rethinking my blog. christians don’t forgive.
After a week break and alot of time to rethink my blog makeover I have finally decided to break the hiatus and bring to you a more discursive meditation on what I am doing here.
Central to Christian claims are the ideas of love, mercy, and forgiveness—a rather queer understanding of justice proceeds from this—namely injustice. I have noticed however that it is the tendency of churches these days to give up forgiveness, mercy, and love for a rather esoteric justice. Christianity has never really been a counter-cultural movement in its totality, the fact that the category Christian exists posits the point.
My blog is offensive, you all have noticed that, and hence it is scary—scary that a person could really mean what I have said, offensive that a person who knows you so well would go even further and voice those sayings. But it is also a parable—my blog writing are not about my feelings, they are rather about your feelings—your responses. They have grown past what I meant by them and they have become emotions inside of you–the reader.
The point is, if you are offended, and you consider yourself a Christian, and you are unable to look mercifully upon me, unable to forgive me, unable to love me—then are you really Christ-like? Or is it that you have come looking for justice? And really are you nothing more than a subject of a court made of gestures?
If forgiveness only forgives the forgiveable then forgiveness fades into nonexistence.
Because I really think that is true, I want to confirm your fears, I have meant every single thing I have said—but any condemnation, any anger, any injustice you have felt, well that is all your fault.
I will continue to polarize, because polarization brings out the ridiculousness of separations that we make between ourselves and others. Those feelings you have, the extent to which they are true to you—that is a measure of how you separate yourself from others. It is measured to you as you measure it to others.
What I invite here, is the reader who reads what I have to say, feels it, and embraces me. I challenge you to love—I don’t demand it. But in facing that you can or cannot love me, honesty becomes paramount. This challenge, I issue, proves that which most people feel uncomfortable admitting: it’s impossible to love everyone selflessly and immediately—loving is hard. Please let your discomfort settle for a moment. Have you stopped to ask yourself—when did I decide that I should love selflessly and immediately?
My point is, the lessons in my writings are manifold and reveal that challenges that we gloss over in our dishonesty. I’ve decided to continue writing the way I have. Your responses have egged me onward, confirmed my calling. My goal, is to help people realize that loving, forgiving, and mercy cost deeply—a sickness unto death.
David,
I’ve been reading your blogs since you started putting them up on facebook. Usually, I don’t read blogs, but since you are my cousin and since I was shocked at some of the titles and since they were short blogs, I decided to take a look at them. For clarification, this response is to your blogs as a whole and not necessarily to this individual blog.
I have to say that I disagree with you (very strongly) on most of the things that you have written. The vulgarity you use is, of course, repulsive- and you knew that when you started writing these blogs- as you’ve said it’s part of your intentions to shock, offend and generally disgust people. But the vulgarity in itself is not what turns me off to your blogs. You can’t live in the world and not be exposed to vulgarity, and while repulsive and shocking, the words you use or pictures you paint are NOT the worst or most offensive parts of your blogs.
What IS very offensive is your coupling these things with Christ’s Church. I don’t really know what’s going on in your life right now or if you’re still in seminary or if you still go to church, but last I heard, you were a professing Christian yourself. Have you forgotten that Christ’s church is his bride? Or that believers are adopted sons and daughters of our Father? Ultimately, it’s not REALLY Christians that you are offending. It’s their Heavenly Father you are offending.
On a similar note, I don’t deny some of the things you accuse Christians of are true. Do Christians judge other people when they ought not to? Yes. Do Christians hold grudges and get sinfully angry and not forgive? Absolutely. Do Christians oftentimes have an incorrect view of their Lord and Savior in not seeing Him for who He really is? Yes. Do Christians buy into nonsense they get from the state and think with their hearts and not their heads? Yep. But, since when have Christians professed perfection? or anywhere close to perfection for that matter? When I go to communion my pastor usually tells us that the table is for sinners. Christians I know tell me that Jesus died for sinners and not saints.
Citing the sins, faults and failures of Christians only tells Christians what they already know- that they are sinful people who need a savior. The way you go about it though is destructive and unloving- not Christ-like.
