Forgiveness and the seventy weeks

In today's reading from Lent for Everyone: Matthew Year A, N.T. Wright connects Jesus' teaching on forgiveness (Matthew 18:21-35) with Daniel's prophetic vision of the seventy weeks.

In the book of Daniel (9.24) the prophet is told, after praying that Jerusalem will be forgiven, that it will take 'seventy weeks of years' - in other words, seventy times seven years - before transgression, sin and iniquity are finally dealt with. This takes us back even further, to the ancient law of the Jubilee (Leviticus 25), which lays down that every forty-nine years (seven times seven) all debts must be remitted, with land returning to its original owners. Daniel is speaking of a Great Jubilee, a cosmic version of the Jubilee law. There will come a time when God will deal, once and for all, with all debts of every kind.

And Jesus? Well, Jesus announced that the moment had come. He was the Great Jubilee in person. His entire mission was about implementing God's age-old plan to deal with the evil that had infected the whole world. Forgiveness wasn't an incidental feature of his kingdom-movement. It was the name of the game. Those of us who find ourselves drawn into that movement must learn how to play the game, all the time. It's what we're about. It's what God is about.

This connection should be easy to spot for anyone with a rudimentary knowledge of Old Testament prophecy. Allusions to Daniel abound throughout the Gospels, culminating with Jesus' ascension in Acts 1, a direct fulfillment of the vision of "one like a son of man" coming "with the clouds of heaven" into the presence of "the Ancient of Days" to be given everlasting dominion (Daniel 7:13-14). A lot of unnecessary confusion has been caused, however, by two centuries of aberrant teaching from the dispensationalist school of biblical (mis)interpretation. The infamous "gap theory," that God interrupted the seventy weeks at the end of the sixty-ninth and won't pick up the final week until after the "rapture," is a quintessential example of the havoc wreaked whenever Christianity is divorced from its very Jewish roots.

So what, exactly, did World Vision do wrong?

Like most any business or organization, Christian relief agencies have employment standards which are reviewed and revised as a routine matter. Rarely does a change in policy spark the kind of uproar which accompanied World Vision's recent decision to allow the hiring of "Christians" in same sex "marriages." The backlash from the evangelical world was so swift and so virulent that the agency quickly reversed itself and reinstated its former standards.

The initial change in policy, while indefensible, would not have been so controversial if Richard Stearns, World Vision's president, had been more discreet. If he had implemented the change in employment standards quietly and without fanfare, it is likely no one would have known and no one would have cared. Instead, he chose to announce the change with trumpets, heralding it as some kind of boon for "church unity." Such pious pomposity, moreso than the moral repugnance of the decision itself, is what so many evangelicals found offensive.

Stearns did what the hypocrites do, and he got called on it. He has repented and asked for forgiveness. We cannot be anything but gracious toward him, recognizing that his real sin was one which can so easily trip up any one of us.

The Apostasy of the "Radical Middle" and the Death of Forgiveness

Of the many errors which infect the church today, there is perhaps none more disruptive to her unity than the accommodationalism of those who wish to be referred to as the "radical middle." The term itself is an oxymoron. There is nothing "radical" about these pitiable souls who are all too eager to find some accord between Christ and Belial. These are the ones who eschew all discernment between right and wrong, good and evil, in order to be hailed by the (secular and religious) media as "peacemakers." Inevitably, by trying to placate both sides, those in the "middle" have taken the side of those who wish to accommodate the world and undermine the church.

The apostasy of the "radical middle" is more dangerous and deadly than any other because it is rooted in a selective misrepresentation of the words of Jesus himself. Jesus commands us to "love one another," these moderates constantly remind us. But the love Jesus commands us to have for one another is a love that is not afraid to take risks. It is risky business to love one's brothers and sisters so much as to be compelled to correct them when they are wrong. To the members of the "radical middle," such loving correction is neither loving nor correct, but is perceived as a threat to the unity of the church. "Love" is reduced to mere tolerance and "unity" is diminished to a willingness to overlook offensive behavior for the sake of appearances.

One is left to wonder, then, just what place forgiveness has in the "radical middle." Confronting errant members, holding them accountable, and restoring them to the fellowship is a process saturated in love. The ultimate outcome of every dispute addressed within the context of loving one another is forgiveness and reconciliation, punctuated with a huge exclamation point by "UNITY!"

When "love" is reduced to tolerance and "unity" to just getting along, accountability and discipline are the two most obvious casualties. But the far more tragic result of the apostasy of the "radical middle" is the death of forgiveness. Loving one another, according to Jesus' commandment, means taking risks. The most dangerous of those risks is forgiveness. Perhaps that is the risk the "radical middle" is most unwilling to take.

Imprecatory Prayers Then and Now

Mark Galli reflects on the long tradition of "imprecatory prayer" (praying down curses) in light of the recent incident involving the Rev. Wiley S. Drake, a pastor and former leader in the Southern Baptist Convention, asking his followers to pray for the death of two leaders of Americans United for Separation of Church and State. Like it or not, the Bible is laced through with imprecatory prayers, in both the Old and New Testaments, from David's "Oh that you would slay the wicked, O God!" to Jesus' "Get behind me, Satan!" to Paul's "If anyone has no love for the Lord, let him be accursed!"

The difference between such biblical curses and the pronouncements of Rev. Drake is one of motive. David, Jesus, and Paul were not being unloving toward their detractors. At heart, they desired their redemption, realizing that the road to redemption is often painful and requires a generous portion of divine retribution. Rev. Drake, on the other hand, seems only to desire harm to befall his critics.

What Galli doesn't address, and this may have been beyond the scope of his article, is the utter triviality of the issue which sparked this controversy. Drake had endorsed Mike Huckabee for president in a letter on official church stationery and during a church-affiliated radio show on the internet, claiming divine sanction for his political choice. The most appropriate reaction to such an expression of theological shallowness and vacuity would be one of dismissive amusement. The fact that a left-wing pressure group got all bent out of shape over it is utterly ridiculous. So, too, is Drake's calling for the deaths of that group's leaders. The whole episode is an exercise in reductio ad absurdum, illustrating just how banal the whole church/state game can be when one's religious convictions are measured more by one's political ties than by one's commitment to following Jesus Christ.

I recall a conversation I had once with a minister of a more liberal persuasion a few years ago. He opened up a little about how convicted he had become about not forgiving his enemies. As an example, he mentioned Tom DeLay, at that time the Majority Leader of the House of Representatives. This man had never met DeLay. He would never have heard of him were it not for his notoriety as a national political figure. Yet, he considered him his "enemy" and felt he needed to "forgive" him simply because he held different political views.

I could only feel sorry for such a poor soul. In order to extend "forgiveness," he had to make an "enemy" out of a man he had never met, and probably would never meet, who just happened to view the world a little differently.