Donald Sterling is no choir boy.
Never has been. He owns a well-documented personal rap-sheet of sexual immoralities, a badly broken marriage and family life, and attitudes toward racial minorities that would make anyone with a genuine conscience blush. All of this has come to light with private statements, secretly recorded, that are now abuzz on national media.
But now, at 80 years old, with a mouth that seems unable to keep from uttering increasingly damning statements, the owner of the LA Clippers still pleads for forgiveness.
"I've said terrible things that I don't mean," he repeats. "I am asking for forgiveness."
America has collectively gathered around at the executioner's field and picked up stones. We are in the windup. Ready, aim, fire (or at least -- DEMAND he sell his team). He's a fool and an embarrassment. Get the hook.
FORGIVENESS IS...
What is forgiveness? And when should it be put in play?
Simply put, it is a releasing of the right to reciprocate hurt or injury. A letting go. A forgiving person decides not to let a transgression against her define future pay-back actions toward the offender. Forgiveness refuses to respond in kind. Other consequences for the offender may remain and play out, but the one offended releases his/her right to do back what was done to him. The Bible puts it this way, "Forgive one another, as God in Christ, has forgiven you."
But to be sure, it is much harder to forgiven when you size up two things about the one who hurt you.
We are less willing to forgive when we sense that the offender is not genuinely sorry. Forgiveness is easier when a person's contriteness is not contrived. We want to know, we want to sense, we want to believe in our gut that the offender truly realizes that what he/she did was dead wrong, without any qualifying excuses.
We also withhold forgiveness if we pick up any evidence that this person will likely, given another chance, do this again. Extending forgiveness in these cases becomes only an encouragement for it to happen again...and again...and again. So the repeat-offender buck stops with us. No forgiveness. No green light for another offense. "The day of grace for you, buddy, has ended."
WHAT WOULD JESUS DO...?
There are several occasions when Jesus extended surprising forgiveness to people, and at the displeasure of some who looked on.
He said to the paralytic lowered through the roof, even before the man had asked for it, "Son, your sins are forgiven you." What? "How does this man claim he can forgive sins!!!???" some protested. "Only God can do that!" Right they were.
He said to the woman caught in adultery, having backed off the morality-police bullpen, "Does no one condemn you?" "No," she replied. "Then neither do I. Go, and stop sinning" Jesus insisted.
Perhaps in these two incidents, Jesus himself sensed true remorse and an unlikelihood that these two would transgress again. Perhaps it was easier to extend forgiveness with them.
But the third instance rearranges the categories a bit. On the cross, having been brutalized and now dying, He asked his Father, "Forgive them. They do not know what they are doing" (in crucifying him). Here, Jesus extends forgiveness before any of them ask for it, without any evidence they are truly sorry, and certainly without any assurance that they would do it again.
In fact, they likely WOULD do it again. They were Roman soldiers. They were part of the execution detail. They did crucifixions for a living.
Do you think God said "yes" to Jesus' request?
THINK ABOUT FORGIVENESS CAREFULLY
I'm not suggesting that the NBA give Donald Sterling a pass. I'm not suggesting that Donald Sterling is truly repentant, or that he will never make the kind of statements he has made again. He appears to be a foolish old man who is embarrassed and doesn't want his amusements taken away. They are all he has, it seems; they are what he has lived for, given himself to, and the return-on-investment is becoming more sour by the day.
Still, his actions and our reactions have revealed much about what we as a culture believe and do when it comes to forgiveness. The way we do forgiveness, and the way God does forgiveness, are not the same. We give it grudgingly, and sometimes never (right, Pete Rose?). Fool me once, your bad. Fool me twice, my bad.
Yet Jesus modeled something different, taking the first step in forgiving, and loving even the unlovable and ignorant and unrepentant...before they loved in return. And in fact some never do.
But that doesn't keep God from loving, offering His grace and his forgiving. And we are the better for it, are we not?
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