“Sometimes I wonder if God will ever forgive us for what we’ve done to each other.” That is a Leonardo di Caprio line from the movie Blood Diamond. That line so well captures my feelings right now. Tonight the Father has provided for me that humanity, even in its most beautiful moments is fatally broken.
My wife and I attended an event that on one level was joyous. At the event we met a really nice guy, I’ll call him Ted. Ted was a friend of a friend who had planned the event. Ted had met this friend through one of those online dating services. I used to enjoy being around this woman because of her spunk. Being that way myself, I really enjoy being around people who speak their mind, are genuine and honest.
I understand that meeting people on an online service is a hit-or-miss thing. Sometimes you meet the love of your life just like you see all those people on TV. Most other times, however, you still wind up, as the old saying goes, kissing a lot of frogs before you find a prince.
But regardless of whether a person is your prince or frog, shouldn’t that person be treated well? This is a concept we learn in grade school. It is also the teaching of Jesus. You know, The Golden Rule: Treat others as you would have them treat you.
This is especially true when that individual sacrifices a great deal for your friendship. Such was the case with Ted. I don’t want to get into the details other than to say that Ted did a great deal to help our friend organize a major social function. Ted was everywhere helping with many of the details. He ran from store to store picking up to make sure that this event went well.
Yet when the event came around Ted was ignored. My wife and I could see that Ted was crushed. He wasn’t asking more than companionship and friendship. What bothers me most is that when this woman was confronted with the facts, she basically said she didn’t care about whether Ted was hurt. I finally got to the point where I had to walk away. I couldn’t face our friend and pretend to be fine when I knew she had deliberately crushed this man’s feelings. I was fuming.
Yet in writing this I know that I am no different. I do much the same thing to others. I find reasons to separate myself from others, call them names or give them labels to try to make myself feel somehow superior. Frankly, I too often don’t care about other’s feelings. “Forget them,” I think to myself. This reflects just part of our broken nature, an inherited feature from our relatives Adam and Eve.
Adam started it off throwing Eve under the bus of blame when confronted by God about eating from the forbidden tree. You know the line: “The woman you gave me, she gave me the fruit to eat.” This is the core reaction we have when caught doing what we shouldn’t. We find scapegoats, people or things to blame for our faults. Just watch “Cops.” How many times does the suspect say something like, “I didn’t do it. I just saw this car with the engine running and thought I would move it to someplace safer.”
It is this state of brokenness that is the very core of what Jesus healed when he died on the cross. We are broken, inherently selfish, and are causing each other pain and suffering. Whether it is the way we treat Ted or the homeless or the way a government treats the people of Darfur, we always seek to serve our own interests, guard our own feelings, protect our own stuff even when others suffer as a result.
The best thing is that he healed us once for all: all sins of all people for all time. How else could God do it? To do it one person at a time would have encouraged further suffering by categorizing people as those for whom Christ died as opposed to those for whom he didn’t. Wouldn’t that make God just as guilty as the rest of us? Wouldn’t that make God selective and selfish? Doesn’t that sound more like us than a good God?
We are broken: I am. You are. We need a Savior who understands what is broken, why we are broken and then acts to heal all parts of that brokenness. Thank God we have one.
