27

Forgiving My Idols.

Jesus stood on the Mountain, about half way through his Sermon.
He’d said much to this point. More than anyone could digest in one sitting.
Now he was telling his diverse audience, the rich and the poor, the upper and lower class alike, to not worry.

“Don’t worry about your life,” he said. “What you’ll eat or drink or wear.”

The rich were hearing something about the major components of their social lives.
The poor were hearing something about what makes them feel desperate.
Everyone was hearing something about what populates too much of their thinking, and too much of their ranking of others as well.

He didn’t suggest we have no concern at all for having basic necessities. Surely Maslow’s first couple of tiers in the Hierarchy of Needs would get a divine nod. But He went on to say birds have food, and flowers are beautiful, without the distinctly human trait of having anxiety over maintaining it.

Jesus told his students to not live anxiously like the Gentiles do in making his point. Gentiles, those outsiders and pagans who’re ostensibly not acquainted with the Love and Peace of God, are the ones who live with this angst about how they are fundamentally doing. They have no compass, but Jesus’s audience did. Jesus effectively said, “You’re a people of faith in God, differentiated and set apart. Well sometimes I can’t tell when I watch how you scratch through a day.”

As long as I believe I am not ok, that I am owed better than I’m getting, that my happiness is around the corner but can’t be found on this block, I become a bit nervous inside. I begin to be someone looking for a thing I already have, a mindless idiot searching for the glasses on top of his head. And when I become this way, owed and unfulfilled, I subtly – and then overtly – expect you all to come through for me.

And you won’t. You never really do.

Neither will I for you in any fulfilling way.

And so now, here we all are, desperate for survival in practical and metaphoric ways, slighted by all the disappointing failures others have proven to be. You failed me. You can’t be trusted. You can’t be used the way I need you to let me use you.

Your appearance has to be attractive because I need to be with the very best of the species. Your attitude must be not too negative, but not overly cheery, as I need people who make interactions as untaxing as possible.

I don’t know how I am going to get through a day, so I need people around that I am sure can help, while disposing of those who will create problems.

The verse numbers and chapter breaks were added to the Bible generations after they were first penned. So what we call Matthew chapter six and Matthew chapter seven are actually one long thought. And at the end of chapter six we read Jesus saying that anxiety is bad for us and is unnecessary. That what we become desperate to seek out in others- and therefore subsequently disappointed – is already available to us. “Seek first God’s Kingdom,” Jesus said here, “and you will find that what you actually need will be made available outside your desperate worrying about it.”

And then Chapter seven continues:

“Do not judge so that you will not be judged. For in the way you judge, you will be judged; and by your standard of measure, it will be measured to you. Why do you look at the speck that is in your brother’s eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye? Or how can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ and behold, the log is in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother’s eye.”

Telling people not to worry about their own life, flowing right into telling people to stop judging others for their shortcomings. I’m telling you, it was a great sermon.

My inability to be charitable to others’ shortcomings are rooted not just in who they are, but in what I believe I require from them. But why am I judging others for their crap? Why am I withholding forgiveness for the piddly thing you did? The thing I am holding against you most probably, and probably definitely, resides solely within me. Anxious people are deft blamers. Pointing to all the world and finding it at fault, finding it unforgivable.

The more I learn that no one is in possession of what I need to be happy, that The Empire of God is others-centered, non-transactional, the more I begin to forgive you for not “coming through” for me. The more I stop even thinking of it as “forgiveness”, though I needed to start there, because there was no sin to forgive but my own. It was my eye with the log in it. My anxieties blind me. I sinned by making you God and your behavior toward me the Kingdom I was subject to.

And maybe that’s just it. Maybe most of my withheld forgiveness and grace towards others can legitimately be catalogued as idolatry. What else is it when I expect you to absolve me of my anxiety and work miracles so that I might have my happiness back?