The “long answers” for all of these questions are obviously tied to the book itself. The reason I included the questions at all is that some of the content can be “slippery.” The words sound familiar, and that familiarity can make it easy to rush past the question with tired answers, and to miss what might be new to those of us who adopted tired answers too easily before, and could stand to think about things in fresh ways – to find love in new ways.
1. What do you believe happens when you ask for God’s forgiveness?
People bring up issues of “true” repentance, as opposed to lip service in our repentance. Throughout the Bible, God consistently looks to the motive and the heart. True repentance does not require perfect insight, perfect understanding, or perfect recitation of some prayer of repentance. The “contrite heart” God will not forsake is the heart that wants to know God and wants to be in intimate relationship with him. When this is the state of the heart of the person seeking forgiveness, the deal is done. The “conviction” has to do with God’s desire to be close to us and his calling us back to himself.
2. What do you feel after you ask for God’s forgiveness?
Forgiveness is a theological concept, and a relational assurance. It is not necessarily an experiential thing – we may not feel forgiven when we ask. This is a point where we have a choice to make about how much we will believe that what God says is actually what God means. If he says we’re forgiven, but we don’t feel it when we ask, we have a choice to make about whose word we’re going to accept on the subject. This can be a challenge to those of us who tend to measure reality by our perceptions of it rather than by God’s pronouncements about it. The choice to believe God’s promises, even when we don’t feel like we think we should feel, can make many of us conclude that we’re cheating, faking, or in some other way not doing “our part” in the relationship.
3. What do you believe happens when you ask for God’s healing?
Healing is different from forgiveness. Being left unhealed has a lot to do with being left weak – as in “when I am weak then I am truly strong.” Brokenness of many kinds creates the basis for our interactions and intimacies with God. Personally, I believe that sometimes God heals all at once and in miraculous ways, but that there are also plenty of times where healing takes time. In the same way that fevers rise and then break, or broken bones take time to knit back together, so there are places in our lives where healing comes at a slower rate. And in the same way that we make experience forced “time out” by being “knocked out” by a fever, or being unable to run or throw because of a broken bone, there are ways that our ongoing brokenness creates “time out” of other aspects of our lives.
Additionally, there are a great many aspects of living in this place that don’t receive healing. Sometimes what is broken is left broken. I have heard people talk about that being a result of the Fall, and I’m okay with that – but I also believe that God is very much in charge, he is still perfect, and that while the Fall may have shifted the way life unfolds away from some first plan, because God is in this reality, this reality is in no way a diminished reality or a “plan B.” What is broken, and remains broken, is still loved well by God, who delights in what he has made and leaves broken.
4. What do you feel after you ask for God’s healing?
I feel like I want him to fix me in the same immediate way that I believe he forgives me. And it can be frustrating when he does not. What I am realizing, though, is that the worst part of being broken is not the pain that comes directly from the brokenness. The worst part of brokenness is what I tell myself my brokenness means, or how the cost and “time off” from the brokenness gets in the way of me getting exactly what I want and being able to control my world. I think the trick – and maybe this is part of having faith like a child – is to learn to be more matter of fact about how I am…kids have to learn what their imperfections “mean” – and they don’t ask about the meaning of their shortcomings until other people teach them to fear condemnation. Hmm, isn’t there some passage about “no condemnation in Christ”?
5. Is there a different purpose for forgiveness than healing, or do our efforts to address both sin and suffering lead to the same place with God?
I think it is very common for people to pray for forgiveness when they should be praying for healing. And I think it is very common for people to pray for forgivenss or healing when they should be pursuing intimacy. Communion. Could it be that prayers for forgiveness involve the least giving up of one’s self and self determination, that prayers for healing acknowledge another layer of dependence that lack of self determination, and that the great reward of intimacy with God, while assuring us that all is well, only comes with a different sort of abandoning of self?
See the next chapter’s discussion questions here.
