THE WESLEYAN AND THE STRUGGLE
TO FORGIVE
by
R. Duane Thompson
Let me set forth in broad strokes the concerns of this paper(1) Deeply buried aspects
which are in the warp and weft of one's personal being and which express themselves in
twisted ways are not compatible with authentic personhood or the image of Christ. (2)
Entire sanctification does marvelous things, for Christ's sufferings were and are
efficacious. When a person submits to "his mild yoke," the power of the
indwelling Spirit provides cleansing, preserving, enabling, and motivating toward growth
and progress toward the perfection of the personality. (3) However, not everything is done
in the crisis. The imago dei is as much promise and culmination as present actuality 1 (4) Forgiveness is hard work (a struggle) and even one who is entirely
sanctified must undergo this process. As Wesleyans some of us may find it hard to
acknowledge the reality of the struggles, darkness, and emotional tangles of our lives
when we are supposed to be living on the victorious side with joy, peace, magnanimity, and
success undiminished and unruffled. (5) Nevertheless, when Wesleyans perceive, explore,
and exploit this dimension of their experience as an ongoing element in the process of
holiness, the result is greater joy, fulfillment, and growth toward authenticity and
wholeness in Christ.
This paper will follow the simple pattern of first stating and unpacking Max Scheler's
concept of ressentiment. Scheler's work is not so widely known, and his emphasis
upon relationships is helpful in understanding the role of forgiving and being forgiven.
The second step will set forth the manner in which ressentiment can be turned
into something manageable. This will explore the five stages of forgiveness as explained
in the work of Matthew and Dennis Linn. The healing of relationships is the goal of this
process.
Let us now examine Scheler's treatment of ressentiment.
Ressentiment denotes an attitude which arises from a cumulative repression of
feelings of hatred, revenge, envy and the like. When such feelings can be acted out, no ressentiment
results. But when a person is unable to release these feelings against the persons or
groups evoking them, thus developing a sense of impotence, and when these feelings are
continuously re-experienced over time, then ressentiment arises. Ressentiment
leads to a tendency to degrade, to reduce genuine values as well as their bearers. As
distinct from rebellion, ressentiment does not lead to an affirmation of
counter—values since ressentimentimbued persons secretly crave the values they
publicly denounce. 2
The key aspects of ressentiment thus appear to be the following: (l) genuine
feelings of hatred, revenge, and envy; (2) repression of such feelings; inability to act
them out; (3) accumulation of such repressions; (4) sense of impotence arising from
accumulative repression; (5) reduction of values as a result of arising impotence; i.e.
the values are scorned since the person recognizes that they can never be enjoyed; (6) and
the secret craving of the values scorned.
Particular places in the social structure especially produce ressentiment. One
primary place is the feminine role with its assigned passive responses, along with the
spinster role where one is deprived of male prestige and denied even certain feminine
satisfactions (basically in sexuality). In societies where age is honored there is no ressentiment
of the older citizens, but where age is not honored there tends to be a slipping away of
power, prestige, and pleasures; and ressentiment begins to build up. The social
structure of the family is productive of ressentiment: the relationship of the
first born to other siblings, of the older wife to the younger husband, and of the
mother—in—law to the son— or daughter—in—law.
Finally, moving into the sociology of religion, Scheler shows that the priest is
especially predisposed to ressentiment as a result of being condemned to repress his
negative affects and to present the image of peacefulness and harmony to the world. He
must participate in the struggles and contentions of community life and yet stand above
the battle, renouncing those earthly weapons which are at the disposal of the laity.3
According to Scheler's analysis of Nietzsche, (from whom Scheler derives the basic
meaning of ressentiment) the roots of forgiveness are right in this dimension of
experience, for it grows out of impotence and inability to retaliate; forgiveness is
essentially the inoffensiveness of the weak. It lies in Nietzsche's famed "slave
revolt in morality": "the ressentiment of beings to whom the real reaction, that
of the deed, is denied, who can only indulge in imaginary revenge . . . every noble
morality springs from a triumphant acceptance and affirmation of oneself."4
Thus forgiveness for Nietzsche arises not out of the power and affirmation of oneself
which is the very principle of life itself, but out of the weakness and sickness of
twisted lives. It arises from being locked in to an existence which is interpreted as a
destiny. Now Scheler is not necessarily agreeing completely with Nietzsche on forgiveness,
but he does regard Nietzsche as providing some basic insights into the ressentiment
which really does afflict most, if not all, human beings.
