Just a flesh wound

I'm a preacher - I long to see God's word setting people free - so every now and again, the blog is going to get all religious. But this is really important - give it a read!

I think there are two sides to this judging malarky. We looked at one yesterday - where we jump to ill-judged conclusions about people (see what I did there...). But we are ill-equipped to make such judgments, we don't know the detail or the background. We should leave the decision of how bad the person is to God - lest we invite the same brutal and superficial standard to be applied to ourselves.

But I think we play the reverse of this game when it comes to our need to forgive. We minimise the pain, downplay the debt owed, seek to mitigate the offence. So when the issue is trivial - a pet peeve, we often judge too harshly - the person is an idiot, a fool, doesn't care - and whilst it is a casual and brief word, it is nonetheless a curse and devalues one for whom Christ died. But when it really matters, when the offence has real consequences, in the name of forgiveness, we underplay the debt owed, we become a judge seeking reasons to mitigate the sentence. It looks loving - in fact it's a defence mechanism - if we can believe that it didn't hurt that much, then perhaps we won't be as wounded. In truth, the wound is there, but now it can't heal properly because we have denied it. Moreover, we cannot fully forgive, because we are no longer dealing with the offence as it was, but the lesser one to which we have compressed it. So the offender remains unforgiven and we nurture unforgiveness in our own lives.

You know the sort of thing. A friend lets us down and apologises. 'It's fine' we say as the knife continues to protrude from our back. Month Python got it right - click here for a quick reminder. After all, it's only a flesh wound.

We're really bad judges. Either we judge someone too harshly or we misjudge the debt we are owed. It's not a flesh wound, we're bleeding to death.  It's not a bruise, it's paralysing us. We can only forgive the debt we acknowledge is owed. If we forgive the scratch, we leave the gaping wound unforgiven and unprotected. If we forgive the bruise, the broken spine is unforgiven and cannot be healed.

But we fear the pain if we acknowledge the true injury, the full debt. It might overwhelm us, better to look away, to deny it, to live with the paralysis than to risk the pain. Maybe I was partly to blame, maybe he had a difficult background. A good friend who knows the truth of this wrote these words:

The fight beneath the surface,
The pain masked by the grin,
A battle raging,
Sharing, wouldn’t know where to begin,
Words like a river inside, flowing free
Suddenly dammed, blocked up, overridden by anxiety
Conversation abrupt, factual,
How can I trust when people don’t want to speak to me,
Body language read, I see the unsaid
And I can’t get to know them,
Would they understand,
Freak they might say
Over emotional
Mad
And I’m Too broken and fragile to risk
Being seen of as this

And what about God,
Can’t be close there either
Can I trust you,
Do you know
What do you see
Did you abandon me
The tears shed inside my head,
And in my room upon my bed
The cries for help, did you hear
Father God, did you care?

Jesus said to the man who had been paralysed for 38 years 'do you want to be healed?'. Let's be courageous and own the debt that is owed. Then we can hand it to Jesus who is the only one capable of taking it, dealing with it. Then we can truly forgive, release ourselves from the power that has been held over us. Then Jesus can bring true healing:

Here just as I am
The shiny mask removed
My soul laid bare to you
All the hurt and pain
Open to your rain
Healing from the inside out

Here just as I am
Struggling now to stand
You see the hurt I feel
Help me to find peace
as I rest in your embrace
Healing from the inside out

Here just as I am
Bowing on my knees
and as the tears flow
help me now to grow
into your design for me
Healing from the inside out

Here just as I am
Held in my father's hand
My soul open to
Your words of love
Singing from above
Healing from the inside out