CYPRESSWOOD CHURCH OF CHRIST
February 3, 2008
25424 Aldine-Westfield, Spring, TX. 77373
www.geocities.com/adon77373/cypresswoodbulletin.htm
www.cypresswoodchurchofchrist.com
PLEASE PRAY FOR:
Our congregation Various friends, relatives and co-workers
The persecuted church Our nation, leaders and military
HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO:
Grace Cruthirds and Margaret Wiesner (7th) and Bryce Mearns (16th)
PAST SINS, EVENTS AND FORGIVENESS
“Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other just as in Christ God forgave you” (Ephesians 4:32).
Simon Wiesenthal wrote a book called The Sunflower about an experience he had as a Jew in a Nazi hospital. He was taken to a room where a German officer was dying from wounds. The officer related what he had done on the Eastern front to Jews, murdering them. When he finished he asked Wiesenthal to forgive him. Wiesenthal said nothing a left the room. After the War, he wrote this book and asked for responses. The question: was he right in walking out and not forgiving him. All the Jews who responded to various editions said yes. Most Christians who responded said no, that he should have forgave him.
Dennis Prager, a Jewish radio talk show host, wrote on the subject of forgiveness a number of years ago. He stated that there were seven aspects to forgiveness. As Christians, we would agree with five of them. One aspect that he explained might help understand the Jewish response. A person can only ask forgiveness from those he offended and if the one offended was murdered, then only he could forgive him. No one else can, hence, another cannot forgive the offender (1).
Forgiveness can be a difficult subject. As Christians we understand that we need to be forgiving just as God in Christ forgave us. We are told that if we do not forgive others, we will not be forgiven (see Matthew 18, particularly verses 21-35). In the Lord’s Prayer, forgiveness is a major aspect. We see the work of Jesus on the cross as a means of forgiveness. In our view, a person, even a murderer, can seek forgiveness from God in Christ (2). If reconciliation is possible, it should occur. Some even state that we should have a heart or attitude of forgiveness, willing to forgive an offender even if they do not seek it. Of course, they might be offended to learn that we forgive them even though they themselves consider that they did not do anything wrong; which makes for interesting dialogue.
The Old Testament deals with forgiveness in a number of ways. We are told that God delights in forgiving (Micah 7:18-19). God provide a means of forgiveness through the sacrificial system in the Law of Moses (3). David was forgiven by God when he simply stated, “I have sinned against the Lord” (2 Samuel 11:13). He could not ask Uriah for forgiveness because he was dead and there is no record of him asking Bathsheba. Another aspect of asking for forgiveness or of repentance is that of the national prayers of repentance from both Daniel (chapter 9) and Nehemiah (chapter 9), one from captivity and the other after Babylon. Both prayed that God would forgive the nation for its sins though those who committed those sins were long dead. The prayer was to God however, and we need to keep that in mind.
The Christian view is that we need to reconcile with those we have offended by seeking forgiveness. How many times must we do this, asking them for forgiveness over and over? Recently, a group of one hundred and thirty-eight Muslim clerics sent a letter called “A Common Word Between You and Us” inviting dialogue between Christians and Muslims. Now I’m all for dialogue. Many have been doing that over the last few decades. Christians and Jews and Catholics and Protestants have all been in dialogue on different issues. Some are common ground issues of morality. Others are doctrinal issues in which each side attempts to better understand the other (4).
A group of religious left scholars responded to the Muslims in a letter called “Loving God and Neighbor Together.” Most of those who signed this letter are pacifists (5). Much of the controversy that this letter has generated deals with yet another apology for the Crusades. How many times must those in the modern West apologize for the events of a thousand years ago? It seems to be in vogue for various people and groups to apologize for all of our national sins time and time again. Is this necessary? Let’s look at some things.
This constant apologizing for past sins comes from what Shelby Steele calls “white guilt.” The idea here is that there are those who think that the United States has committed so many evils that we must apologize and “beat ourselves to death” time and time again over these sins. Slavery, how we treated the American Indian, and now immigration, are all seen in this category. The politically correct, multicultural crowd makes almost everything a racist, homophobic, nativist reference so as not to have any debate about what is really the situation.
