25

Billy Joel Sang it Best.

My buddy Brian and I agreed to help our mutual friend Patrick build his barn for a couple days. It is to date the most Amish week of my life.

There we were, thirty feet in the air, straddling still-naked trusses of two-by-fours as we banged away at the frame. My main concern was not falling to my death. The other two seemed to be more attuned to the work at hand. But Patrick soon proved less focused on driving in nails as he was with something else.

As we joked and told stories, Patrick kept looking over at Brian and shaking his head, agitated. After half an hour he was out with it.

“Brian. Your belt is on crooked. The nail pouch should be on the front.”

Brian looked down and made an unconcerned sound. Patrick waited a couple minutes and tried again.

“If you have it where it goes, you can pull nails out more easily. More safely. See?” he said, demonstrating with his own.

Brian assured him. “Got it. This is fine though.”

Another two or three minutes of hammers banging filled the quiet.

“Brian, dude, spin it around right,” Patrick said.

Brian gave me a glance. Why was Patrick concerning himself with the placement of the nail pouch on someone else who was fine with where it was?

Bang, bang, bang.

Bang, bang, bang, bang.

Bang, bang, bang, bang, bang.

“Brian! Just. Ugh! Here!” Patrick was now sprawling across the beams and twisting the belt around Brian’s waste into its proper place, speaking through his teeth as he did. Brian held his hammer, bracing himself on the trusses as he was jostled, staring at Patrick, then staring at me. “There! It goes like that!”

We didn’t return the next day. Later I saw the barn and assumed it was exactly how Patrick wanted it.

The Gospels are missing most of the content many of us have been led to think is there. All the content that has Jesus speaking to people about how they need to be different than they are, based on the absolute of Divine preference for every life, got erased or something.

Who does Jesus level criticisms to but, in 99/100 of exchanges, religious leaders who make it their careers to tell other people to change. And isn’t the rest of Jesus’s time spent healing people who are empirically not what they could be – real beneficiaries of change.

Missing are the stories of people told to dress differently. Told they needed to buy a car with better gas mileage, and not spend too much time playing video games past a certain age. Stories where Jesus tells people that they need to pick a specific church, back a particular candidate, believe in a certain age of the Earth. It’s almost as if Jesus was ok with people generally having their own way about things. When men of good standing with the faith did successfully convert people to their way, Jesus had some strong words:

“You Bible teachers travel land and sea to convert a single person and in doing so make them twice an accursed son as you are.”

I’ve been persuaded in recent years that forgiveness isn’t just letting people off the punitive hook for a specific thing they have done to me. That is its own effort to be sure. But forgiveness is more. It’s the moment-to-moment charitableness which doesn’t hold my unmet preferences against others. People not being or doing what I want, even when I have my reasons validated, feels like I am being wronged if allow the childish tick to reign. You can see it on a middle school playground when the new kid’s shoes aren’t to standard, costing her inclusion and love. The kids will actually say “ew” to feign disgust. They believe they are being offended by their preferences not being met. You can see it in adults when they hear the word Republican or Democrat, depending on their election predilections. They can become angry at the mere name of the Incumbent. They in their mind are being wronged at the very mention of an alternative worldview.

In truth, I’m rarely ever being wronged. I just want everything to be my way. Compassion, that sacred together suffering, is the maturity to absorb humanity’s terrible track record for being just how I want them.

Being that forgiveness is Love, it contains in it the others-centered expansiveness to say to all others, “I don’t need you to be any different than you are.”

That would be a far better greeting than “Hello”, would it not? To shake hands at the store, at church, at home or atop an unfinished barn and say with a heart that forgives the other for not being what my selfishness would prefer, “I don’t need you to be any different than you are.”

And if I do need you to be different, well now we’re talking about my weakness, not yours.