Confirmation Student Questions: Taking Advantage?

Another question today from the sermon notes of our confirmation students:

We talk about helping people.  What happens when people take advantage of that help?

This can happen.  Nothing we do can prevent it.  The only question we can ask is whether we're going to allow that to stop us helping people or whether we're going to take the risk--and occasionally get taken advantage of--and help anyway.

God already answered this question for us through the example of Jesus.  He died for our sins, right?  He made us free and saved us.  He did that so we could do good in the world.  But all of us mess up.  All of us occasionally use that freedom for bad things, selfish purposes.  We take advantage of the help God has given us, misusing it and hurting him, when we sin.  Did that stop God from giving us help?  Does that stop God from forgiving us?  Did the story go, "And then Jesus realized that all of these people were just going to take advantage of him so he got down off the cross, said, 'Forget you guys!', and went home"?  Clearly not.  Just as Jesus helps us even though we mess up, so we are called to help others even when they mess up.

Having said that, there are a couple things we can do in order to cope with being taken advantage of.

First, do everything you can to make your help unconditional.  That means you give because the gift is needed, not because you expect a person to act a certain way or pay you back somehow.  We're not buying good behavior with our gifts, we're sharing love.  There's a difference.  If your gifts are given freely, with as few conditions as possible, you won't really be taken advantage of.  It's your choice to give.  Once you've made that choice, let the gift go and be at peace.  You did what you could.

Second, every gift-giver is free to define what "help" means.  If you don't think your gift will be helpful--will do good--there's no requirement that it be given.  Let's say you were babysitting a brother and sister.  The brother climbs up on the roof and looks straight down on his younger sister.  When you climb up there to see what's going on he asks you, "Hey...have you got a big rock I can borrow?"  Are you under any obligation to "help" him here?  Of course not!  You have reasonable suspicion that the rock you're "helping" him with will be used for hurtful purposes.  Your gift would not bring good into the world so it's not really a helpful gift at all.

I have to define the real meaning of "help" every time someone knocks on my door (or passes me on the street) and asks for money.  Often people who ask for money on the street have problems with alcohol.  If I just give them money they might go and buy a bunch of booze.  That's not helping them or the world.  So I have to consider the situation before I just hand them a $20 bill.  Usually I'll ask what they need.  If they say "food" then I'll go with them to the grocery store and buy them a bunch of food...way more than $20 usually.  That way I'm giving a lot of help, but it's real help and not something harmful.  If I'm in a big city and can't stop for groceries I will tell them that I'm donating to a local shelter where they can get a hot meal.  Then I do it!  This is also helpful.

Sometimes our gifts to others don't involve money.  Listening to friends and supporting them is a helpful practice.  But here, too, you have to define what "help" really means.  Sometimes just listening is the right thing to do.  Sometimes friends use other friends as a crutch, as an excuse to continue their bad behavior.  Sometimes listening to someone's story gives the impression that you approve of their actions.  Or sometimes a person relies on a friend so much that it begins to drag the friend down, consuming their lives and making them worry.  Every once in a while you figure out that you're not the person this friend should be talking to...that they need more help than you can give and should talk to an adult or a counselor.  In all of these cases you have to ask what is most helpful.  Sometimes giving the gift of your time and a listening ear does more harm than good.  In those cases "helpful" means saying, "I'm sorry, I can't do this.  Here is who you need to talk to to get some real help."

In none of these cases do you abandon the person in need.  You're just helping in a different way, by getting them the right kind of support...a kind that you can't give.  Being able to do this well will keep you from feeling like you're being taken advantage of.

If you're not sure what to do in a given situation and it's worrying you, you might want to get some help yourself by talking to a parent, teacher, counselor, or...I don't know...your pastor!  These people might have some decent advice about how to proceed so that the person you're worried about gets the right kind of help without you being hurt or taken advantage of.

--Pastor Dave (pastordave@geneseelutheranparish.org)

Confirmation Question: Unforgivable Sin?