When one reads these apologies for the Crusades, one can see that there appears to be a selective historical view of the situations. This is often a one sided effort. At the least, any Muslim attempting to apologize for past Muslim sins would face an immediate death sentence or fatwa issued by some radical cleric. Worse, Muslims have a long but selective historical memory. They use the Crusades as a means to stop any discussion with Islam. Most of the Crusades were failures and caused great harm both to Christian, Jewish and Muslim populations (6). But they began as an effort to protect travelers to the Holy Land who were being attacked by Muslims. What isn’t mentioned is that some three hundred years before the Crusades, Muslim invaders began coming out of the Arabian Peninsula and conquering Persia, the Middle East and Israel, North Africa, Spain and on into France before being stopped in the 700s. Muslims consider any land that they conquered as Muslim forever and will make any and every effort to reclaim it.
The selective historical memory goes even deeper. Muslims refuse to face their own problems or sins. Just recently in Dallas, Texas, a Muslim father murdered his two teenage daughters because they had began dating and refused to wear the traditional headdress. Their mother had fled with them but he found them. He fled the country. Muslim clerics stated that this was not an “honor” killing but was caused by some other problems. Honor killings are common in many parts of the Islamic world though the Koran does not teach it. And there are other examples. The Muslim Turks refuse to admit that their ancestors murdered more than a million Armenian Christians during and after World War I. They say little of the suicide bombers who have killed thousands of Muslims as well as thousands of others (7). Rather, they blame the Jews and the “Great Satan,” the U.S., for this.
But if Islam has a selective historical memory, so does the religious left. They too blame the West, and in particular the U.S. for all its sins. This comes up over and over. In reading and listening to these people, they are constantly confessing the same sins over and over. How many times must one confess? And to whom are they confessing?
We have had our share of national sins but we have also recognized them, and when we have done so, we have worked to correct them. Slavery was eliminated in part by war and law. Civil rights were legislated into law as well. The American Indian is still a problem but even here, efforts are being made to correct this. Illegal immigration is problem not because we hate immigrants; we are a nation of immigrants; but rather because it is illegal. Current political solutions seem to be extremes, politicians looking for votes. We confront these, sometimes reluctantly. The way I see it, one can only apologize so often before it becomes meaningless.
Many of the religious left constantly dwell on the sins of the nation that they miss the good things done, even in the midst of evil. For instance, we soundly defeated both Germany and Japan in World War II. Some in hind sight look at the carpet bombings, fire bombings, and the nuclear bombings as morally evil. Fifty or sixty years later one can debate this but when one is living it, it is a different story. But what did we do when the War was over? We rebuilt both Germany and Japan, making them our friends. We have a Christian cultural perspective, we saw that these defeated people were in need of help, and we turned from weapons of war to plowshares of peace and rebuilding. Even in this country, in the sad affair of the internment of Japanese-Americans during the War, we have since provided reparations to them, maybe too late for many, but at least we made the effort.
When the tsunami occurred in the Indian Ocean a few years ago, it was Americans, military and Christian relief organizations, who went to the aid. The Muslims living there saw a different America than what they had heard from their clerics. Interestingly, no Muslim nation provide relief to this area. Even in Iraq, they have seen Americans differently. Soldiers providing schools supplies and food, playing with children, taking care of the injured, even enemy terrorists; much different than the Islamic view (8).
I think that the religious left has good intentions but is some what naïve about Islam. I agree that dialogue would be good but keep in mind, the Muslim philosophy isn’t for agreement or equality; it is for domination. They do not see Christians or Jews as equal, though they consider them people of the book. They allow Christians and Jews to exist as second class citizens. In Saudi Arabia, it is illegal to convert a Muslim to Christianity, or for that matter, to have a Bible in the country. Lying to advance Islam is acceptable. A few years ago, Paul Marshall, who is a religious liberty scholar, stated that “The [extreme Islamist] people engaged in persecution are neither stupid nor uneducated…We will not understand persecution if we think it is a mere misunderstanding to be resolved through more education and chatty conferences” (8). Christians in the Islamic world face persecution every day. Converts must be careful and those who preach as well.