In ressentiment there is a self—poisoning of the mind when one is dominated
and continues to serve without freedom. This is very much like the hell of Sartre's play
No Exit. In the play the fundamental meaning and reality of hell is that there is no
escape, no exit. Envy is the strongest source of ressentiment.5
Value delusion lies at the heart of ressentiment. "When we feel unable to
attain certain values, value blindness or value delusion may set in."6
Scheler sees a profound example of ressentiment in what he calls "the
apostate."
An "apostate" is not a man who once in his life radically changes his deepest
religious, political legal, or philosophical convictions—even when this change is not
continuous, but involves a sudden rupture. Even after his conversion, the true
"apostate" is not primarily committed to the positive contents of his new belief
and to the realization of its aims. He is motivated by the struggle against the old belief
and lives only for its negation. The apostate does not affirm his new convictions for
their own sake, he is engaged in a continuous chain of acts of revenge against his own
spiritual past. In reality he remains a captive of this past, and the new faith is merely
a handy frame of reference for negating and rejecting the old. As a religious type, the
apostate is therefore at the opposite pole from the "resurrected," whose life is
transformed by a new faith which is full of intrinsic meaning and value. Tertullian . . .
asserts that the sight of Roman governors burning in hell is one of the chief sources of
heavenly beatitude. Nietzsche rightly cites this passage as an extreme example of apostate
ressentiment. Tertullian's sentence . . . "credo, quia absurdum" . . . is
also a typical expression of his apostate ressentiment. It pungently sums up his
method of defending Christianity, which is a continuous vengeance taken on the values of
antiquity.7
Now it would be possible to pursue this line of penetration into the subterranean
dimensions of the psyche of specific religious types who have engaged in "harangues
against materialism." Often such people proclaim the heavenly bliss of giving to God
and the church so that God and the church (of which they are a part) can enjoy these
gifts. Others tend to engage in a "harangue against perfection." The point is
that the concept of ressentiment seems to be alive and well when we can observe
quite clearly that we often condemn what we secretly most deeply long for but have limited
access to.
Earlier in holiness history ministers spent large amounts of their time and energy
keeping the women in specific line, observing the clothing and keeping an incredibly close
eye on all the girls to make sure that they did not fail in any manner with respect to
modesty. While one should not stereotype the concern for modesty as having devious roots,
one may suspect that occasionally some huge sexual hang-ups are masked (or revealed) by
all the attention and energy. Here I am assuming the same amount of sexuality in Wesleyan
circles as in other normal human types; i.e., I am not assuming that Wesleyans are
"eunuchs" for the sake of the kingdom of heaven nor that they are Bohemians or
nymphomaniacs. The former would fall under the Nietzschean condemnation of the denial of
life values and the latter would fall in the direction of the idolatrizing of a
preliminary value rather than worshiping the ultimately valuable. In sum, sexuality is a
strong human reality which thus may emerge in proportion to the lack of realization of its
power, and the less the realization the more the fanaticism.
But I do not wish to pursue this line of concern. What I wish to examine is the fact
that we may have a tendency to emphasize the bright, victorious, and well—adjusted
while neglecting the dark side, the anger, anxiety, fear, guilt, and unforgiveness which
have ways of being embodied in human emotions and experiences. We can bury our emotional
realities and head toward emotional instability or we can work through them toward health.
As Wesleyans it may often be hard for us to acknowledge the presence of the struggle,
darkness, and emotional tangles which seem to be a genuine part of our human ascent to God
when theologically we are supposed to be living in a continuous state of joy and victory.
