Feeling Forgiven

My brother is an amateur magician, albeit good enough to have been president of the local branch of the Society of American Magicians. (Click here.) He'll tell you that children are the most difficult audience. They always say "It's in your other hand!" or look at the very thing you are trying to direct their attention away from. So a good magician works those things into the act.

I can tell you that a children's sermon is the toughest kind to prepare. If you ask children a question, you can't expect to get the answer you anticipate. And they can ask questions that would tie a theologian in knots. Part of it is that their questions cut to the heart of the matter. I've had sermon suggestion questions that were obviously submitted by kids. One was "Why aren't there dinosaurs in the Bible?" Another asked why we sing in church. They were challenging, albeit fun, questions to contemplate, research and answer.

I don't think today's sermon suggestion was written by a child but it has a directness that is confounding, at least to me. It reads, "How do you feel in your heart that your sins have been forgiven, and will go to heaven?" The reason it is so difficult for me to answer is because (A) the historic relationship of religion and emotion and (B) my relationship with emotion.

Let's start with B. It's not that I am an unemotional person but I do keep my emotions in check most of the time. Believe it or not, I can display quite a fiery temper. That rarely does me or anyone else or any problem I am trying to solve any good and since boyhood I have fought to keep it under control. I also, as have we all, suffered disappointments in life, so I tend to keep a tight rein on any urge towards exuberant anticipation until things have in fact turned out well. Small wonder my favorite characters in fiction tend to resemble Sherlock Holmes, who solved problems with knowledge and cool reasoning. However, I realize that not everything can be explained logically but, especially when it comes to people, some things must be approached psychologically. Emotions are an important part of who we are. Negative emotions must be acknowledged and experienced. Positive emotions are part of a healthy life. I just make sure it is safe before letting certain emotions run free, rather like making sure the gate is closed before letting an excitable dog out in the yard. He needs the outlet but you don't want him or anyone else hurt.

But emotions and religion go together. In Christ we can find love, joy, and peace. But some, who are more focused on the religion part of faith than the God part, can let their emotions run away with them. People sometimes do silly things under the influence of their religious feelings, like the church in Canada that has gone beyond speaking in tongues and now lets its members make animal noises. It all may be very fun and even cathartic but it does cross the line that Paul warned about in using tongues in public worship. It makes the church members look either crazy or drunk to outsiders. A good number of vocal anti-theists think that all religious people have defective brains as it is. Though one can only hold such a position by ignoring an immense amount of evidence to the contrary, we needn't fuel the flames of such ignorance by providing them with more material to use in their Facebook posts or their bumper sticker thinking.

And of course, religious feelings can lead people to do bad things, indeed, very bad things. This is why I distinguished between those who value their religion over God. A psychological study found that people who very religious are also very altruistic. But those who were more committed to their particular religion or denomination than to God tended to limit that altruism to those inside their group and were less charitable to those outside their belief system. Those who were more committed to God than to their particular faith tradition were more altruistic to others regardless of their faith. In other words, if you have a closer relationship to God, you are less bound to the tribal thinking that often afflicts more partisan believers.  

The Latin root of the word "religion" means "to bind or tie." Religion is the tie that binds a group of people together. Which reminds me of the old hymn that goes "Bless be the tie that binds our hearts in Christian love. The fellowship of kindred minds is like to that above." That's the upside of religion. It binds us together and we care for each other. All for one and one for all. The downside is that it can be used to foster an "Us vs. Them" mindset or, when a religious group is unpopular, a fortress or siege mentality. We circle the wagons and defend ourselves. The problem is that is a extremely counterproductive way to try to spread the good news of God's love for all. I don't imagine the Westboro Baptist Church has a waiting list of people clamoring to join them. Their message is literally that of a God who hates, not just sin but sinners themselves. They don't even believe sinners can repent! It's no surprise then that rather than being made up of converts that church is made up mostly of preacher Fred Phelps' family. That is, those who haven't left the church or given up on God altogether.

Bad theology can make religious people go wrong but so can emotions channeled in the wrong direction. And it's really easy to channel religious feelings because religion is about things of Ultimate Value. Politicians have known for millennia if you want to go to war against a neighboring nation, it's not particularly effective to say "I just want to rule a bigger group of people," or "I covet someone else's resources." Rarely will a citizen be willing to die to satisfy a ruler's personal whim. So the politicians say, "The people in that nation are evil. They don't follow our God and they spit on our most sacred values." Most so-called religious wars are actually about political matters. And if a politician can cloak his true motives in religious terms, he can motivate a lot more people to support him. Hitler did that, though not himself a believer. The Nazis reached out to churches and succeeded in getting many of them to believe that you could somehow reconcile Christ and Nazism. Those churches and Christians who saw through the lie, like Dietrich Bonhoffer, the Nazis put in the camps along with the Jews and other enemies of the state.

So having seen the devastation done by the wars of religion in Europe, the thinkers of the Enlightenment harbored a distrust of religious emotionalism. That's not to say that Christians started acting like Mr. Spock. But some Christian thinkers tried to downplay the role of emotion, or at least extreme emotion, in religion. They felt that Christianity could be presented in such a way that accepting it could be seen as a rational thing to do. And that line of thought is still present in certain denominations.

