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A culture of unforgiveness

Why can't we forgive in this country? And why, if we brag that this is such a great country, don't we believe in one of the things that set it apart: our justice system?

We live in an age of hatred, rage and unforgiveness, and I believe this attitude holds us back as a society and as a nation.

We're all human. We all make mistakes. We all screw up. We all hurt someone sometime. And a few of us commit crimes.

We have a system in this country wherein a person who commits a crime is tried in public by a presumably impartial jury; if the person is convicted, he or she receives punishment proportionate to the crime, according to law. When the sentence is completed, the convicted person can go on with his or her life.

But that doesn't seem to be good enough for an awful lot of people. At a gut level, they want more. They want blood. And they never, ever want someone who has committed a crime to stop suffering consequences for it.

Look at Michael Vick. I'm not a big fan of pro football, and I don't think athletes or celebrities deserve any special treatment. I also am an animal lover. I cry at those Sarah McLaughlin Humane Society commercials.

What Vick did was horrible and disgusting. Dogfighting is vile, ugly and inhumane. I believe it offends God.

But we have laws to deal with dogfighting, and Vick was tried and punished according to those laws. He admitted his guilt, he did his time, and he paid his debt to society -- a debt that society (that's you and me) determined.

So why doesn't that settle it? Why can't people accept a "Paid in Full" stamp on Vick's rap sheet? Why do they want him banned from the NFL, banned from society, banned from making a living for the rest of his life?

Why are the provisions of the law not good enough for people who are mad at someone for breaking the law? It's as if we agree to sell someone a car for $5,000, they pay the $5,000, and after they've driven off we tell everyone they stole the car from us. "No, what I meant was I wanted them to pay me $5,000 every day for the rest of their life."

Many, if not most, companies won't hire anyone with a felony record, even if that person has fulfilled all the court's requirements for punishment and compensation. A former boss of mine once cackled over a job application on which the applicant checked "Yes" in response to the question "Have you ever been convicted of a felony?" "This guy is too stupid to get a job," the boss told me. I guess he would have preferred for the applicant to lie.

Even when the offense doesn't rise to the level of lawbreaking, no response by the offender ever seems adequate for the offended.

Someone says something offensive or does something unethical and is called on it. The offender realizes his or her error and offers a sincere, specific, public apology. The person might also be fired or resign. "Not good enough!" the offended party cries.

What exactly do you want? You want the person who offended you to be totally abased, to be publicly humiliated, to lose everything he owns, to never have an opportunity to gain it back, and, ultimately, to die by stoning, followed by the body being burned in the public square. There. Satisfied?

Is that the American way? It certainly isn't Christ's way.

We all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. Those of us who have accepted Jesus as our savior have received eternal forgiveness for all our sins -- past present and future, no matter how heinous. By Christ's death on the cross, our debt is paid in full. How then can we who have been forgiven of so much be so unforgiving? How can we who enjoy such abundant grace offer no grace to our neighbors who are just like us?

Punishment has to fit the crime. Penalties have to have limits. At some point the creditor has to stamp the promissory note "Paid in Full." Refusal to do so places the unforgiving creditor in a position of superiority to God, a sin far greater than the original offense. How dare the forgiven not forgive?

Is there not a cause?

My brilliant pastor, Jentezen Franklin, this morning preached on the subject, "You need to get free of 'What's in it for me?'" He used the passage in 1 Samuel 17 where David's brothers and other men tell David what rewards would be given to the man who slays Goliath.

These guys were all focused on the prizes -- great riches, the king's daughter in marriage, and tax-free living for life. But all that talk didn't sit well with David, who said, "Is there not a cause?"

By that David meant there was a better reason than personal rewards to go after Goliath. This thug was insulting their God and everyone who believed in him. What more incentive did they need?

My pastor then lit into preachers who do things not for the glory of God and furtherance of his kingdom, but for self-aggrandizement and income opportunities. Then he turned it onto the rest of us, saying the cause of God's kingdom should be enough motivation to get us to serve others; we shouldn't need any other incentives, such as payment, recognition or fame. Amen and amen.