Maybe Wesleyanism has cultural elements within it of celebration of the ethos of WESTERN
MAN with emphasis on self—sufficiency, autonomy, and frontier success or
triumphalism. And while I am fully prepared to identify with Wesleyanism with its emphasis
upon joy and victory in Christ and in this world, some of the avenues which this theology
has taken and some of the implications which this has produced in many of our churches and
colleges must receive Biblical, rational, historical, and experiential critique if it is
to become adequate for human needs. And we must take responsibility for the fact that many
of our people fail to understand our position. We can say it is perfectly clear in itself
and that only the most ignorant could misunderstand, but maybe we can do some adapting
which will produce greater clarity. In brief, we need to take a fresh approach to the role
of darkness and struggle if we are to avoid superficial analyses in Wesleyanism and if
Wesleyanism is to survive the culture of success of which it is at least partially a part.
Let us notice several examples of darkness. These samplings are varied perspectives and
images of darkness, but they reveal a locus of insight not obtained in fullness of light.
O dark dark dark. They all go into the dark,
The vacant interstellar spaces, the vacant into the vacant,
The captains, merchant bankers, eminent men of letters,
The generous patrons of art, the statesmen and the rulers,
Distinguished civil servants, chairmen of many committees,
Industrial lords and petty contractors, all go into the dark,
And dark the Sun and Moon, and the Almanach de Gotha
And the Stock Exchange Gazette, the Directory of Directors,
And cold the sense and lost the motive of action.
And we all go with them, into the silent funeral.
Nobody's funeral, for there is no one to bury.
I said to my soul, be still, and let the dark come upon you
Which shall be the darkness of God.8
Darkness, trouble, and struggle are present in the universal human condition. But out
of such depths true value and heights of victory can arise.
All is prepared in darkness. Enormous light
is but the fetus of big—bellied night.
The image hatches in the darkened room:
the cave, the camera, the skull, the womb.
Future and past are shut. The present leaps:
a bright calf dropped between two infinite sleeps.9
I will give you treasures from dark vaults,
hoarded in secret places,
that you may know that I am the Lord,
Israel's God who calls you by name.
Isaiah 45:3 NEB
Even though one is entirely sanctified, floating in one's psyche there are elements
which one would want to recognize, deal with, grapple with, struggle with, work through,
and come to some higher level of handling of those emotions, attitudes, views, and
predispositions than one has achieved up to this point in time.
Now the question is, If I have not adequately worked through all the elements in those
experiences, how can I come to be the sort of person which I desire to be? and how can I
come to grips with something so buried in myself, and how can I move from the
fragmentation which unforgiveness produces to the wholeness which my own "journey to
selfhood"10 has established as its entelechial target? This study
does not give a full answer to such a vast agenda, but the five stages to be examined are
a partial answer. The concern is not to dredge up the sewer of human lives. I personally
identify with the emphasis on the bright attitude toward life. But there must be an effort
to faithfully/realistically confront both observations and experiences which Wesleyans
have. Do you now discover either in introspection or in an examination of your
relationships any problems with envy, ambition, anger, conflict, or unforgiveness? Maybe
not! But review your own history. Have you ever seen people who seemed to be struggling
with such matters, or have you yourselves at times had to badger and buffet your own being
in order to find deliverance and forgiveness? Maybe not in your specific case. But I
believe that most of us either have had problems, are having problems, or will have
problems. As David Seamands says in one of his sermons, we all either have a problem or
have to live with a problem.
What I am getting at may not be that different from what has been said by the general
evangelist at the most popular levels in holiness circles: the deeper the death the fuller
the life. The only critical difference may be the emphasis in this paper upon the
inability of the crisis to complete the depth of death and fullness of the resurrection.
As Heraclitus put it, "the way up and the way down are one and the same." Isaiah
concludes one beautiful servant passage:
Yet the Lord took thought for his tortured servant and healed him who had made himself
a sacrifice for sin; so shall he enjoy long life and see his children's children, and in
his hand the LORD's cause shall prosper. After all his pains he shall be bathed in light,
after his disgrace he shall be fully vindicated; so shall he, my servant, vindicate many,
himself bearing the penalty of their guilt, Therefore I will allot him a portion with the
great, and he shall share the spoil with the mighty, because he exposed himself to face
death and was reckoned among transgressors, because he bore the sin of many and interceded
for their transgressions.