This latest blog challenges Christians to be honest with themselves and to try to hold a loving attitude towards you after you’ve trampled on the name of the Savior we hold so dear to our hearts. But I would challenge you to look at some of the things you are saying. You accuse Christians of hypocrisy because they don’t want to love you after what you’ve said (which is true- loving someone else is never easy). But at the same time, you’ve acknowledged that you mean everything you say and that you offend others deliberately. I haven’t seen anything in any of your blogs that would come across as loving or encouraging. Are you asking Christians to do what you won’t? Where’s the honesty in that?
One more thing. God does command his children to love others. And while I sincerely believe that you’ve spouted heresy in these blogs (arrogantly), your plea for Christians to do their best to love you as a person in spite of the things you’ve said, is not opposed to what God commands His children. So please don’t take this response in hostility. But don’t think that these blogs are primarily about the readers. The views and opinions on the screen are yours. Meant to elicit reactions yes, but meant to expose the sinful hearts of men and women to God’s light, no. God’s Word does that. Not your blogs.
In one of your early blogs you said that Christ would f*** up the church. This is not Biblical. Christ loves His Church. His purpose is to build it up, not bring it down. So when you write these blogs, you ought to ask yourself beforehand how exactly they are supposed to build up Christ’s Church. If they’re not meant to do that, then all they amount to is angry nonsense from an attitude of disillusionment with God’s children.
Like I said. Not trying to be a hater here. But look at your own life before you challenge everyone else to look at theirs.
-Your Cousin
Ben
October 27, 2009 5:34 pm at 5:34 pm
That’s my boy. Well said, son.
Ben’s Dad
Don Bethel
November 1, 2009 8:41 pm at 8:41 pm
I agree Ben, you have it right. But the x-factor here is knowing David, who he has been and what he is doing with this blog.It is a blatant and direct attack to the Church. Honestly its a welcomed attack. If you look at the Bride of Christ and see her getting on her knees for the American Government. She is a whore.
Yes we are the adopted children of God. We have been grafted in when He cut out His chosen race. Because I say I am a Christian doesn’t make me one. Faith without works is dead, and works without faith is dead. We need to work to stay apart of the vine, so that when the day comes we hear those beautiful words. ‘Well done, good and faithful servant.’
So when I look at churches, of course not all churches, but a lot I see people who feel they are the chosen children of God, and they do NOTHING for anyone. The Church of America has become the Synagogue of the First century, and its members are the Pharisee. I don’t think Dave is asking people to not Judge him. He is asking them the Judge themselves. It is a hard task to look inward and feel like you’re wrong. Take off your American hat and put on the Armor of Christ. Fight for Christ, not for marriage. Fight for Christ, not for your ideals. Don’t call it Christian when you fight the state. Christ never fought the state. He fought the hearts of God’s chosen and made them want to kill him.
Everyday we all hang Christ on a Tree. Everyday we sin.
With Love
Michael
Michael Plante
October 28, 2009 9:10 am at 9:10 am
Michael says it well, and confirms in me also that people can read this blog positively, as an affirmation of Christian value rather than as a negation and contradiction of it.
I want to build on Mike’s writing by focusing on something Ben said. “The vulgarity you use is, of course, repulsive…the words you use or pictures you paint are NOT the worst or most offensive parts of your blogs. What IS very offensive is your coupling these things with Christ’s Church.”
First, Ben is right, I am a Christian and I do go to seminary; so it must be factored into the interpretive lens as a part of why I write. Draw the next conclusion, I won’t make it for you. That’s part of the exercise of this blog.
What Ben said about being repulsed is what I intended to draw out, caricature, and lambaste. Namely, the self-righteousness that poses itself in humility as a throwback to Christian value and defending that value.
How, as a loving neighbor, do we square repulsion with Christ-likeness? How does the Christian injustice of mercy square with the esoteric justice of church-culture? In other words, why do we have a subset of static church-culture-mores with which we judge by?
How far Ben and others are repulsed away from me is exactly the measure of how far Ben and others are from Christ. I actually am not offended by that; I would say that it is true of many. But the offense is that I would make that quantification, because the assumption is that there is no distance there. I am not against the distance between myself and others, nor even myself and Christ, I am against dishonestly saying we are already embracing. Where as my labeling and slandering is offensive it is actually non-judgmental. I never said it was a bad thing to be a Christian, to give a blow-job, etc. I just said I have less respect. To what extent must you care about whether or not I respect you?
Offense comes from how closely you identify with that which I caricature—and how uncomfortable you are with dirt and sin.
