Getting unstuck

Have you ever been really stuck? Stuck in a stronghold? Like there is but a step between you and an insane asylum? No time for theoretical theology?

All theology should be practical anyway. The doctrine that God loves you and thinks about you (Psalm 40:17) is the most practical and least theoretical of them all; it colors your attitude all day long and puts a spring in your step. It's like going off to work in the morning knowing that your husband digs you, versus going off to work in the morning knowing your husband doesn't love you.

Specifically, have you ever been stuck in bitterness and unforgiveness? I have. Here is the most practical and hopeful counsel I have received on the subject (drum roll, please):

Forgiveness is not a feeling that leads to an action. Forgiveness is an action that leads to a feeling.

Why is this the light at the end of my tunnel of gloom? Because as long as I thought forgiveness was a feeling, I was doomed. I could do nothing about a feeling. Thinking positive thoughts could not carry me all the way. But if forgiveness is an action that leads to a feeling, then I have hope because an action is doable. It's doable because Jesus commands me to do it. It's that portion of human behavior that falls within the realm of volition. To perform it, even with pained feelings, is not hypocrisy but obedience.

As a primer for performing this act of forgiveness, it helps to understand the spiritual mechanics of the situation: When someone has sinned against you---say he has gossiped about you or physically hurt you or emotionally abused you---he has in fact stolen from you. Whether he has stolen your reputation or your health or your joy, he has robbed you of something. There has been a spiritual "crime." There is a debt, and someone has to pay it. (Of course, Jesus paid it all, so now we are just children dickering over nickels and dimes while our Savior shelled out billions.)

Now you hold a bill for damages in your hand, spiritually speaking. The way of the world is to exact those damages somehow, to take it out of the person's hide in kind. This can be done in any number of creative ways: You can be cold to the offending person every time you meet; you can be demanding or hostile or ignore him or be verbally abusive or slice away at that person's reputation in many a conversation. You can even do it with a veneer of righteousness, "sharing" your concerns about that person with others.

These are all ways of exacting "payments" to recoup the debt that person owes you for stealing your joy or health or reputation or childhood or whatever.

The practical counsel I received on this is that there is another way: You can pay the debt yourself! You say, "Boo!" This is precisely the thing you do not want to do. But wait! This is the way out! The debt is there anyway and is going to stay there until somebody pays it. If you pay it yourself, you can get rid of it and go on with your life. Your feelings will tag along and be healed. Here is how it's done:

You make payments on the debt whenever you see the other person and resist the temptation to do something retaliatory---like be cold or mean or ignore him. Instead, you conduct yourself kindly toward him. It hurts like the dickens, and that pain is whittling down the debt.

You make payments on the debt whenever you resist the temptation to gossip about the person to someone else. What you wanted to dole out verbally you suck up internally. It hurts like the dickens, and that pain is whittling down the debt.

This is nothing more than what Paul meant when he talked about "carrying around in the body the dying of the Lord" (2 Corinthians 4:10), and what Jesus meant when he talked about taking up your cross (Luke 9:23).

Do that enough times and eventually you have paid down the whole debt. You discover the biblical principle that feelings follow actions, rather than actions following feelings. Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote a whole book about it (The Cost of Discipleship). He wrote, if you're not sure you believe in Christ, obey him anyway and you will believe. He went so far as to say that the only one who can believe is the one who obeys.

One of the criticisms on yesterday's post was that I had said an abused person should "get over it." In fact, I did not say that. I said "we should not let them get away with it." Very different. God gives us principles and power and we give genuine hope by not letting people get away with not using them. They are life to the soul and healing to the body.

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