Captains Courageous

I had a week off earlier this month and got to do one of my favorite things. I read a classic novel. ‘Captains Courageous’ is not an easy read. It’s not a long book, but written in 1897 and set within the fishing community of the Grand Banks off Newfoundland, the colloquial dialect combined with an endless supply of fishing/sailing terms make it a bit of a challenge. None the less, it is a great story. It is a coming of age story in the finest of that tradition.

The story by Rudyard Kipling chronicles the adventures of fifteen-year-old Harvey Cheyne. His father is a wealthy railroad tycoon and Harvey, spoiled by privilege, neglected by his father and indulged by his mother, has become a totally intolerable brat of a kid, arrogant, obnoxious and completely immature. That is until he is washed overboard from a transatlantic steamship. After nearly drowning he is rescued by a fishing schooner. Completely unconvinced by his story, the seasoned captain of the ‘We're Here’, Disko Troop, refuses to return him to land and instead offers him a place among the crew. Left without a choice, Harvey is launched into a whole new existence of rigorous hardship and toil.

For Harvey, what initially seems like the worst of disasters turns out to be the making of him. Not only does he learn what it means to labour, he learns what it means to be a man among men. Rough and dysfunctional in many ways, the men of the schooner become Harvey’s mentors for the fishing season. By the time Harvey is finally reunited with his father and mother, after months at sea, the transformation is so complete that it is quite a different young man returned than the boy that had been lost to them.

There is a strong irony to the story. The rich and successful father fails to do for his son what a bunch of rough and tumble fishermen accomplish in fine fashion. I know that this story has played out many times in real life but I am saddened to think that more often it doesn’t end so well. Not very many of us in this privileged place and time have the good fortune of falling overboard.

XOXOXO

I was recently thinking (pondering really) about how people sometimes can convey a certain message while the reality of the heart is quite different. I was struggling with the fact that someone could profess great love while at the same time commit terrible acts of un-love. It seems totally incongruous to us and it is. But it happens. I’m not thinking of the many little slip-ups we all make in our relationships with those we truly love. I’m talking about treachery. How can people say that they love, or convey it in all kinds of typical manners, and yet at the same time, knowingly, cause immeasurable hurt and suffering to those they are claiming to care about?  

As difficult as it is for us to understand this, we can draw some comfort from knowing that Jesus Himself experienced precisely that. We often think, and rightly so, about the suffering that Christ endured on our behalf. We typically think of the Cross of course, but one of the things experienced by Christ that caused Him immense pain was in fact the betrayal of one He considered to be among His closest friends.

This is not an obscure truth. It is very much a part of the atonement. The prophetic forerunners of the Old Testament introduce us to it. King David, speaking from a great deal of personal experience, but also speaking prophetically of the sufferings of Christ, cried out in great pain:

“Even my close friend, whom I trusted, he who shared my bread, has lifted up his heel against me.”

Psa 41:9

And Jesus, the night He was betrayed refers to this very passage:

“I am not referring to all of you; I know those I have chosen. But this is to fulfill the scripture: ‘He who shares my bread has lifted up his heel against me.’”

Jn 13:18

Then, in a poignant moment dripping with irony, Jesus used the prophetic symbol to identify the one who would betray Him…

“Jesus answered, “It is the one to whom I will give this piece of bread when I have dipped it in the dish.” Then, dipping the piece of bread, he gave it to Judas Iscariot, son of Simon.”

Jn 13:26

A shared meal is one of the strongest biblical symbols for goodwill and relational harmony (communion). Another is the kiss. The kiss is perhaps even the greatest and most common symbol of affection there is. As near as I can figure, both of these acts are considered as such in every culture on earth. So is it not significant that Jesus used the sop to identify the one who would betray Him and that Judas used a kiss, the most common and cherished means of conveying affection, to commit the most preposterous act of betrayal the world has ever seen? 

It gives a whole new appreciation for the words spoken by the prophet Isaiah:

“The Lord says: ‘These people come near to me with their mouth and honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me.’”  Isa 29:13a

It should also give us a whole new appreciation for the incredible significance of the substitutionary nature of the sufferings of Christ. Once again drawing from the writings of Isaiah the Prophet, in the fifty third chapter, Jesus was not only One ‘familiar with suffering’ but He was a ‘man of sorrows’. He not only ‘took our infirmities’ but He also ‘carried our sorrows’. Jesus died for our sins. We know that, but we need to know it more. He also died for our sorrows. Maybe that deserves some more thought too.

Two Kinds Of Forgiveness

There is more than a little confusion on the subject of forgiveness. Sometimes it’s the mistake of thinking that to forgive is to forget. This causes some of us to think that, because we can’t forget, we can’t forgive. The reality is that it’s not even possible to forget in that sense. We never really forget anything that happens to us. It’s in there somewhere, whether we can recall it at will or not. And think about it, to forget what someone has done to us could quite possibly subject us to an endless cycle of abuse which God never intended. On this note, we should not confuse forgiving someone with trusting someone. They are not the same thing. Forgiveness is free. Trust needs to be earned.

There is also the mistaken notion that when we forgive we’re really doing ourselves a favour. It’s true that our lives improve a hundred fold when we practice forgiveness, and the refusal to forgive is like a disease that eats away at our souls until there is nothing left. The old saying, “forgiveness is setting the prisoner free only to then realize the prisoner was me” speaks to this truth. And the saying, conversely, that “resentment (the opposite of forgiveness) is like drinking poison and waiting for the other person to die” is also true. However, to make our own well-being the primary focus and motive for forgiving is to flip forgiveness on it’s head, twisting it into an act of selfishness rather than what it is to be in truth – an act of love for God and others.

Perhaps the other big thing about forgiveness that can cause confusion is that there are two kinds of forgiveness, or maybe it would be better to say that there are two aspects to forgiveness. Tim Lane and Paul Tripp point this out in their excellent book – ‘Relationships: A Mess Worth Making’. They refer us to Luke 17:3 where Jesus teaches us that forgiving someone who has sinned against us is conditioned upon their willingness to repent. But this is in contrast to Jesus’ teaching in Mark 11:25 where it is intimated that we should simply forgive people whether they repent or not. The answer to the seeming inconsistency in Jesus’ teaching in these passages is explained by this fact – there are two aspects or two types of forgiveness. Repentance is necessary if a true reconciliation is going to take place (see Matthew 18). But even when reconciliation is not possible, even when the other person is unwilling to repent, or maybe they don’t even acknowledge what they have done, we are to have what the authors call an ‘attitude of forgiveness’. We experience this attitude of forgiveness in our vertical relationship with God. We let go of the offense and we give it up to Him. He died after all for all of our sin, both the sin we commit AND the sin committed against us. His grace is sufficient for all of these things.

As I read through those pages I thought of Jesus Himself. As He hung dying on the cross at the hands of us who put Him there, He cried out to the Father, remember, “Father, forgive them for they don’t know what they are doing.” THAT is an attitude of forgiveness. Of course, only those who genuinely repent will actually get to experience that forgiveness, as only those who repent are reconciled to God. But nonetheless, Jesus was right with the Father when He expressed that incredible attitude of forgiveness. And, once again, He is the one we are called to emulate.