Today we look at another brilliant question from the sermon notes of our fine Confirmation class students.

We talk about forgiving sin.  Is there such a thing as a sin that can't be forgiven?

The Bible actually talks in Matthew and Mark about "speaking against the Holy Spirit" as the one sin which cannot be forgiven.  Well and good...except we don't know exactly what that entails.  The Holy Spirit gives us a good portion of mystery and discovery just by his mere presence.  We don't even know entirely how to speak of him, let alone what speaking against him would mean.  Theologians have debated this for centuries without coming to a firm conclusion.  In any case, it's only mentioned briefly and never brought up again.  We could talk all day about what it means, but my pastor sense is tingling telling me that this isn't the best answer to your question.

The better answer probably starts with another question:  Who are we talking about doing the forgiving here?

It's certainly within the power of God to forgive all sins.  When we do the confession and forgiveness thing in church that's the same as God telling you that your sins are forgiven.  You are washed clean.  That's what makes you able to hear God's Word rightly, to participate in communion, to even sing or pray before God and have him hear your words.  God makes you clean so he can stay with you and so you can stay with him...not just in worship, but forever.

When we say, "Your sins are forgiven" we don't mean some and not others.  It's not a process of picking and choosing.  You can't be sort of clean and get into heaven.  There's no such thing as "mostly saved, except for that one thing".  Clean means clean.  Forgiven means forgiven.  God loves us so much that he doesn't leave any sin behind.  In that sense there is no unforgivable sin.

The issue gets more complex when you talk about how we forgive each other.  We're supposed to forgive each other just as God forgives us.  That means being able to forgive the people who do wrong against you, not holding grudges or carrying the hurt and offense around with you forever.  Ideally there would be no unforgivable sin in our relationships with each other either.

In practice, though, some sins cause so much hurt that it's nearly impossible to forgive the offender fully...or at least impossible to forgive the offender on a timetable, as in, "You've got to forgive them now!"  Sometimes even saying those words, "I forgive you" makes us hurt more because it feels like we're saying the sin didn't happen or wasn't important.  Each of us is always free to forgive another no matter what the sin.  Each of us should strive to do that.  But it's not fair for one person to say to another, "You have to forgive that other person right now or you're a bad person!"

I'm afraid that if I only describe the ideal situation--that we should forgive each other as fully and freely as God forgives us--someone reading this will say, "Pastor Dave is telling me I have to forgive this other person right now or I'm a bad person."  What if the sin in question was abuse...somebody was abused or attacked by another person.  Would it be fair for me to say, "If you don't forgive the person who abused you right now you're bad" when the whole tragedy of the abuse was that it made you feel bad?  I'd just be piling new badness onto the old.  That's not what God wants.

That's why we have to be more gentle with this subject.  We do say that God is capable of forgiving all of us of any sin. We say that we need to forgive each other too, just like God does.  But I'd also say that if the idea of forgiving someone right now is just so painful that you can't do it...I think God understands that.  Right now that sin might be unforgivable.  If not being able to forgive right this instant is a sin in itself, well...God can forgive that one too.

Therefore when talking about unforgivable sin I tend to say that I'm not certain that I could always forgive every sin but I am certain that God can and I won't stop him from doing it.  If someone did something awful to one of my children (or even one of my Confirmation students!) I'm not sure I could forgive them for a long time, maybe not ever.  But if that person were locked in jail and a priest or pastor came to see them I wouldn't be angry.  I would allow that God could forgive them...maybe even that they should be forgiven at some point.  I would just know that I wasn't able to do that right now.

So from a God point of view there are no sins beyond his ability to forgive.  From a human point of view we should try as hard as we can to imitate God and forgive each other's sins.  That should work 99.9% of the time with 99.9% of sins.  But if there are certain sins which cause us so much pain that we cannot bring ourselves to forgive at this time, that's OK.  God is here to comfort our pain, not to bring more.  He'll forgive in his way and he'll hold us tight in the meantime.

