Forgiveness

Riffing off the karma idea, I want to explore a related idea: forgiveness. There's a story Jesus tells of a man who accumulated a large debt, more than he could pay back in his lifetime. He appears before a king and throws himself on the mercy of the court. The king looks at his situation and forgives the entire debt. The man walks away grateful. Several months go by. The king hears that this man had a similar situation with another person over the matter of $100, only he was the one who was owed money. Rather than forgive the debt, the man throws the person in debtors prison until he pays back the amount. The king brings the man back into court and says because of his action he will be placed in debtors prison as well until his original debt is paid in full.

When I hear this story, I think about karma and the cycle of cause and effect. First, karma is not a punishment. It's a teaching tool for learning the consequences of choices. In Jesus' story we don't know how the man accumulated his debt, but he obviously knew what the consequence of carrying it was. He knew about debtors prison and didn't want to go there. His choices accumulated some karma. The king, who represents cosmic justice, looks at him and decides he has learned his lesson and doesn't need prison to reinforce it. But then we find that the man really hasn't learned when he throws his friend in prison. Cosmic justice sees that the man still wants to experience debt payback and accommodates him. 

In one sense I like karma because it gives responsibility to people. In another sense I don't like it because it's not compassionate and forgiving. In my own life, when I experienced the trauma of church hurt, I was incredibly angry. I wished the absolute worst. I wanted the church to fold and the pastor to suffer with explosive diarrhea for the rest of his life. Deep down I knew these emotions, while very true and warranted, were making me miserable. My natural bend is to be kind and these vengeful feelings were new to me. I wanted them to go away, but no matter how hard I tried, they wouldn't.

Looking back on it now, I can see they did serve a purpose. For one, I had a codependent relationship with church authority. I think I needed the emotional realness of seeing them as human rather than saviors to break that dependency on their approval. Another thing the feelings served was to help me truly understand what it means to be done wrong by an institution. There are many people who have lost faith in government, churches and schools because they've found themselves outside the system. I have firsthand knowledge of what that feels like. If I ever find myself in a position of leadership in an institution, I won't forget what poor performance can do to people.

One thing I still work on is forgiving the church that hurt me. Not because they deserve it, but because the unforgiveness no longer serve any purpose. I've spent enough time in debtors prison to learn that it's a miserable place and I don't want to perpetuate misery in myself or in others. The karma of forgiveness, when possible, is much lighter than the karma of a holding a grudge.