Listen or Read Below:
Audio By Carbonatix
Perhaps the most striking and discussed part of Ross Douthat’s 60 Minutes interview with President Trump was about forgiveness. Douthat, who might be the single best interviewer in the country right now, asked the President:
Let’s say you pass away, you’re entering the next life, and all you have to do to enter paradise is feel love and forgiveness for James Comey, Nancy Pelosi, anyone who you have expressed hate for over the years. Do you think you can do it?
To which the President replied that it would be easy to say yes, but it wouldn’t be honest:
I found them to be extremely dishonest people, very bad people, very bad for our country. I love our country far more than I can love people and people like that… No, I think they were very bad people and . . . . I do hate some of my enemies, and I always will.
The President is correct to say that, when it comes to forgiveness, the easy thing to do is to claim the moral high ground while never actually forgiving the one who wronged you. To his credit, having refused to forgive his enemies, he refused to claim he had forgiven them, while more than a few of his critics are guilty of that hypocrisy.
In fact, most of us are hypocrites in that way. Depending on the seriousness of the offense, forgiveness is somewhere between difficult and impossible. While discussing the President’s comments on Newsnight with Abby Phillip, philosopher and political activist Dr. Cornel West accurately explained this aspect of the human condition:
Every human being is going to hate their enemies. That’s what it is to be human. The question is, are you open enough to a divine grace that will empower you, to be aid to you, in order to enable you to love your enemies? You can’t do that by yourself. I say that as a Christian because I got a lot of gangster in me, just like Trump got gangster in him. But he chooses to be a gangster, and I’m a gangster. But I’m a redeemed sinner with gangster proclivity; so that I know I have a grace that I have access to that allows me to love my enemies to the best of my ability.
Forgiveness is, in fact, unique within the Christian worldview. Within more fatalistic worldviews, such as critical theory or naturalism or fundamentalist versions of Islam, there is no undergirding or support for forgiveness. In other worldviews, especially Eastern religions and their Western revisions, forgiveness is only for the good of the self, not for the restoration of another.
Within a Christian vision, it is God who is ultimately offended by our sin, deception, hate and rebellion. Thus, it is only if God forgives that forgiveness has some ultimate value in His world beyond mere therapy or weakness. But if He has secured forgiveness, then it’s substantive and even binding over those who are His.
Scripture repeatedly describes a reciprocal relationship between being forgiven by God and offering forgiveness to others. We are to forgive because we have been forgiven. Unless we forgive, we will not be forgiven. And we are not able to forgive unless we are forgiven.
Jesus concluded His parable about a servant forgiven a great debt but who refused to forgive a smaller one by saying,
And in anger his master delivered him to the jailers, until he should pay all his debt. So also my heavenly Father will do to every one of you, if you do not forgive your brother from your heart. (Matthew 18:34-35)
Paul instructed the church at Ephesus, “Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you.” (Ephesians 4:32)
Jesus taught His people to pray, “Forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors.” He then added,
For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you, but if you do not forgive others their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses. (Matthew 6:12, 14-15)
And in a striking scene at the Last Supper, Jesus told Peter, “Unless I wash you, you have no part with me.” (John 13:8)
And this is what explains the difficulty the President admitted about forgiving his enemies. When asked, at the Family Leadership Summit in 2015, if he had ever asked God for forgiveness, Trump replied, “I’m not sure I have.” Later, he told Anderson Cooper, “Why do I have to repent or ask for forgiveness if I am not making mistakes? I work hard; I’m an honorable person.”
In fact, Trump is saying out loud what we all think, outside of Christ. That we aren’t that bad, that we can work our way into God’s favor, and that it’s really the other guy who is worse. Though in many cases, the other guy is worse, God doesn’t grade on a curve. As John Newton, the former slave trader, famously said, “Although my memory’s fading, I remember two things very clearly. I am a great sinner, and Christ is a great Savior.”
That we need to be rescued, and that He has provided rescue, are both difficult things for any of us to admit. But it is the heart of the Gospel, and the fountainhead of true forgiveness. It is a wonderful gift for Christians to offer a world without it.
Photo Credit: ©GettyImages/fstop123
John Stonestreet is President of the Colson Center for Christian Worldview, and radio host of BreakPoint, a daily national radio program providing thought-provoking commentaries on current events and life issues from a biblical worldview. John holds degrees from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School (IL) and Bryan College (TN), and is the co-author of Making Sense of Your World: A Biblical Worldview.
The views expressed in this commentary do not necessarily reflect those of CrosswalkHeadlines.
BreakPoint is a program of the Colson Center for Christian Worldview. BreakPoint commentaries offer incisive content people can’t find anywhere else; content that cuts through the fog of relativism and the news cycle with truth and compassion. Founded by Chuck Colson (1931 – 2012) in 1991 as a daily radio broadcast, BreakPoint provides a Christian perspective on today’s news and trends. Today, you can get it in written and a variety of audio formats: on the web, the radio, or your favorite podcast app on the go.
Continue reading
