23

A Love That’s Intents*

*I stand by this joke, especially as we begin thinking about forgiveness.

Suspend your dislike for the most sleazy lawyers for a moment. And if you are a lawyer of any description, suspend your awareness of this fact the best you can as you read.

Imagine someone you knew got arrested for kicking in several storefront windows. It was his first offense of any kind, no one was injured, but criminal damaging being a second degree misdemeanor, he’s facing thousands in fines and six months in jail.

Imagine you are somehow offered a chance to free him. All you have to do is explain what happened in terms that will persuade a judge that it’s not as bad as it seems. And if you could explain it satisfactorily, not only would your acquaintance be released, but you also would be rewarded a million dollars.

Don’t worry for a second about the moral implications.

Could you do it?

Might you possess the creative vigor to contextualize the act in such a way so as to get the man out of trouble and you into seven digits of reward. Could you cancel out his vilification with positivity, telling the story in a way that turned the tide of judgment? Could you spin it as a momentary lapse of reason which need only result in his replacing the windows, not his having a criminal record and yet another occupied jail cell? Could you argue that he was, for all we know, killing venomous spiders with his boot a little too zealously, though ultimately for our good? The Spiders are bad this year after all, your Honor. Could you offer to pay for the windows and associated lost revenue in exchange for dismissal of charges – you’d have the cash – promising to take him to anger management classes, adding “we all need help with our anger Your Honor,” and “Isn’t this arrangement far better for his longterm correction than incarceration and a rap sheet anyway?”

Couldn’t you find a way to fight for him by applying the best, most positive intent and outcome?

Now imagine they were your windows he kicked in.

Wouldn’t you, despite this new twist, still possess all the same creative vigor? Frankly, the same incentives? And wouldn’t you likely have even more leverage, since you’re the victim who’s seemingly not victimized? And couldn’t you, if we stop talking about windows kicked in and some hypothetical courtroom and start talking about the actual people in your home, school and office, apply the same creative vigor to find a way to make right what needs made right without the desire to inflict retribution? We don’t really believe victim energy is necessarily stronger than the spirit of forgiveness, do we?

Ask it this way: If it wasn’t a million dollar incentive but was instead the true reconciling and freeing power of Love, would you be any less able to fight for the forgiveness of others- even those who have made trouble very specifically for you?

When you hurt someone, unless you’re a sociopath – in which I’ll assume you lost interest many chapters back – you hope that when it comes to judgment your intentions will trump your actions. We naturally add to our apologies, “I didn’t mean to,” or “I really didn’t think about how that would affect you.” Even if there are real, tangible consequences for what you did, and there often should be, you’re confident that if the other knew your intentions it would reduce their bad feelings and increase the probability of reconciliation.

It’s a plea for the internal, unseen context behind a (mis)behavior to be considered by the other before sentencing. It matters deeply to us what we intended and we hope the wounded other will appreciate it. It makes all the difference. It hurts and offends when some woman stomps your toe on the bus. Watch out lady! But then you look up and see that she is very old and blind. The same physical pain is being experienced, but the place the encounter is processed in your head moves and you can instantly absolve her of guilt. There isn’t any guilt. Even as your toe throbs, the lack of intent can cancel the debt.

And yet, as much as we hope our intentions will be considered most eagerly, and as much as the blind lady would get a pass because it’s so easy to tell she didn’t mean it, we tend to judge others 180° from what he hope or demand from others. “Forget context and intentions,” we’re saying now. “What you did and what it did to me are all I care to consider. Excuses excuses.”

I’ve found I don’t really always want justice. I want revenge.

The Spirit of Compassion seems to be blowing in our society’s air in interesting ways. Ways that make it possible and even entertaining to contextualize Darth Vader into a salvaged good rather than a hopeless devil. We really seem taken by the idea that evil is too lazy a label and that maybe there is a something redeemable in one who a previous generation would have cast out. Yet how many of us still think our ex is genuinely bad, worthy of our slander, our contempt, or ill-wishes? How few of us are willing to fight for reconciliation with a parent, an old friend, that idiot neighbor, all because the pain they caused is all we care to consider for sentencing?

This is not to say no pain was caused. There really is a thing to be forgiven.

This is all to say you and I have far more creative vigor – far more Compassion reserves – to let someone off the hook than we give ourselves credit for. We are after all made in the image of a boundless giver of Love, and not in the image of a wounded, unsettled Account.

Our Father in heaven
Wholly Other be Your Reputation
Your Kingdom, Your Way, be in effect in our living
Give us today our plenty
And forgive us our infliction of pain
As we simultaneously forgive the pain inflicted on us
Lead us around the temptation to make this about ourselves
Rescue us from becoming the evil that’s happened to us
Amen.