Aspects of Forgiveness, Part 3

"Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors."
And Love is reflected in love.

What about all the evil that is in the world? All the hatred, destruction, malice? sin, disease, death? How can these evils possibly be forgiven? How can you expect to forgive someone who's hurt you? Or do good to someone who taken advantage of you? Or love someone who is a just plain evil?

Again, you must look to Jesus for your answer. He proved by his life what true Love is - and the power it has over evil. He never ignored hatred. He never tolerated evil. Just the opposite, he destroyed evil and its effects wherever he went. How? Because Jesus understood something extremely powerful: God, good, is real. And evil is God's opposite: unreal.

Hear his words of rebuke to evil-doers: "Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own: for he is a liar, and the father of it."

Mrs. Eddy put it this way: "The notion that both evil and good are real is a delusion of material sense, which Science anihilates. Evil is nothing, no thing, mind, nor power. As manifested by mankind it stands for a lie, nothing claiming to be something,--for lust, dishonesty, selfishness, envy, hypocrisy, slander, hate, theft, adultery, murder, dementia, insanity, inanity, devil, hell, with all the etceteras that word includes."

Saint John gives us this perspective: "This then is the message which we have heard of him, and declare unto you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all."

To truly overcome evil, you must start from the right vantage point. You must start from understanding the reality and power of God, good, and the unreality and impotence of evil. You must see that God is Light - reality - and evil is darkness - absence of reality, the lie. And light always overcomes darkness. Always.

To demonstrate this however means to see with new eyes, a new perspective, the perspective Jesus had. It means witnessing for the Light - for the Truth of being, not witnessing for the darkness - not worshipping, bowing down, obeying evil - the liar and the father of lies.

That is why this verse of our Lord's prayer has such a strong connection to the 9th Commandment: "Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor."

Look at a spectacular example of how this verse - and its relation to the 9th Commandment - played out in this remarkable story from John's Gospel:

"And early in the morning he came again into the temple, and all the people came unto him; and he sat down, and taught them.

And the scribes and Pharisees brought unto him a woman taken in adultery; and when they had set her in the midst, they say unto him, Master, this woman was taken in adultery, in the very act. Now Moses in the law commanded us, that such should be stoned: but what sayest thou?

This they said, tempting him, that they might have to accuse him. But Jesus stooped down, and with his finger wrote on the ground, as though he heard them not.

So when they continued asking him, he lifted up himself, and said unto them, He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her.

And again he stooped down, and wrote on the ground.

And they which heard it, being convicted by their own conscience, went out one by one, beginning at the eldest, even unto the last: and Jesus was left alone, and the woman standing in the midst.

When Jesus had lifted up himself, and saw none but the woman, he said unto her, Woman, where are those thine accusers? hath no man condemned thee?

She said, No man, Lord. And Jesus said unto her, Neither do I condemn thee: go, and sin no more.

Then spake Jesus again unto them, saying, I am the light of the world: he that followeth me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life.

The mob had what they thought was the right perspective - a moral perspective - and so no doubt felt justified in condemning this woman to death. But Jesus had a much different perspective. He had a spiritual point of view. He saw things the way God sees things. As it says in Genesis: "And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good." Good, like Him, like His image and likeness.

The mob thought to kill the sin of adultery by killing the adulterous sinner. It was the way things had always been done. In fact the Old Testament is full of such examples. The woman was caught in the act of adultery! How much more obvious an open-and-shut case could there be? The woman (like the mob) no doubt also thought of herself as a sinner - because she believed (like the mob did) in the reality of evil. She might have even thought she deserved to be stoned. The mob certainly did.

But the problem - as Jesus clearly knew - was that they had all believed a lie.

Jesus knew that the woman's true God-given spiritual identity was completely separate from any lying claim of evil. Instead of seeing her as doomed to live in original sin, he saw her true birthright of original wholeness, holiness. When he looked at her, he saw "God's own likeness" and this correct view forgave her, redeemed her, literally saved her.

Jesus was always the true witness. He always saw through the lie, because he knew the Truth, the Truth that God's creation is intact, pure, holy. And in this situation, he so perfectly fulfilled the Divine Love underlying the 9th Commandment by witnessing what was spiritually true. His seeing was literally the "light of life" for everyone involved - both the woman - and her accusers! His simple loving Word not only redeemed the woman from breaking the 7th Commandment "Thou shalt not commit adultery, " it saved the crowd as well from breaking the 6th Commandment "Thou shalt not kill."

This is a turning point in spiritual history. The whole of the Old Testament is full of examples of killing sinners to kill the sin. But Jesus came with a new testament, a new promise from God: to save sinners, not kill them, to save them from the lie of evil, to awaken them to their true being, their true likeness to God. Jesus destroyed the sin, not the sinner. This is a radical change.

And he demonstrated something even more fundamentally important: spirituality must always come first. If morality comes first, the letter of the law would trample on the spirit of the law. The letter kills. The spirit saves. Morality - without spirituality coming first - is always wrong. It is exactly what tried to stone the woman. But the spiritual Truth is always saving. And it must always come first. Without the Spirit, there is no real morality. There is only the cultural mores, traditions, and opinions of fickle fallible people - and most of those are fatal to anyone not sharing them.

So look at the miraculous result of the good and just perspective of Jesus: his perfect spiritual view of the woman shone so brightly that it exposed that dark moralistic self-righteousness - that evil false witnessing - of the mob.

And his potent question not only exposed the hypocricy of that false witnessing, it made that hypocricy felt. His quiet true witnessing fell like righteous rain on the just and the unjust - with equal potency. And the eldest - perhaps the ones with the least stomach for yet another religiously sanctioned murder - felt it first. Then the rest, one by one had that light of Jesus' word dawn in their conscience so they too saw their almost fatal mistake.

As it says in Science & Health (p. 476:32):
"Jesus beheld in Science the perfect man, who appeared to him where sinning mortalman appears to mortals. In this perfect man the Saviour saw God's own likeness, and this correct view of man healed the sick. Thus Jesus taught that the kingdom of God is intact, universal, and that man is pure and holy."

Jesus bore true witness of God's creation wherever he went - and this correct view of people, helped them, healed them, raised them, forgave them, awakened them, and saved them.

This true witnessing is Love reflected in love. It is God, Love, being reflected in love to your neighbor. It is God's view of His creation being witnessed to by you in every encounter you have with humanity. It is Divine Love unconditional shining on the evil and the good, the just and the unjust - because those labels mean nothing when viewed from the divine perspective.

To the extent you put aside a personal sense of "ego" in favor of recognizing your role as the reflection of the Great I Am, you will be following Jesus' example of true witnessing.

To the extent you put aside the dream of debts, failure, the mortal-minded personal sense of yourself or others is to take even just a step in awakening to who you really are: God's witness.

To that extent forgiveness washes over you, washes you clean of the dream of a personal ego, of being the personal author of evil, the privileged originator of heart-break and hurtfulness. And you awake to demonstrating that all real being is actually already the emanation of the Great I Am - of Love itself, of God.

And you behold in Science the perfect person where sinning mortal people appear to mortal minded ways of thinking, seeing, and being.

And in this perfect Christ-like view, you witness Divine Love at work. You see Love, reflected in love.

This is the ultimate of forgiveness - for in the Allness of the Light of Love, there is no lie of evil, there is no darkness, there really is nothing left to forgive.