(Isaiah 45:3 NEB)
The problem is that in the history of Wesleyanism too many people are proclaiming that
they cannot live it, when that is precisely the only thing one can do—namely, to live
it. What they really seem to be saying is that the life of holiness is such a high life,
such a victorious life that they are not living on that plain. But if we acknowledge that
the life of holiness is not a plain but rather a cresting and valleying experience, then
one who is in the valley is just as much living it as one who is on the mountain.
Furthermore, one who uses his valleys for healing and growth will recognize all
experiences as progress rather than retrogression or just marking time. We are in God's
hands. In His hands, nothing is common or profane. We are no further from God in the
valley than we are on the mountain. However, if we see ourselves as guilty in the valley,
then our opportunities for growth will be reduced, and our crests will be shallow and
insignificant. We shall not be truly living the Christian life but rather immaturely
pivoting around the entrance to it through manufacturing pseudo—guilt and going
through whatever cleansing is available for such experiences and needs.
Whether we are up or down, it is extravagant felicity just to be in God's hands in
eternal security (not of the unconditional sort). And nothing can pluck us from those
secure hands. The way up and the way down are one and the same, insofar as the reality of
His salvation is concerned. And it is this confidence which needs to be instilled in the
hearts of Wesleyans. Nevertheless, it must not be instilled there without emphasis upon
the possibility of human relationships deteriorating even between two such persons who are
secure in Christ.
"Forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors" (Matt. 6:12 KJV). What is
the relationship between forgiving and being forgiven? It could be a form of
self—righteousness. Since I forgive others, Christ must forgive me. Or it could have
an opposite causal relationship: since God has forgiven me, I must be forgiving others.
As such in either case logically we are tied into Aristotle's excluded middle; either I
am forgiving or unforgiving. Since the deduction from Scripture is clear, there is now no
problem: I am forgiven and I forgive. But what happens when life seems to run deeper than
logic, even the logic of deduction from Scripture? When I want to insist that I have been
forgiven but have difficulty in forgiving?
Part of the answer is that we are forgiven to become channels of His love and mercy.
There is no rigorous or legalistic one—to—one relationship. Rather there is the
foundation and power for a whole new life—style. When God through Christ forgives us,
we are truly and deeply forgiven. But this does not make our own attitude and acts of
forgiveness automatic. Forgiveness of other human beings is an expression of being
forgiven by God, but it is something which we must do as well as be and have. Thus the
words "I forgive you" are performative. When you say "I do" you really
do, and/but you spend the rest of your life doing it.
While perfection or salvation may frequently be thought of as individual (whether
appropriately or not), love and forgiveness must be thought of as relational. Since
holiness is perfect love for most of us, there is no way we can avoid the 9truggle and
victory of relating to others.
Let us now look at the Five Stages of Death and Dying by Elisabeth Kubler—Ross as
adapted to forgiveness by Dennis Linn and Matthew Linn.
It may be that the five 9tages are basic to the acceptance of any reality. Maybe this
is why they apply both to death and forgiveness. As such, this means that both death and
forgiveness are simply aspects of human experience and not related on some other level.
But for whatever reason, seeing the comparison and working through these stages is
extremely perceptive and therapeutic.
Stages In Dying And In Healing a Memory
Denial
In dying: I don't ever admit I will die
In healing a memory: I don't admit I was ever hurt
Anger
In dying: I blame others for letting death hurt and destroy me
In healing a memory: I blame others for hurting and destroying me
Bargaining
In dying: I set up conditions to be fulfilled before I'm ready to die
In healing a memory: I set up conditions to be fulfilled before I'm ready to forgive
Depression
In dying: I blame myself for letting death destroy me
In healing a memory: I blame myself for letting hurt destroy me
Acceptance
In dying: I look forward to dying
In healing a memory: I look forward to growth from hurt 11
We should not absolutize these stages but rather use this as providing helpful insights
into forgiveness. It may well be that acceptance arrives much earlier than anticipated.
