Month: September 2011

The year was 1985 and my boyfriend broke up with me because he was seeing another girl. I was so heartbroken. It was not the first time in life I had been hurt, but it was an unexpected hurt. So, I tucked it away as anger with the rest of my hurts and thought of ways to get him back. I had become fairly good at revenge, even at that young age. Within the mindset of revenge, one of my favorite memories was a telegram I sent to him on April 1st: “On this day made for fools, I think of you.” Perhaps that is the only memory I am willing to publish. Truth is, the statement pointed more to my foolishness, but I didn’t see it that way. (If I remember correctly, the telegram cost me $20!) I was deeply hurt and the only way I could find to feel better was to hurt him back.

Those feelings are really easy to find within our human nature. I suppose most of us have experienced hurt at the hands of another person that leads to our one wish for them becoming a wish for punishment and pain. If you haven’t yet experienced that, then you probably will before it’s all over.

Your ability to believe what I’m getting ready to say really depends on where you are on your life journey, but here it is: there is a better way to handle that pain. Granted, it is not the most natural response as a human being. It is however, what we are called to when we enter God’s kingdom where Jesus is Lord. The call is this: “Be perfect as your Heavenly Father is perfect.”

At first-glance and on face value, that sounds pretty ridiculous. Actually, the way most Christians have handled it as a teaching is to . . . well . . . avoid it. It’s too extreme! It’s a calling far too high for our human frailties to handle. Or is it?

Put in context with the larger Sermon on the Mount, Jesus isn’t saying to us that we are to never make mistakes. He is keenly aware of our condition. The perfection he is speaking of is the way that God the Father operates in a wholeness of relationship. We are called to behave toward others the same way God behaves toward us. Several concrete examples are given to illustrate how this Kingdom ethic plays out in human life. Those include things like resisting retaliation, praying for enemies, honoring our marriage relationships, and making amends when we need to make amends. We are not called to execute the wrath of God in the world. We are called to love and to be perfect, in this sense of wholeness.

Remember the old t-shirt that says, “I don’t get mad, I get even”? Well, we will still get mad. But we don’t have to get even. We can get better. Instead, we can always seek peace and reconciliation. We seek forgiveness. We seek first the Kingdom of God. It doesn’t change the way the world operates, but it changes us.