Matthew 18-27 The servant’s master took pity on him, canceled the debt and let him go.
If you have ever experienced being in debt, you are aware of of the heavy weight of that experience upon your life. Some people can't get out from under it and may end up filing for bankrupcy. And yet there are still consequences that linger. Sometimes people walk away from a home with a mortgage they can never pay and a dream that was never fully realized. Some may never reach that extreme, yet debt takes it toll on relationships, mental and physical health and sense of well being.
Even if you have never experienced it, can you imagine the chains
of that kind of debt? The lack of freedom, the frustration and fear? Now imagine that someoe says, that debt is cancelled, removed, you are free! Can you imagine, the joy, the surprise, the lightness of the moment you hear that news? The inexpressable gratitude?
We carry around a different kind of debt with us. On some level we intuitively know-
an eye for an eye. For every person we have wronged, every offense, through commission or omission (meaning our failure to do right when we have the opportunity) we carry around this indebtedness as we travel through life and it adds up. Keep in mind that just because we know something doesn't mean we accept it. People deal with this knowing in different ways. Knowing is allowing ourselves to experience something as truth, the good, the bad and the ugly truth. It is one of the key elements to this Metanoia journey. Some of us numb ourselves to the experience through addictions, Some of us project these things on others, refusing to see what is within. Others minimize, distract, justify, compartmentalize or we self loathe, fully aware of a sense of shame and guilt .And some of us truly own our stuff and work hard to do better. But these things never cancel out the debt we carry. Most of these "defense mechanisms" as we call them in the psychology field end up negatively impacting us and/or our relationships with others.
There is only one who can truly cancel our debts. Because in the end He's the one we are accountable to. And the good news is He cancels our debts willingly! No the news is better than that really, He paid the debt for us. I do not know why Christianity gets such a bad rap. It is the only religion that reveals a God who loves us so much that he takes on our debt so that we are free and unencumbered by it. I suppose people get bogged down by what they see as Christian rules. But in reality, the rules come down to this. Love the Lord with all your heart and soul and mind and love your neighbor as yourself. Its hard to love yourself even when you are weighed down with shame and guilt and regret. But when this is lifted from you, there is freedom to experience complete love and compassion from your heavenly Father, and this love and compassion allows you to extend love and grace and compassion to yourself in a way you can never experience through your own defense mechanisms, (those things we put in place to hide our debts from our awareness but can never rid us of our debts). And this love that you experience from God and from your own sense of worth that comes from knowing how very precious you are, can then freely flow to others.
Who wouldn't want this gift of cancelled debt? And who wouldn't, after experiencing it, have the deep conviction to cancel the debts of others as well? There are two things that lighten our load and free us as we journey. Being forgiven, and forgiving others. If you read all of Matthew 18, you will see how very entertwined they are.
This post has been part of the Five Minute Friday writing challege group. A challenge to write for 5 minutes on a given topic each week.