August 15, 2005

Forgiven

Jesus said that anybody who is forgiven little loves little (Lk 7.47b). I wish he hadn’t said that, but he did, and I’ve never been all that sure what he meant.

I wonder if he means that if you don’t make any mistakes at all, or, like some folk in high places, you can’t even remember ever making any, then of course there’s nothing to forgive or nothing you know about that needs forgiving. If that’s the case, that is, if there’s nothing to forgive, then I suppose you can’t qualify as a lover, or, as they say, even a compassionate conservative, let alone be one. Come to think about it, that explains a lot.

This gets really bothersome, though, when there’re a lot of people involved, like a corporation or a nation or an orthodox church, for example. I can’t imagine how Jesus or anybody can go about forgiving, say, an energy company or an HMO or an army of preemptive warriors. Or, for that matter, if he did know a way, then I can’t imagine the FBI, for example, loving anybody.

There’s plenty of evidence that they all make mistakes and need forgiving, but if they can’t actually love, they could maybe be instruments of justice which, it seems and as some have suggested, might be thought of as love at a social or institutional level.

Maybe if we find a way to forgive these big power houses, say, like the Supreme Court for the Dred Scott decision and for meddling in presidential elections, that is, let them off from all their debt to society, maybe then we can expect justice to abound. Lots of it. That’ll be a day.

But being in politics, and that’s what this is all about, is for some folk like being a football coach; you have to be smart enough to understand the game and dumb enough to think it’s important. How can Jesus possibly forgive anything like that? I know. Don’t tell me.

No Comments

RSS feed for comments on this post.