Forgiveness

 

Parable of the Good Samaritan

The gospel reading this week was the parable of the Good Samaritan. It is unusual among parables in that the message is clear, if often ignored: you must love your neighbour; and your neighbour is not someone who lives near you, or someone of the same religion, or race, or ethnicity, or gender, or anything else, but any good person, or any even unknown person in need of help.

The priest at my wife’s parish in the Philippines managed to twist it instead into a sermon on how we must forgive those who wrong us; that the problem it was meant to address was anger. How he derived this from the passage is hard to guess. My wife says he led into it by arguing that the priest who walked by and did not help the poor victim lying in the ditch was doing so because priests in ancient Israel were not allowed to touch blood.

So we are being unjust in criticizing him or the Levite, and praising the Samaritan over them. 

No word on what we should feel about the poor guy lying in the ditch.

Having been the victim of childhood abuse, and therefore caring deeply about right and wrong, and about being assaulted and having no one lend a hand, my wife says it was all she could do not to stand up and argue with him during the sermon. As it was, she became literally sick to her stomach, and had to leave in the middle of the service. It took her some hours to recover.

Such a view serves those who enjoy doing evil. It inflicts an additional cruelty on those who have been wronged, making them feel guilty about it instead of offering support. It was the Devil himself preaching. But it is only too common a sermon to hear these days: “forgive, forgive.” “The problem is not the sin, but the condemnation of the sin. Nobody should criticize anyone, and then we would all live in peace and harmony.” One is supposed to offer “unconditional love.”

For the record, the Bible does call for forgiveness of those who have wronged us; but only if and when they have admitted their sin, asked for forgiveness, and attempted restitution or done penance. This ought to be clear to a priest, since it is what is required for a valid confession.

Anyone who preaches this false doctrine of ignoring sin or wrong automatically condemns themself: for if the fault is not in the sin but in criticizing the sin, then they are still at fault, for criticizing the criticism of the sin as a sin.

Moreover, to ignore sin in another is to condemn them to Hell. This is not a neighbourly act. To endorse it is also to become an accessory, and guilty of the sin yourself.

To deny sin is sin is the very sin against the Holy Spirit which Jesus describes as unforgivable.

And we now must often hear it preached from the pulpit.