And, as someone brought to the faith by C. S. Lewis, I lean a bit in that direction, both because of my personal history and because I see what happens when religious people go off half-cocked on the basis of strong emotions. Science shows the most rational of us tend to make decisions based on our gut and use our intellect after the fact to come up with rationalizations. I'm from Missouri. In any situation, first show me strong emotion is warranted.

I also know emotions are not always predictable. A person gets what they wanted and then realizes they are not happier. You tell somebody something meant to be taken in one way and they take it in a different way entirely. People die and a loved one may find herself unable to cry or mourn at that time. Emotions often foreshadow and underscore what happens to us, but not always. Sometimes we look for the appropriate emotion in a situation and do not find it there. We find a different emotion, one we did not see coming. We feel angry when we should be relieved, or sad when we should be happy. Or we feel nothing.

So when asked "How do you feel in your heart that your sins have been forgiven and you will go to heaven?" I'm not sure how to answer. I do not know how I can make you feel that you have been forgiven. All I can do is share what works for me and what I've seen work for others.

First, a little deductive reasoning. Many people don't seem to be troubled by their sins. Nonreligious people probably don't think of them as sins, so much as wrongs. Since only a very small percentage of the population is made up of psychopaths, incapable of feeling guilt, the rest either don't feel that they have done very many wrongs or else that they have not done any great wrong. So to feel that you have committed a wrong or a sin that weighs on you either means you are very sensitive to the smallest wrong or that you have indeed done something you feel is a great wrong. While he was a Roman Catholic monk, Martin Luther was notorious for spending hours in the confessional trying to remember every single wrong thing he'd done. His confessor in frustration told him to go out and commit some sins worth confessing.

On the other hand, if one has done someone a great wrong or committed a major sin against oneself or God, it would be understandable that it would weigh heavily on your heart.

The good news is that God does not have 2 tracks of forgiveness, one for tiny but niggling sins and another for the really big sins. In every case, the thing to do is to confess to God. Be honest. Own up to what you did. Or what you should have done but didn't. Tell him you're sorry and you repent, that is, you turn away from the sin and towards God. Ask for his forgiveness. And that's all you need to do. As we are assured in 1 John 1:8, 9 "…if we confess our sins, God is faithful and just to forgive our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness." Not some unrighteousness or sins: all! God forgave the patriarchs and saints for their sins and they were considerable. He forgave Moses for murder, David for that and adultery, Jacob for his deceptions, Matthew for his greed, Peter for his denial of Jesus, and Paul for his persecution of Jesus' followers.

The payment for all those sins and ours was made once and for all by Jesus. He took the full punishment for all of our sins on the cross. That was the whole point of the cross. He took the punishment so we can stop punishing ourselves and each other. In a sense, our sins died with him. They were buried with him. When he rose, he left them behind. They have no bearing on us now.

As we read in 2 Corinthians 5:17, 18 "If anyone is in Christ, that person is a new creation; the old things are gone; look out, everything has become new! All this comes from God. He reconciled us to himself through Christ…"

Sometimes we don't feel that, though. We confess to God and we don't feel different. The sin still bothers us. If it is against someone else, go and tell them you are sorry. In fact, that should be your first step. Jesus says, "If you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember your brother has something against you, leave your gift there in front of the altar. First go and be reconciled to your brother, then come and offer your gift." That's the harder thing, isn't it? Asking God in secret is easier than going to the human being you have wronged and making things right with that person. They may not be as forgiving as God. They may be angry. Or they may make a scene. They may want some restitution. And if possible, you should give it. If you really want to be reconciled. If they don't forgive you, God knows you sincerely tried. If they do forgive you, you have been reconciled with that person.

It is reconciliation, healing the rift between God and you as well as between others and you that is the ultimate purpose of confession. Going to heaven is just the natural result of reconciliation. Because heaven is not so much a place but a state. It is being with God. And the only way to be with God after we die is to be in a good and loving relationship with him now. The relationship survives our physical death and with those temporal barriers gone, our relationship will be more direct and intense. Ultimately we will be resurrected and in bodies like Jesus' after his resurrection, bodies not limited by the restrictions of this creation, we will live with God in the new creation, where there is no pain or crying or mourning or death.

To make such a paradise, everything has to be perfect. And that means the people who populate it. But we aren't. We are arrogant, lazy, lustful, greedy, rage-filled, envious, self-indulgent and more. How can God let bad people into his paradise? By making them good people. God is just but he is not merely just. He is gracious. His goodness is such that he does not want to destroy sinners but redeem them. He wants to restore them to what he created them to be. It is God's love for us shown in Christ's death and resurrection that is our guarantee that when we ask for forgiveness, we will receive it. Our forgiveness doesn't depend on our deserving it; it depends on God's gracious nature and his steadfast love for us.

Knowing that should make us feel peace and joy and reciprocal love when we ask for forgiveness. But if we don't feel it, it does not matter. Our forgiveness is based on a fact, not a feeling. It may take a while to sink in. It may not make sense to you. It doesn't matter. Paul, who realized what a great sinner he was, tells us nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ. Or as a friend once said in a parting sermon, which I here quote in full: God loves you. And there's nothing you can do to stop that.