Mr. Wonderful blunders
Now that I think of it I think I should have had a clearer awareness of it long before now, though I wasn't completely ignorant of it in the past. Mrs. Clennam (click) despised herself and as a consequence she despised other transgressors and had come to hate evil-doers. There was something of that in Javier, Hugo's obsessed policeman in Les Miserables.
Each of us has some influence over others and the influence we have is not always the purposed kind; much of it we aren't aware of because we aren't consciously trying to exert it.
If we're overly severe with ourselves and forever self-critical we're proclaiming a definite message to those we live with. If I call myself "stupid" (or some such thing) when I make a mistake, even in silly things (maybe, spilling milk, breaking a cup, burning the toast), I'm creating an atmosphere around the home. If I'm Mr. Death on my moral wrongs, so severe that I verbally whip myself to shreds and show no mercy, I'm sending out a message: transgressors deserve to be punished without mercy.
Certainly in relation to those I have influence with, when they see me withholding forgiveness or allowing it only grudgingly and after a severe beating, they'll tend to think they should withhold forgiveness from themselves; and so the infection spreads as we each influence someone else.
If I show no mercy toward myself and those who are to some degree shaped by me show no mercy to themselves, what will we feel toward others? If we learn to despise ourselves because we're transgressors, will we not come to think that all transgressors are to be despised and treated with prolonged severity?
This came home to me quite some time ago when I was working with Ethel, doing a tricky little cleaning job and replacing a burst colostomy pouch. It took a while and some patience but I finally got it done, only to discover that the pouch was facing in the wrong direction and in the process of replacing that one I goofed and had to replace the urostomy pouch also. It infuriated me and I gave myself an audible and over-the-top verbal beating. Ethel asked: "Did you do it on purpose?" She was right but I wasn't prepared to allow room for my failure without a string of self-insulting remarks. (Who'd I think I was that I wouldn't allow myself to blunder? Samuel L. Jackson, the actor, said an honest caddy taught him to control his temper on the golf course. In ill-temper Jackson had flung his club away and the caddy said: "You're not good enough to be that angry.")
If I was injuring anyone at times like that I was injuring only myself (I think I must have thought) but it wasn't true. Maybe that's when I first linked my own behaviour with Ethel's habit of calling herself "stupid!" when she spilled water or forgot her medicine or jammed her hand between the door and the wheelchair. Why would she speak that way? Because she'd heard me do it for years and was led to believe that if I made no allowances for myself she should make none for her. I learned it from her and she learned it from me.
It turns out that to withhold forgiveness from yourself creates a culture in which forgiveness is harder to accept as well as to offer. Nelson Mandela said "As we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same." Hmmm, there's something in that statement that sheds light on this topic and I want the truth of it to be part of me.
Would all this have any effect on our understanding of forgiveness offered by God in Jesus Christ, do you think?
Many thanks to brother Ed Healy, for allowing me to post from his website, the abiding word.com.
©2004 Jim McGuiggan. All materials are free to be copied and used as long as money is not being made.
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