I've been thinking alot lately about trust. We have just experienced in our extended family a multi-year desecration and destruction of trust (apparent multiple adulteries for a long time). Right now there is a lot of talk about repenting, forgiving, grace, restoration, resurrection and moving forward. I am glad for that. Those words are all gospel words and they are essential and necessary. In fact they are what we have to have in any relationship.
Honestly though, they are relatively easy to come by. I know that sounds heretical or worse cynical. Trust me (no pun intended), I believe in the reality that the Holy Spirit brings about these things in Jesus' people. They are our life because they reflect the value and power of the gospel of atonement. Sin has been paid for, blood has been shed and I am made right with the God I have offended. Hallelujah and Amen.
Now what? That I believe is the rub. Because sin is not just against God (though primarily), it is also against human beings with whom we sleep, eat and live, how do I exist now in a relationship of vulnerability with the one who has sinned and thus violated trust (love necessitates this)?
If forgiveness and repentance and atonement are the judicial means of dealing with sin, how do I move forward with you?
God forgets my sin in that he no longer holds it against me, but my memory of pain and betrayal will not let me just move on. Though in forgiveness, I forgo demanding you pay for your sin against me, I absorb it, How do I move on? Can I trust you, after all, you did sin and sin big time?
My attempt at an answer tomorrow.
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