In beginning the process of healing it is very helpful to ask oneself the questions
which the Linns pose to us:
Am I like the disciples at Emmaus willing to face with Christ the fears, frustrations,
anger, rage, and self—hatred that I have buried through the years? Am I willing to
let Christ show me through the Scriptures that I like to nurse grudges, feel sorry for
myself, look down on another, feel taller, and have a narrow view of what another is
doing? What I don't want to share with anyone else, can I still share with Jesus? Am I
ready to be healed, or do I just want to smile and pretend everything is O.K.?12
Thus can the process of healing of memories begin.
Rollo May suggests that any moment/event can be taken in one of two ways: (1) as a
blessing for growth or (2) as a curse that cripples. We can bury our emotional realities
and head toward emotional instability or we can work through them toward health.
The denial stage can be healthy both in terms of the rejection of a reality which is
beyond one's capacity for coping and also in terms of coming to grips with something
buried which gifts us as we patiently become aware of it and work through it.
Denial can be healthy. Breakdowns can come when we are forced to face something we need
to deny. Until we can deal with a hurt, it is best not to face it. Jesus was very much
aware of the limitations of human acceptance of reality when He said, "I have yet
many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now." (John 16:12 RSV) Denial
prevents us from being overwhelmed by too much anxiety, disapproval, or insecurity
crippling our ability to bounce back.13 Also we must not push others
to face a reality which is beyond their capacity.14
Something in us prevents us from remembering, when remembering proves to be too
difficult or painful. We forget benefits, because the burden of gratitude is too heavy for
us. We forget former loves, because the burden of obligations implied by them surpasses
our strength. We forget our former hates, because the task of nourishing them would
disrupt our mind. We forget former pain, because it is still too painful. We forget guilt,
because we cannot endure its sting. Such forgetting is not the natural, daily form of
forgetting. It demands our cooperation. We repress what we cannot stand. We forget it by
entombing it within us. Ordinary forgetting liberates us from innumerable small things in
a natural process. Forgetting by repression does not liberate us, but seems to cut us off
from what makes us suffer. We are not entirely successful, however, because the memory is
buried within us, and influences every moment of our growth. And sometimes it breaks
through its prison and strikes at us directly and painfully. 15
A lengthy passage from the Linns is very instructive in helping us to understand the
stage of denial and the next stage, anger.
In German concentration camps, for example, angry prisoners were punished until they
learned to fear and bury their anger in order to survive. But frustrated anger initiated
regression to patterns of immediate gratification (fighting for food and wolfing it down),
fantasy (dreaming of miraculous rescues), and identification with the aggressor (helping
the guards to intimidate the new men), and ended the apathy. Victor Frankl, psychiatrist
and founder of logotherapy, relates how his fellow prisoners chose either to feel the
concentration camp horrors and become angry or to feel none of the brutality and bury
their anger in apathy. The inmates who continually chose to insulate themselves from
feeling any hurt became totally listless and refused to move for roll call, dinner or even
the bathroom, until eventually they died. Nothing frightened them any longer and they
hardly seemed to feel a bloody beating.
Thus denying anger is unhealthy and can destroy us. Feeling anger, or the other hand,
is as healthy a reaction to being emotionally hurt as feeling pain is to being physically
hurt. When emotionally hurt, people who love themselves get angry; people who don't love
themselves get depressed and even suicidal as in Frankl's concentration camp. Because
depression is often displaced anger turned against oneself, a good psychotherapist treats
the depression by helping the client express anger in a healthy way and at the proper
target. Many depressions being to lift when answering, "Who or what makes me
angry?"
Feeling anger enables me to identify the hurt and heal it in a healthy way. When the
emotional hurt isn't felt, it becomes like a cancer that grows wildly until it is exposed
and its hidden dimensions are cut away. . . .