Like Mike said: “Everyday we hang Christ on a tree. Everyday we sin.” I say with that: everyday we hang our neighbor on the tree, we spit in her face, we stab her in the side, we watch her die, and we have no compassion.
I will echo what I said about forgiveness.
Compassion is not compassionate, with those that we already care for or are predisposed to care for. That sort of compassion is self-love.
Dave Bennett
October 28, 2009 10:34 am at 10:34 am
I love your blogs. Seriously.
Seth Powell
October 28, 2009 12:05 pm at 12:05 pm
“How far Ben and others are repulsed away from me is exactly the measure of how far Ben and others are from Christ.”
I would argue that the degree to which we are repulsed and distanced from anyone is the degree to which we are repulsed and distanced from God. If we take Jesus’ command to love our enemies seriously, then our enemies become the embodiment of Christ to us. Then, our reconciliation with our enemies becomes the process of sanctification and salvation in our lives.
Davo
October 28, 2009 12:33 pm at 12:33 pm
I’m enjoying this discussion. I did want to respond to one thing Michael wrote above:
“Don’t call it Christian when you fight the state. Christ never fought the state. He fought the hearts of God’s chosen and made them want to kill him.”
Actually, I interpret plenty of of Christ’s actions while he lived, and also his execution at the hands of the state, to mean that there is, in fact, a sharp divide between following Christ and following empire. It’s one thing to argue for Christian pacifism, which I believe you could make a good case for (though I’m not wholly convinced of that). But if, when you say “Christ never fought the state,” you mean that Christ never acted in flagrant opposition to state oppression and neither should we, well, I’d have to advocate a different view of discipleship.
In peace,
Tom
Tom Ryberg
November 2, 2009 7:04 pm at 7:04 pm
I have to agree with Tom on this one. Jesus’ work certainly contained a strong spiritual component. However, much of what he did was politically revolutionary. Otherwise, he would have been stoned, not crucified. In the garden of Gesthemane, when Jesus says, “Do you come to arrest me like a common thief?”… The word that is translated “common thief” is more accurately translated “insurrectionist.” This suggests that his actions were, in fact, very political for their time.
Davo
November 3, 2009 8:24 am at 8:24 am
Please don’t get me wrong. I am not saying we are not called to fight the state. BUT, We, Christians, are not seen as fighting the state. At least not all of it. We choose sides. Sides that only vaguely use our hearts more appropriately or agendas to get us to do their bidding. Abortion is bad. VOTE. Same sex marriage is only the gateway that people walk through before people can marry their pets. VOTE VOTE VOTE. Save the world by voting.
When I said that Christ never fought the state. I meant He never fought the state about taxes, about marriage, about unborn children, about things that do not matter tomorrow. He fought hearts. That is where you change people.
As far as pacifism is concerned. To hell with pacifism. It is sin. They took the ten commandments out of schools. Can you save schools, or the children in them? No more praying before HS football games. Says who? Them? Pray!! What are they going to do, tell you not to do it, take you to jail? Praise God. They can’t take Him out of your hearts. When they take these away from you, and we say “this is awful an abomination.” No one said you had to obey them. Ask yourself, “am I facing anything like my brothers in China?” Hardly. I would say that when we get angry with the state for taking it away we deny God His due, we need to praise God all the more because of the suffering we were blessed with in His name.
So again I reiterate. Christ never fought the state. EVER. He fought the HEARTS of men. He was heaping coals of fire on their heads. The state may have fought Christ but it was deeper for God.
With Love
Michael
Michael Plante
November 3, 2009 9:46 am at 9:46 am
David,
I want to know if you think forgiveness is truly necessary. Many (especially Christians) will say that we must forgive because the Lord has forgiven us, and/or that when “peace of mind” is at stake, the process of forgiveness is worth braving for. But its almost as if Christians feel forced to forgive, beyond their thoughts on it, because they have a duty – it is their mission to forgive, and so they do so. But how can we forgive everyone? How can someone like Hitler be forgiven? I think its more valuable to sacrifice “peace of mind” in order to remind everyone why we mustn’t forgive such a inhuman, genocidal monster. If someone wrongs you, then it is more powerful to hold that memory close to you so that you can learn from it and not let it happen again. If you forgive then you forget, and you are left vulnerable to a future attack. Why else should we not forgive? What do you think
marcus
November 23, 2009 2:56 am at 2:56 am