We go to church and hear scripture and preaching about how we should live out our faith, but sometimes it’s hard to transfer that into our daily lives. Or we’ll see large problems in the world and not know how to respond to them. We say, ‘I’m just one person. What can I do?’ Well, this week, I was confronted with a problem that brought my faith directly into a concrete situation.
Several weeks ago, some damage was done to the sacristy and the student involved—someone who is the same age as I am—is facing up to ten years in jail. When I first heard about it, I was shocked by the destruction of the act but took the news of the potential punishment in stride. Growing up in a world of TV shows about the criminal justice system, I took it for granted that a punishment was warranted for this crime. But over the last week, I’ve begun to question what our role as people of faith should be in situations like this. How are we called to respond?
If we turn to scripture, there are verses about visiting people in prison. There are verses about the importance of forgiveness—how we should forgive again and again. In the 18th chapter of Matthew, Peter asks Jesus how many times we should forgive someone and he answers (depending on the translation) seventy-seven times. This is then followed by a parable in which a debtor who owes a king astronomical amounts of money is forgiven his debt. However, that debtor immediately turns around and throws one of his debtors in prison for a much smaller debt. Upon hearing of this, the king rebukes the debtor for his reaction and sends him to prison. The parable ends by saying this is what God will do to us if we refuse to forgive people. There are aspects of this parable that are problematic for me—for example, the idea that if we don’t forgive people, God will revoke our forgiveness—but that’s not what I want to focus on. Basically, this parable tells the story of someone who is forgiven in a complete act of grace but then betrays the spirit of that forgiveness by refusing to forgive someone else.
We have been forgiven unconditionally by God, no matter what we have done, and we are called to forgive others as well. The only problem is figuring out what forgiveness means. In the case of the student, does forgiveness mean telling that student we forgive him and there are no hard feelings but then still leave him to rot in jail? Or does forgiveness mean extending the same grace that was given to us and working together to give him a second chance? How do we reconcile our notions of legal justice and what people ‘deserve’ with the tenants of our faith and how God calls us to live our lives?
Maybe we are called as a faith community to allow the criminal justice system to send someone to jail for ten years because of some really stupid decisions he made and let him fall out of our minds. Maybe we are called to visit him in prison. Maybe we are called to write to him. Maybe we are called to be there for him when he’s released. Maybe we are called to draw attention to how our prison system is broken. Maybe we are called to give him a second chance—the grace that none of us deserve but that God gives to us anyway. Maybe we are called to reach out and welcome him into the community of faith, to allow him to find a home here among us. Maybe we are called to do the things we don’t want to acknowledge as options, the things that scare us, the things that make us uncomfortable.
I don’t know. I don’t have any answers. But I think it’s important to be challenged and to question how we are called by God to live our lives. It’s important to stop and think about the things we are doing or not doing and whether those are things we need to change.
I’ve been struggling a lot this week with the things I don’t want to acknowledge as options, the things that scare me, the things that make me uncomfortable. And it’s been really hard. It’s made me see parts of myself that I would rather ignore—the parts of myself that don’t want to think about other people’s problems, that would rather stick to myself, that feel scared about challenging the people I respect, the parts of myself that can describe everything I think is wrong with society but never seek to do anything to change it. But I’m trying to acknowledge those parts of myself so that I can slowly coax them out and leave them behind. I’m trying to learn how to take action and how to speak up. I’m learning, albeit very slowly, how to form my own opinions and defend them. I’m trying to learn how to use my faith as the framework through which I see the world instead of an addendum that I tack onto the end. I’m learning to question, to challenge, to stand out. I’m learning to forgive myself and others over and over again—seventy-seven times and beyond.