More Than Shallow Sorries--August 25, 2021

More Than Shallow Sorries--August 25, 2021

"For if we willfully persist in sin after having received the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins, but a fearful prospect of judgment, and a fury of fire that will consume the adversaries. Anyone who has violated the law of Moses dies without  mercy 'on the testimony of two or three witnesses.' How much worse punishment do you think will be deserved by those who have spurned the Son of God, profaned the blood of the covenant by which they were sanctified, and outraged the Spirit of grace? For we know the one who said, 'Vengeance is mine, I will repay.' And again, 'The Lord will judge his people.' It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God." [Hebrews 10:26-31]

I read someone's insight recently on social media (I think she was a mom) that said simply, "Don't say, 'I'm sorry' and then go right back to doing what you said you were sorry for." Man, that hit home.

It's not merely meaningless to say you are sorry for something if you never actually stop doing it, it's actively making things worse to offer an empty apology.  That cheapens the power of your words and gives the person to whom you are apologizing have a false hope that you are going to stop hurting them.  If you're going to say you are sorry for something you have done or said, there has to be a change in what you do and say from now on, or your words are a cruel joke.

That's true whether we are talking about your kids or mine, insisting they will not hit or harass one another and saying a quick "sorry" when they are caught, only to make a fist all over again as soon as they think you're looking the other way, or whether it's the loved one who keeps saying they'll quit drinking, or shooting up, or whatever, but never actually gets the help to break their addiction's hold on them.  It's true whether it's the abusive spouse who says, "I'll never hit you again," every time, but never seems to mean it, or the well-meaning Respectable Religious person who keeps saying they love God while also willfully ignoring the ways their casual bigotry hurts the people God has sent across their path.

In other words, don't trust the person who says, "I swear I'm sorry for setting fire to all those houses down," if he's holding a can of gasoline in one hand and a lit match in the other, or you're going to get burned.

Well, it's no less true if we're the ones starting fires that threaten to burn down our relationship with God, too.  If we really get it that we have been given a new beginning with God, where our crookedness and self-centered ways have been put behind us and set aside, it's like we are rejecting the gift of that forgiveness when we keep turning back to it. The same way it would break your beloved's heart to tell them you were done cheating on them, only to run off with a new fling next weekend, we break God's heart to keep turning back to the ways that have separated us from God before.  God keeps offering us a new future, and we have a way of running back to the same dead-end pasts we were stuck in before. But God wants more for us than just to hide behind shallow sorries.

That by itself is bad enough, but so often our dead-ends are also harmful to other people around us--people whom God fiercely loves.  When we keep turning back to old patterns that hurt others, God is especially upset, like any decent parent is.  If my son says he's sorry for hitting his sister, but then goes and hits her again a minute later, the problem isn't just that he has broken relationship with me, but that he has hurt her, again, too. And if we fool ourselves into thinking that God's forgiveness means we are free to keep being rotten jerks to other people who are beloved of God--a group that includes literally everyone--we have another thing coming.  

See, that's it--all this talk from the writer of Hebrews about the seriousness of continuing in sins isn't just a matter of God having a fragile ego or looking to zap people out of some bloodthirsty need for arbitrarily punishing people.  It's that God knows us, including the loopholes we look for and the mental tricks we try to pull.  And God knows we have this impulse to skip out on the hard part of mending broken relationships--actually putting things right and turning from the harm we have caused in the past--and wanting to jump right to saying we're forgiven and therefore not responsible for setting things right.  And God doesn't want to see use the language of grace and forgiveness as license to step on other people with impunity.  God is willing to bear an immeasurable cost in order to mend our relationship, but God is not willing to make someone else bear such a cost when we try and use, "But I said I'm sorry!" as a cover for going back to the same old destructive ways that hurt others.

I don't think the writers of Scripture want to make us live in fear of some divinely-thrown lightning bold of punishment out of the blue, but I do think they want us to understand that God cares about the people who get hurt when we keep turning back to our old dead-end ways.  And because God wants justice for them as well, we don't get to use some cheap sense of "mercy" as permission to keep stepping on other people or ignoring their needs. It's because I love my daughter that I don't let my son off the hook with a quick insincere, "Sorry" muttered while holding her in a headlock, or vice versa.  It's because God loves the people harmed by my selfishness, apathy, or hatred that God doesn't just let me mouth a memorized prayer of religious jargon like "repentance" and "confession" while leaving my heart, my mind, and my actions unchanged.  And it's because God loves me--and you, too--that God isn't fooled when other people try to do the same.  It is God's love for us all that insists justice has to be real to protect the people my actions would hurt, and it is that same love that insists forgiveness creates a new beginning for us, rather than an excuse to go back to our old death-dealing ways.

And when I think about this passage in that light, I get why the writer of Hebrews is so quick to insist that our actions still have consequences, that our choices always matter, and that living as forgiven people is meant to be a way forward rather than a detour backward.  And I am glad that God cares that way, about all of us.

Lord God, let us receive your forgiveness as the gift of a new beginning, rather than an excuse for more of the same old rottenness we were stuck in.