Blog on the Lillypad
Sunday, October 26, 2003
 | 10/28/03 Addendum: Forgiveness in Bizarro World
Remember the old Superman comics that occasionally featured Bizarro World, where everything ran the wrong way? Yesterday on the FFF, Marty Braemer (now famous for telling me twice to shove it in a public post), posted a message that he loved me in Christ, so I posted back and told him I didn't believe him because there was no evidence of it. So then two other guys posted messages that indicated that something better was expected of me. I was confused. I couldn't make myself believe Marty loves me; I'd have to give it time and see if there was evidence. |
So then today, Marty posted a longer post on whether forgiveness is asked for or received. Then I got his drift. He wanted me to express forgiveness of him. This is where the Bizarro stuff kicks in. The last he wrote, he had lowered himself to tell me to shove it, but I deserved it. So after several questions to figure out what he was getting at, I frankly told him that I could not forgive him for a sin he committed against himself. So, finally, he posted, "I have apologized for my tone and my phrase of "shove it.""
Actually, I thought, he never did apologize to me for either one. He only said he had lowered himself (and if that's a sin I have no power to forgive it) and that his opinion of me remained unchanged. But it was time to give him the benefit of the doubt. So I did. I wrote: "I forgive that--easily."
But it was all backwards: First a somewhat doubtful (to me) claim to love me in Christ after calling me Trailer Lot Barbie and telling me to shove it. Then an expectation from him and two others for me to forgive him when 1) he hadn't asked for it, and 2) I wasn't mad. I thought the "shove it" post was both funny and tragic. But it was useful in terms of my documentation. So then I did grant the forgiveness, and he--by the way--claims to have forgiven me for what I did. But all I did was ask for dates to clarify a timeline; I told him I plan to keep documenting these abuses and the ongoing corruption and cover-ups in these types of churches, so if he thinks that's a sin against him, he'll have to keep forgiving me: I don't plan to stop. However, he seemed satisfied with that. It was all backwards, I thought. But I guess it made sense to somebody.
I wasn't going to post an account of it because it is confusing, but since I documented the beginning of the matter, I thought it was right to document the end of it.