One of the differences between Islam and Christianity is that Christianity has made corrections for its past sins. Seeking to apologize for past events that we had nothing to do with seems rather fruitless in my mind. We are to confess our sins to God. One important scripture to keep in mind is that the son is not responsible for the father’s sins; the father will pay for his own sins (Ezekiel 18). It would be nice to hear in this country from some to stand up and say, thank you for your apology, we forgive you, now lets move on. Another way in which we can see repentance is in “the fruits of repentance” as seen in changes that have occurred.
So I am not extremely impressed by these constant apologies about events long past. We cannot change history; they happened for any number of reasons, honorable and plain wrong. I think that these apologies are misleading and only increases the offended ranks. Michael Medved, another Jewish radio talk show host, calls Islam a religion of perpetual outrage. A school teacher in Africa allowed her young students to name a teddy bear “Mohammad.” This lead to riots and her life being threatened because she had “offended” the “Prophet.” Yet the religious left doesn’t seem too concerned that Christian symbols are attacked in this country, because Christians do not issue fatwas against those who degrade our beliefs. Rather, we write books in defense of them, and have done so for centuries.
The final aspect of this is to ask, as I have mentioned, who are we to seek forgiveness from? Going back to scripture, we find, first of all, that we are to seek forgiveness from God. Whether it is an individual like David or a national prayer like Daniel, both appealed to God. Secondly, if possible, we are to seek forgiveness from those we have offended. Reconciliation is key (see Ephesians 2:11-22). But if those we seek forgiveness from have died, then our appeal it to God, and we must then move on in showing fruit worthy of repentance. Next, we cannot change the past, good or bad. We live now and must learn from the past to avoid those sins. Finally, if we ask to be forgiven for our sins, then whether a person does so or not, we have fulfilled our responsibility. If someone comes to us asking for forgiveness, we have to responsibility to forgive. I do not wish to be caught up in the idea of “white guilt” or political correctness or stereotyped because of who I am. I think the words of Martin Luther King, Jr. are important and need to be followed: we look at people and the content of their character, not the color of their skin.
If you have any thoughts on this, let me know.
George B. Mearns
(1) Prager was a respondent in a later edition of The Sunflower.
(2) Two examples would be Clyde Thompson, who spent time on Texas’ death row for the murder of eight people, became a Christian, and worked in prison ministry until his death. The other would be the serial killer, Jeffrey Dahmer, who became a Christian in prison and was attempting to change his life when he was murdered.
(3) Much debate centers on how all that worked in relation to Jesus and the cross. I question the idea of rolling sins over or forward, but we also must consider God’s foreknowledge in all of this as well.
(4) Much of this can be found in the publication First Things, edited by Richard John Neuhaus. It can be found online at www.firsthings.com
(5) In arguing on New Jersey’s recent decision to do away with the death penalty, Dennis Prager made a comment on pacifism. He stated that it is “a value system that denies good and evil and that actually increases murder and unjust suffering in the world” (“Gov. Corzine and I May have different hearts“), 1/15/08, www.jewishworldreview.com
(6) However, Richard John Neuhaus argues briefly that the arguments over the Crusades sinfulness is both debated and debatable. See “Islam And Christianity: Changing The Subject,” in First Things, February 2008. This article is on these letters from a Catholic perspective worth reading. Check online at www.firstthings.com. Others argue that the U.S. was not even in existence when the Crusades occurred and are not responsible for them.
(7) According to Don Feder, The Center for the Study of Political Islam states that there have been 57,749 murders since 9/11. Bhutto’s Body And The Face Of Islam, 1/9/2008, at www.donfeder.com
(8) Michael Orin discusses the role or the U.S. in the Middle East in his book, Power, Faith and Fantasy. While there was some gunboat diplomacy, missionaries when their to preach the gospel. While conversions were few, they established schools and hospitals. The discovery of oil helped produced wealth though that did not always trickled down to all the people, but that was a Arab/Muslim thing and not a company or capitalist idea.
(9) Quoted in Mark Tooley, A dialogue in Bad Faith, www.frontpagemag.com 1/10/2008.