Anger not only helps me love myself by pinpointing what hurts and beginning to heal it,
but it also helps me love the person who hurt me. Once I am able to recognize my denial
and begin to get in touch with my hidden anger and my need to forgive, I can choose either
to forgive little by denying another's weakness and saying, "You're not so bad; I
forgive you," or to forgive much by allowing my anger to see another's weakness and
saying, "I see the worst that is in you, the hurts in myself and yet I love you as
Christ does." Anyone can love the smiling side of a person, but anger allows my love
to deepen into forgiving even the wounding side of another. I can accept the anger and
weakness in another's wounding side only to the degree I can recognize and accept my own
angry feelings and weaknesses as does Christ— Anger, therefore, stretches me to love
more as Christ until I can forgive even the weakness in myself and in another....
Therefore thank God for feeling anger, often a sign that we love either the person
hurting us or we love ourselves enough to dislike getting hurt. To be in touch with our
angry feelings is always healthy, but how we deal with our angry feelings can cripple us
or give us new freedom to walk boldly. It's human and not wrong to feel pain or anger.
What becomes right or wrong is how we express our pain or anger.16
The third stage is bargaining. The primary characteristic is the setting up of
conditions which must be met before I am willing to forgive. The Jacob of the Hebrew Bible
was apparently quite a bargainer, and he was caught in the web of his deceiving and
bargaining with both God and other humans. Nevertheless, Jacob is a prime example of one
who went vastly beyond his bargaining stage into the position of prevailing with God as a
prince. But he had to come to the point of the facing of reality with God, himself, and
his brother in order to prevail
In bargaining, I set up the conditions with respect to forgiveness. I say to the other,
if you will come to me on your hands and knees, then I will forgive you. Or I say that I
will forgive you if you go to the psychiatrist or apologize publicly or something else.
As their pastor I became aware of a couple in middle age who were drawing apart as he
was becoming involved with a young lady half his age. I discovered that their relationship
had been cold to the point of near death for many years. They had just bought a new
refrigerator and a new freezer, and he informed me that it was just as romantic to put his
arms around those as to try to embrace his wife He expected a level of intimacy and
passion with his wife that she was unable/unwilling to give, and she demanded that he
visit a psychiatrist if she were to remain with him. Maybe such bargaining wag not what
each really wanted, but in the final analysis neither could live the other what would
enable them to remain together.
The fourth stage is depression, anger turned inward. We have already seen this in the
prison camp quotation. We must press beyond this stage to the final one if full healing is
to occur.
The fifth stage is acceptance, in which I look forward to growing from the hurt which
has come into my life.
Those who follow in the Nietzschean mode insist that forgiveness is weakness to the
extent of impotence. But rejecting this, I in turn believe that forgiveness is a power
rather than a weakness. To forgive someone is not to be in a reduced and inoffensive
weakness of relationship, but it is one of the most powerful relationships possible.
A great amount of healing must be involved in forgiveness. It is important for us to
realize that we must go deeper into our own and other persons' dealing with certain phases
of experience if we are going to express adequately the power of forgiveness.
Churches are divided, and persons are divided. Is it possible for us to receive greater
help and to help our people go through their feelings until they can really love each
other and embody a greater ministry of reconciliation and healing in the community? When
they are torn by the same strife and confusion as people to whom they are attempting a
witness, they are guilty of self—deception and maybe even a false witness. "By
this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another"
(John 13:35 KJV). But this is a reality to be expressed, not just an ideal to be assumed
or forgotten.
One of the key areas needing forgiveness is the parent—child relationship. Even a
good Wesleyan has parents, and conflicts may be obvious or buried with accompanying
disastrous results. The Biblical command to "Honor your parents" goes to the
very root of the matter of personal identity and wholeness. Maybe one cannot admire what
one's parent or parents have been, but honest facing of this reality (or acceptance) goes
a long way toward establishing my own personal identity and advancing me in my journey to
selfhood. Some of us can honor our parents and grow into what we wish to become only by
excessive strides in forgiveness and generosity of attitude toward our parents.
