Forgiveness: The consistency of inconsistency

Be Merciful.

Where once we had few places in which to castigate others, social media has been a boon to cruelty and to hyperbole in the extreme. Where once we had a red-faced bully at the schoolyard gate, now we have a legion of faceless attackers to excoriate any perceived miscreant over the most minimal of offenses.

I continually go back to my Christian upbringing in my judgment of others’ actions. More specifically, I keep it simple and wonder WWJD. I mean, what would Jesus say about the piling on of strangers to light the stake that will bind the next sinner?

I feel like J-Dog would totally get it. He knows we are quick to judge and slow to forgive. But truly, why?

I have watched a daily feast of a banal post which caused a full-on attack with the writer driven to aggression that in no way is balanced with his/her egregious sin.

I have read provocative remarks evoke agreement from those who seek to stop the progress of change. Agreement from a tenuously held hope that with anger and hate they would seek to build walls literally and figuratively to avert any attempts at helping anyone remotely different.

And when others make mistakes, why must we yield to puritanical shunning or witch trial dunking to test whether they can rise or not? If we dunk them long enough, then what is our goal post? Must they commit seppuku to satisfy our bloodlust? How far must we tear them down in order to feel we have reached the saturation point?

I thought I would pull out some Alexander Pope to elucidate my point. Pope is a marvelous writer because his humor is looking at the saturation point of the human ability to screw up and the crowd’s corollary in judgmental overreach.


X.
Cease then, nor order imperfection name:
Our proper bliss depends on what we blame.
Know thy own point: This kind, this due degree
Of blindness, weakness, Heav'n bestows on thee.
Submit.—In this, or any other sphere,
Secure to be as blest as thou canst bear:
Safe in the hand of one disposing pow'r,
Or in the natal, or the mortal hour.
All nature is but art, unknown to thee;
All chance, direction, which thou canst not see;
All discord, harmony, not understood;
All partial evil, universal good:
And, spite of pride, in erring reason's spite,
One truth is clear, Whatever is, is right.

(Alexander Pope, X, Essay on Man—poetryfoundation.org))

Modern translation—
We are screw ups.
God knows we are screw ups.
We will continue to be screw ups.
We will make all new screw ups tomorrow.
We are who we are supposed to be at the moment.



At ev'ry Word a Reputation dies.
 Snuff, or the Fan, supply each Pause of Chat,
 With singing, laughing, ogling, and all that. Mean while declining from the Noon of Day,
 The Sun obliquely shoots his burning Ray;
 The hungry Judges soon the Sentence sign,
 And Wretches hang that Jury-men may Dine;
(Rape of Lock, 4-Pope,poetry.eserver.org/rape-of-the-lock)

Social media exploits our basest nature—the need to feast on others’ pain to elevate ourselves. Pope’s “Rape of Lock” shows how herd mentality exacerbates the balance with over-judgment and disproportionate disdain. Imagine the horror of a woman having a lock of hair taken. A battle to be waged. A war to be fought. A reputation to be shredded:

Methinks already I your Tears survey,
Already hear the horrid things they say,
Already see you a degraded Toast,
And all your Honour in a Whisper lost!
How shall I, then, your helpless Fame defend?
'Twill then be Infamy to seem your Friend!
(Rape of Lock, 5-Pope,poetry.eserver.org/rape-of-the-lock)

We are ridiculous. Boastful. Meanspirited. Unyielding. Unfazed at the cost of such unmitigated judgment.
People kill themselves over this hatefulness.

We are responsible. We do not get to cast judgment. Moreover, we should not want the burden of judging others. We do not get “to weigh, to measure, and to find wanting’ those around us.

We have an obligation to lighten the load of those around us.

I will end with this. My husband completely self-destructed last year due to drinking himself almost to death. Make no mistake, he destroyed our family. He crashed four vehicles, got three DUIs in three different counties in two different states, was fired from two jobs, and left his entire family in the Wilds of Wisconsin forty-five minutes away from the closest rental car. The policeman who arrested him on the second official DUI drove me into the main city, so I could rent a vehicle. I did not have one drivable car, and I had to buy a cheap $2000 truck to get around. Injury after injury.

I have had innumerable family and friends with quite specific ideas on how I should handle my husband.

I have not divorced him. I am still cleaning up messes that seemed like Everest last year. I am still helping my daughters to claw their way out of the pit we all fell into during his unraveling.

Others may injure us to our very souls. Real, not imagined, trauma that will take much to overcome.

So I must ask, I must wonder: What price are we willing to make someone pay for our perceived injuries? I seem to recall some seventy times seven or something along those lines from Jesus. You know, a symbolic number, so we funny humans could grasp the concept that forgiveness must be the one consistent of the inconsistent.