In our mad rush to abandon our Judeo-Christian heritage, we have nearly lost much of the treasure that such a heritage bestowed upon us. Whether you can bring yourself to believe in an all loving God who cares for us as we would our own children, or whether you only see as mythology the idea of an omnipotent Savior who gave his life that we hopeless humans might have entry to eternity, it should be understood that both faith and myth can teach powerful societal lessons. The progressive mind ever looks forward with questions long ago asked and answered. It assumes change to always be good, and constantly reinvents the wheel; since the new wheel cannot resemble the old wheel, the change is often asinine. And so we end up with modified foods that cause cancer, economic systems that cause financial ruin, and progressive governments that cause disaster.
One of the tenets of our heritage was the idea that all men are flawed, and so community with God or our fellow man could not be based on flawlessness, or all men would be eternally alone. Forgiveness was arguably the central theme of our heritage; if we were forgiven our flaws, how could we withhold forgiveness from those who offended us? “Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us…” But we don’t say those words anymore, much less believe them; we don’t forgive, and we are unforgiven.
The same heritage that gave us liberty and freedom had to embrace the values of free will and forgiveness to foster an atmosphere where people who differ could exist together as one nation. The events that have unfolded surrounding Syria and France demonstrate how not all heritages embrace these same values. For many, coexistence is found through conquest, and free will is dealt with not by forbearance or forgiveness, but by the edge of the sword. In abandoning our own heritage, we are leaning, or perhaps falling to something similar.
In the course of a generation we have gone from a citizenry hardly afraid of sticks and stones, much less ‘names that will never hurt me’, to a population of thin skinned crybabies offended not only by every name conceivably derogatory, but by words in no way intended to be offensive. Beyond that, we now actively search for new and delusional ways to be offended. The recent protests on the campuses of Yale and Mizzou show how the values of free speech and intellectual diversity have been replaced with censorship and death threats. Of course there are hateful and inappropriate ways to use speech, but should people really be losing their jobs over intelligently discussing whether adult students need to be reminded not to dress in inappropriate Holloween costumes? Are we actually offended by red coffee cups because they bear no Christmas snowflakes? Or are we rather offended by imaginary Christians supposedly offended by those cups? How sheltered are we if we are devastated by coffee cups, holiday greetings, or the very presence of someone of a different race in our midst? How unforgiving are we who react to those who disagree with us as does the road rager whose entire life seems challenged by someone accidentally impeding their progress? We no longer engage in reasoned debate with those we consider mistaken; we unfriend, we debase, we ridicule, we mock. In a world where everything offends, nothing is safe but silence; where there is no forgiveness, there can be no freedom, only hatred and isolation. In the words of one of the Yale students, “I don’t want to debate, I want to talk about my pain.”
IMHO: Forgiveness is the oil that eases the friction between members of a free society. As it is for couples and families, so it must be in any community. Without forgiveness, we must have walls, many walls, and walls create prisons where freedom is sacrificed to fear and political correctness. Prison bars are a poor substitute for a civil society, and silence coerced is not indicative of a transformed heart; you can’t touch a man’s spirit while cowering behind a wall. Freedom demands vulnerability, and vulnerability requires a thick skin. If we disagree, you need not hate me. If I sin against your sensibilities, you need not destroy me. But so we do, to the shedding of blood and the destruction of humanity, both of the living and of the dead. We divide by party, and then by distinctions within parties, and then by candidates within distinctions. In our refusal to forgive we separate ourselves from those who offend us and join with those likewise offended, until they offend us as well. Finally we are all left alone in the silent prisons we have created, unforgiving, and unforgiven.
“What I’ve felt, what I’ve known,
Never shined through in what I’ve shown,
Never free, never me…
So I dub thee, unforgiven.”
(Seniors might prefer THIS bluegrass version!) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uWI0ZGrC9Mg
