A mother, or even a son?

The beauty of the Gospel is that God not only knows all about our suffering, He identifies with it to the maximum degree. Picture Christ, naked and alone on a cross, what does He cry? "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?!"

He knows all about our suffering. He has experienced it to the max. But that is little comfort if that's all that He's done. What if God knows all about our suffering and even identifies with us, but can't do anything about it? That is little consolation, if any.

We need a God that is stronger than our suffering, One who goes toe-to-toe with death itself and comes out on top. Picture Christ, risen and exalted, and what does the Father say, "You are my Son, today I have begotten you ... Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies a footstool to your feet."

God creating universe-sized rocks that He's barely able to lift means absolutely nothing to me. Christ on the cross, suffering for me and conquering death on my behalf--now that means absolutely everything to me.

What's it mean to you?