He kept repeating the line, "You need to get free of 'What's in it for me?'" And it got me thinking about the health-care town hall screamers and the current crop of conservatives in general. (By the way, Franklin himself is clearly pretty conservative, so this message surprised me a little, but he didn't take it where I'm about to.)

This very morning on the way to church I had been saying to My Lovely Wife that the theme of these protests makes me sick. I saw on TV a woman with a look of disgust say of President Obama's proposed plan, "It takes away from those who have been paying for health care for years [and] reduces our health care so that everyone else can have it."

Yes, and isn't that horrible? I mean, I got mine, so SCREW everybody else! Am I my brother's keeper? Why should I be expected to give up a tiny fraction of the abundance that I have so that my neighbor who has nothing might have something?

I've never really been able to put my finger on what it is about conservatives that nettles me so much, but this is it exactly: They go on and on about how great America is, America love it or leave it, God bless America, but they're not willing to give anything up to help their fellow Americans. Anyone who suggests Americans pool their resources to help out the least of these is decried as a SOCIALIST!

I wonder if any of them have ever read the last four verses of the second chapter of Acts. The first Christians were total pinkos.

I voted for Obama in the primary election, but I liked Hillary Clinton's health-care reform plan better. So I'm not suggesting everyone should just go for Obama's plan; it definitely needs work. What I am saying is that it appalls me that people think it's OK to let their fellow Americans -- even children -- go without health care.

Believe it or not, I actually liked George W. Bush for a minute when he was running for president in 2000. That line about ushering in an era of "compassionate conservatism" got my attention. But those words turned out to be not only a lie, but an oxymoron. In today's American politics, conservatism is by definition the opposite of compassionate. It is service only to oneself, regardless of the cost to others.

What's in it for me? How about a better night's sleep knowing some child won't die because her parents' insurance company didn't want to pay for a liver transplant? How about fewer people hitting you up for money while you're walking downtown because medical bills will no longer drive anyone into homelessness? How about the avoidance of a rebuke at the Judgment Seat of Christ when he says, "Inasmuch as you did it not to one of the least of these, you did it not to me."

Memorable birthday

My sister Margaret had a pretty amazing 16th birthday.

In addition to the usual cake and ice cream and gifts, her party included a giant leap for mankind.

I remember all of us gathered in the family room that evening, watching the broadcast. I don't remember which network we were watching, but it was probably CBS with Walter Cronkite and Wally Schirra, because Channel 6 was the clearest station we could receive. It may have been NBC, though, because Margaret liked David Brinkley better. We were a news-watching and -reading family.



Margaret's 9-year-old brother Jim was sitting on the couch (or davenport, as we called it), craning his neck to get a better view of the upside-down image as Neil Armstrong took that momentous step. Even as a 9-year-old, I understood what a historic moment this was.

After Armstrong said, "That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind," I asked what that was supposed to mean. Weren't "man" and "mankind" the same thing? Even as a 9-year-old, I was a smart-alecky copy editor in the making.

A year or two later, my dad and I stood in line for four hours at the Capitol Complex in Lansing to get a glimpse of a moon rock. What an amazing time to be a little kid.

He loves him some airplanes

The guy in the yellow shirt is my friend Tony.

The wheel of life

On this, the 90th anniversary of my mother's birth, I present a newspaper guest column I wrote 20 years ago. I believe this was my first published work after college. It ran on the front of the Metro section of the Fort Wayne (Indiana) News-Sentinel, where I was a copy editor.

Wheel of life takes emotions on a wild ride
August 16, 1989

This summer has been a matter of life and death for my family.

The season has always consisted of languorous days spent staying out of the sun and muggy evenings spent sipping iced tea on the front porch. Baseball games on the radio and the smell of ribs on the neighbors’ grill.

Come to think of it, all that stuff has been going on as usual, but other events have marked this summer, and I’m not at all comfortable with the theme.