--Pastor Dave (pastordave@geneseelutheranparish.org)

Confirmation Student Questions: Hurt

Today we continue our look at questions submitted by our church's Confirmation students through their sermon notes.  This is the first of two questions we'll field on the sermon from last Sunday on blessings. (The Monday morning version can be found here.)

If God is with us and blessing us, why do we still feel hurt?

In the beginning of all things, back in the Garden of Eden, everything was perfect.  Nobody knew pain or suffering or loss of any kind.  Then Adam and Eve bit the fruit and brought sin into the world.  The Bible tells us that sin didn't just break them, it broke the whole world and their relationship with it.  Thorns came upon the ground, we experienced physical pain for the first time, people started blaming and accusing each other and hurting with words, death became a part of our reality.  The world wasn't the way it was meant to be anymore.  We made it that way through sin.

You don't have to look very far to see the world is still broken.  People at school often fight and say mean things about each other instead of getting along.  Some people in a community have plenty to eat, others have little or none.  Nobody knows who to vote for in the presidential elections because all of the candidates seem self-centered and out of touch.  Racism, war, famine, disease, natural disasters...these things afflict the world every day, causing people to suffer.

The hurt we feel is a response to this "brokenness".  I don't know if you've ever known anyone whose nerve endings have been deadened.  It happens sometimes either because of a birth condition or some kind of accident.  Not having any feeling in a part of your body creates an incredibly difficult challenge.  The biggest problem is that you can't feel pain.  If you have no feeling in your foot you could step on a nail and it'll just drive right through you without you knowing.  I've heard of people without feeling in a hand who actually burned it on the stove and only knew it when they started smelling their skin burning, long after the damage was done.

Imagine having that same thing in your spirit.  If you never hurt you'd be viewing things like racism, poverty, illness, suffering from natural disasters and you just...wouldn't...care.  Hurt is your indicator that something is going wrong, something you should pay attention to.  When somebody calls you a name or treats you badly the hurt you feel tells you that this isn't right...the same way stubbing your toe on something tells you that you weren't walking right.  Hurt reminds us that the world isn't perfect and that we need to change things for the better.  Hurt reminds us not to do wrong things to each other or to put up with wrong things being done to us.  Hurt isn't pleasant but it's necessary in this way.

Even the best things in life involve hurting.  Giving birth to a child involves a fair amount of physical pain.  No matter how much you love that child, they grow really quickly!  From a parent's perspective the baby whom you were just cradling in your arms runs off to college in just the blink of an eye.  Every time you look at your adorable three-year-old you realize that he won't be three forever--not even for long--and that all of these moments are temporary.  Your best moments involve that kind of sadness.  Realizing that nothing in this life lasts forever helps you treasure those moments though.  That pain reminds you to make the most of every moment you have.  Again, hurt fills an important role in our lives even though it's unpleasant.

The hurt that comes from this broken, temporary world also reminds us to look forward to God's ultimate gift:  a return to life the way it was meant to be.  We hurt now, but we won't hurt forever.  God has promised us that we will be with him and every tear will be wiped dry.  As it turns out, the good things in this life really are forever!  Only the pain really passes away.  But we have to hold on through a fair amount of that pain in order to see the promise come true.

Every time we get together in church to celebrate we also pray for people who are suffering.  We pray for God to be with them and that he would use us to help them...not to take away their pain but to let them know that they're not alone as they deal with it.  That's probably the most important message we can bring.  I'd never take away your pain.   That would make your life a real tragedy.  But you don't have to feel alone as you bear it.  Whether it's a passing pain like a fight with a friend or an enduring pain like abuse or having a loved one die, someone's here who cares about you and is willing to walk beside you and hold your hand through it.  That walking and hand-holding is a little reflection of the heavenly healing to come.  It's a gift we give to each other as people of faith until that day when God bestows his ultimate gift on all of us.

--Pastor Dave (pastordave@geneseelutheranparish.org)