Law #46: Life isn't always fair.

Right now I'm reading Madeleine L'Engle's The Genesis Trilogy, which is a collection of theological musings on the book of Genesis. I love L'Engle's work because she is ruthlessly creative and unconventional - I have never read another author where I can read one page and think that she is incredibly right and two pages later think she is incredibly wrong (but most of the time I think she's right). It's very refreshing! In the second book of the series, entitled A Stone for a Pillow, Mrs. L'Engle struggles with the concepts of forgiveness and grace. I believe she has it right, and I am struggling to learn both. Here are a few select quotes from the third chapter - all of which speak for themselves, but work beautifully together to explain the frailty of our human condition and desperate need for God...


"The glorious message of Scripture is that we do not have to be perfect for our Maker to love us. All through the great stories, heavenly love is lavished on visibly imperfect people. Scripture asks us to look at Jacob as he really is, to look at ourselves as we really are, and then realize that this is who God loves. God did not love Jacob because he was a cheat, but because he was Jacob."

"If God can love Jacob - or any single one of us - as we really are, then it is possible for us to turn in love to those who hurt or confuse us. Those we know and those we do not know. And that makes me take a new look at love."

"Unfortunately, as many of us move on in chronology, we tend to stay stuck in the 'It's not fair!' frame of mind, which, for the adult, is crippling. It takes great courage to live in a world where fairness simply doesn't play a part, and hasn't, since Adam and Eve ate of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. And one of Satan's most successful ploys is his insistence that things ought to be fair. The good should be rewarded; the bad should be punished. If we think forensically and earn enough merit badges everything will work out just as we would like. But that is not how grace works."

"And in my own life I was struggling to accept the fact that justice was not going to be done. I did not have to be exonerated over that spilled secret. I did not have to know who told, and then allowed me to be blamed. I had to let go thoughts of justice and vindication, and live with the situation as it was, as lovingly as possible. Which was not very."

"It takes more maturity than many of us possess to want the monstrous criminal to repent, saying to God and to us, 'Forgive me. I am horrified at what I have done. I am sorry, sorry, and I will never do it again. With your help I will turn my life to love.' "

"It is a taint in human nature to like to see someone else do wrong so that we can affirm our own righteousness. My own wish to find out who had told the secret was a part of this taint. I was well aware that, as my friend Tallis points out, we cannot afford the luxury of hurt feelings. My head could get that all straight, but there was still hurt in my heart."

"Ernest L. Boyer, Jr., in A Way in the World, writes, 'Forgiveness is, then, a renewal, and for love to grow it must be renewed every day. This renewal is not one that seeks somehow to return to the past, to live with the bitterness of disappointment of the expectation of a future that never was.'
To carry a grudge is to live in the past. That hit home. It helped me to move into the present so that there might be hope for friendship to be reborn.
Boyer continues, 'Both of these - the past that is now gone and the future that never was - are illusionary worlds. Forgiveness frees a person to live in the reality of the relationship's present.' "

"Forgiveness which leads to welcoming, with open arms, the forgiven ones to the party, comes less from an act of the will than from a gift of grace. Sometimes prayer open the door to this gift.
Prayer is most real when it moves away from forensic demands, from a crime and punishment, eye-for-an-eye thinking, and into an open and vulnerable listening. It is not so much talking to God as being quiet and focussing on listening, so that perhaps we will be able to hear if God has something to say."

"I am not burdening myself with a lot of guilts which are impossible for me to resolve. But to separate myself from the suffering of the world is disaster. If I call myself 'good' is that not separation?
Jesus said,

'Why do you call me good? Only my father is good.'

Aren't we supposed to be good? Do we always have the wisdom to know what good is? If we truly understand what Jesus was saying, we know that what matters is not moralism, but undersanding that God with infinite grace can work goodness through us. Goodness is of God; we cannot make ourselves good through an act of will."

"If I am ever good, it is not because I am trying to be, but because goodness is for a moment offered me as a gift of sheer grace. Jesus made it very clear that goodness comes from God, not from [God's] creatures."

"What has happened to our country in the past quarter-of-a-century would be incomprehensible to my grandparents, but it has all happened and is happening. We need to be aware of it, and to try to listen to God for what our part is in trying to change it, to bring terrorism to compassion, greed to generosity, lust to love. We don't have to succeed, single-handedly, in reforming the world, or in improving the morals of those around us by our own goodness. God-Within-Us-in-Jesus did none of these things."

"If I am true in my living to what I proclaim in my writing it is because of grace, not virtue. It has little to do with denomination. I pray for grace, knowing that it is not mine to grasp; it is a gift of love."



My prayer, Joel's prayer, is this: "Lord Jesus Christ, Son of the Living God, have mercy on me, a sinner."