The healing of relationships and personal characteristics by working through the five
stages provides a significant attack upon ressentiment. Thus personal and social
recalcitrancies are turned into manageable matters. But these aspects of our beings are so
personal and individual that only through facing them in genuine integrity will we be able
to make the most progress on the way to the celestial city. Neither crisis, nor theology,
nor the common lot of humankind can take the place of my own toil toward personal
realization.
William E. Hulme gets at the heart of what I am endeavoring to suggest.
While admittedly in the realm of conjecture, I would imagine Job saying that no answers
can be given to the sufferer apart from the struggle in the sufferer's own soul. It is the
struggle itself that leads to the experience of knowing. Whatever answers are pertinent to
the sufferer come through his own involvement in the knowing process. The pastoral
counselor is a support in the struggle to bring to birth, though by labor and travail. To
attempt to spare the sufferer the ordeal of his own struggle with God is to disrespect his
individuality as a person. It is one thing to hear of God by the hearing of the ear; it is
another to see him with one's own eyes. Only then can he know.17
What Hulme thus expresses in general terms I am attempting to apply to the matter of
forgiveness. It is only by the patient (sometimes impatient) work upon our own spiritual
maturity involving the community of which we are a part that we shall arrive at the peaks
of relationship with others and at a higher and higher level of power and glory in
forgiveness.
Listen to the beautiful lines from the greatest writer in English.
Portia. The quality of mercy is not strain'd;
It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven
Upon the place beneath. It is twice blest
It blesseth him that gives, and him that takes.
'Tis mightiest in the mightiest. It becomes
The throned monarch better than his crown.
His sceptre shows the force of temporal power,
The attribute to awe and majesty,
Wherein doth sit the dread and fear of kings;
But mercy is above this sceptred sway
It is enthroned in the hearts of kings,
It is an attribute to God Himself;
And earthly power doth then show likest God's
When mercy seasons justice. Therefore,
though justice be thy plea, consider this
That, in the course of justice, none of us
Should see salvation. We do pray for mercy,
And that same prayer doth teach us all to render
The deeds of mercy.18
When forgiveness and greatness of soul are believed in, encouraged, and cultivated,
people are greatly blessed. And I join with you in appreciation for the fact that such is
a solid dimension in our great heritage.
Notes
lCf. Thomas Merton, The New Man (A Mentor—Omega Book. Published
by The New American Library, 1963), p. 44. Merton's delightful passage reads as follows:
"The image of God is the summit of spiritual consciousness in man. It is his highest
peak of self—realization. This is achieved not merely by reflection on his actual,
present self: one's actual self may be far from 'real,' since it may be profoundly
alienated from one's own deep spiritual identity. To reach one's 'real self' one must, in
fact, be delivered by grace, virtue and asceticism, from that illusory and false 'self'
whom we have created by our habits of selfishness and by our constant flights from
reality. In order to find God, Whom we can only find in and through the depths of our own
soul, we must therefore first find ourselves."
2Max Scheler, Ressentiment, Lewis A. Coser, ed., trans. by
William W. Holdheim (New York: Schocken Books, 1972), pp. 23—24.
3Ibid., pp. 27—28.
4Ibid., p. 44.
5Ibid, p. 52.
6Ibid, p. 59
7Ibid., pp. 66—67.
8T. S. Eliot, East Coker, The Four Quartets.
9Dilys Bennett Laing, "The Apparition," in Birth Is
Farewell (Duel Sloan and Pearce. 1948).
10Cf. the title of Mark C. Taylor's book, Journeys to Selfhood,
Hegel and Kierkegaard (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press).
11Dennis Linn, S.J. and Matthew Linn, S.J., Healing Life 's
Hurts: Healing Memories through Five Stages of Forgiveness (New York: Paulist Press,
1978), p. 11.
12Ibid., p. 83.
13Ibid, p. 91.
14Ibid, p. 243, n. 1 on Chap. 7.
15Ibid, pp. 92—93, quoting Paul Tillich, The Eternal Now.
16Ibid, pp. 106—108.
17William E. Hulme, Dialogue in Despair: Pastoral Commentary
on the Book of Job (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1968), p. 152.
18William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice, Act IV. Scene
I. Lines 84—202
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