The Wrestling is the Hope

When faced with the misery of another human, how do we respond?

Not long ago, I found myself in a group of people in prison reflecting on questions of mercy and compassion. What has been our experience when showing mercy? What has been our experience when being shown mercy? In the midst of this, a man started to share about a hypothetical or vague situation and it became increasingly clear that he was sharing his own story with us.

He said that he couldn’t believe that God would forgive some people for the terrible, awful things they had done to other people. It wouldn’t be enough to just say sorry; forgiveness from God would be too easy, too incomprehensible. Though numerous pastors, priests, friends, and volunteers had told him otherwise, he could not fathom forgiveness being offered to himself. It was clear he was repulsed by himself and that he had likely tortured himself by replaying his crimes over and over in his mind thousands of times.

What do you do when you hate yourself so much yet you cannot avoid yourself? While you can run away from everyone else and hide in shame, you cannot outrun yourself. You cannot avoid being with your own tell-tale heart which longs for forgiveness yet cannot imagine ever being reconciled–with God, yourself, or humanity.

Some of his friends jumped in to offer consolation or to compare their wildly different situations as though they were similar. He sadly rebuffed the attempts, clearly seeing the differences and being unwilling to yield any compassion towards himself. Numerous thoughts raced through my mind and I tried to consider what I could say in the face of such despair. At one point, weeping, he questioned why God wouldn’t let him feel forgiven if he actually was and he bemoaned having no hope for himself.

“Perhaps the wrestling is the hope,” I said.

I explained that while he wants to give up, it doesn’t seem like he can. Maybe it is his undying longing for reconciliation and for redemption which is his hope. He wants to despair and yet he cannot fully commit himself to giving up entirely. Perhaps this is the hope the Lord is offering.

“I don’t know why the Lord doesn’t offer more grace in different moments. But I know He always offers enough.”

His eyes, still filled with unshed tears, still tormented by the less-than-human crimes of his past, looked at me with a bit of surprise. “The wrestling is the hope?” he asked. Later that week, I looked him up and read a little about his crimes and understood, in a way, that perhaps while my words were helpful, it was maybe my very person which was more striking. His crimes were against young women, several of them, and his words that night in the prison alluded to even more grievous crimes for which he was never charged. I wasn’t trying to let him off the hook or make it seem like the past didn’t matter, but I also believe (and need to believe) in a God who can truly forgive us, regardless of what we have done in the past.

And though my hard heart scarce to thee can groan,
Remember that thou once didst write in stone.
“The Sinner” by George Herbert

The mercy of God isn’t cheap. It cost Him everything and requires a love which my finite, human brain and heart cannot fathom. Yet this is what the foolishness of the cross offers and which we should be grateful to accept for ourselves and for all of humanity. And if we still struggle to understand or to accept, we should engage in the practice of wrestling with the hope that God can offer to us what we would stubbornly, pridefully deny ourselves.

As soon as we allow our feebleness to prevent the mercy of God from reaching that person, we start to harden our hearts and neatly divide humanity into the “deserving” and the “undeserving.” The mercy of God means Jesus forgiving His executioners from the cross, as they mock Him, as they thrust the emotional sword repeatedly into His mother’s heart, as they seem entirely unrepentant. It it the martyrs through the centuries who ask for their persecutors to one day be in heaven with them. Whenever we draw a line for God’s mercy, we risk immediately putting ourselves on the wrong side of that line, like the Pharisee who condescendingly prays to himself while the tax collector implores the mercy of God.

If I don’t believe God’s mercy is for everyone, I risk it certainly being not for me.

“God, be merciful to me a sinner.”

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Photo by Simon Wilkes on Unsplash