The cycle started, like summer, on Memorial Day weekend, when my wife and I were driving on U.S. 30 to visit her brother in Chicago. It was fairly early that beautiful Saturday morning, and there was very little traffic. We were sharing cinnamon rolls we had bought at T.J. Cinnamon’s on what was supposed to be its last day in business (it has since been resurrected), getting sticky fingers and having a good time.

We both were looking out the side window at a farm where the cattle were standing near the road. We were searching the herd for calves.

When I looked to the road again, I saw in front of us a wall of steel in the form of a stopped livestock truck. Instinctively, I swerved left onto the median, missing the huge truck by little more than a few inches. After I got my pickup back on the highway, still going about 50 mph, my wife put her hand on my arm. It felt like the hand of God.

Neither of us said a word for five minutes. Later we prayed and she cried.

Apparently even as that brush with death was happening, the pathetic stray cat we had taken in on Mother’s Day was giving birth back home to five kittens.

Kittens are wonderful. They can entertain without trying, delight without cloying. We’ve tried not to get too attached to them, because we know we have to give them all away, but they’re hard to resist.

It has been a joy to watch them grow, explore, learn and play. They make you feel wonderful about life.

Now we learn one of them has a heart murmur, and we have to decide whether to “put it to sleep” (to use the prevalent euphemism for killing something beloved), give it away to someone willing to take a chance, or keep it and hope for the best.

A few weeks ago, our next-door neighbors brought forth a beautiful baby girl. We were – and still are – thrilled for them.

But then another neighbor – four doors down – was stabbed to death, and a curtain of fear and sorrow hangs over the neighborhood.

The wheel of life keeps turning as it always has, but this summer it seems to be spinning so fast that the spokes have become invisible. I’ve been up and down on it so many times already that I don’t know how to take each new scene that flashes past my eyes.

For example, several weeks ago my 10 siblings and I threw a party for my mother on her 70th birthday. It was an event to celebrate this wonderful, funny woman’s long and worthwhile life and her full recovery from a heart attack four years ago.

Nine of her 11 children were there, along with a few other relatives and cherished friends and uncounted grandchildren. It was a beautiful day, full of laughter and love and a kind of closeness with some of my siblings that I cannot remember ever feeling before.

With the kind of summer it’s been, however, I couldn’t help but think about how many more birthdays my parents might have.

The macabre mood of this summer has even managed to take a turn toward the comic.

The aforementioned stray cat has made herself very much at home in our house, turning every inch of it into her personal hunting ground.

We used to have a pet zebra finch named Jenny. She was 6 years old – that’s 120 to you and me. I admired her for her longevity.

Rikki the cat admired her for her white meat.

We came home one day to find the bird cage shattered on the floor, a small pile of feathers in the kitchen and a satisfied look on Rikki’s face.

I guess everybody faces issues of life and death; it’s part of living. But having to do it nearly every day is a bit much. Take me out to the ballgame.

Godfather's Day II

My goddaughter Vannah and I went out on a "date" last week to a new candy shop, where she read me a Dr. Seuss story and we shared delicious frozen yogurt. Aunt Rox came along too, and a grand time was had by all.

When we took her home, Vannah said "Bye!" and ran upstairs to play with her siblings and a 5-year-old visitor.

As we headed for home, it dawned on me that this date was notable for three reasons:

1. It was the first time Aunt Rox had come along with us.
2. It was the first time Vannah didn't throw me an unsolicited "I love you, Uncle Jim" at some random moment.
3. It was the first time she failed to kiss me goodbye.

Vannah is 8 years old now and getting noticeably taller. Her mother told me Vannah grew a whole shoe size in five weeks' time. You can tell her thought process is maturing and her awareness and understanding of the world around her are growing, too. She's becoming less passive and more interested in setting her own agenda.

These are good things. Still, with the sweet comes the bitter, and I'm realizing that she's not going to be my baby girl for much longer. I pray constantly for the life events and challenges she has yet to encounter, some of which are (I hope) decades down the road. I haven't lost sight of the present moment, but she's made me aware that it's a moving target.

With that in mind, here is this year's Father's Day offering, courtesy of former Hootie & the Blowfish frontman Darius Rucker: