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In my last post, I shared about the process to becoming a member of a motorcycle club. As a result of that process, membership is incredibly important and something that is taken very seriously. Guys are proud of their club. In fact, in some cases, their love for the club overshadows everything else.

This time, I want to talk about the sense of family found in most motorcycle clubs. Again, if you haven’t done so, please read the second post in this series, where I explain what I mean by motorcycle clubs. It will help those who might disagree with some of what I will say below.

Family

One thing you will discover with most clubs is a strong sense of family. They truly see the other members as brothers (and sisters). They will do anything for one another. Anything. If a brother is in need, his club is there. It’s one of the things I love the most about clubs.

A club stands together. No matter what. Even if a member is in the wrong, they will stand with him. If a member acts like an idiot in public and finds himself in trouble as a result, his brothers will be right there beside him in the middle of the trouble. That doesn’t mean they will condone the behaviour. Often the club will address the behaviour of the member and make it clear that it’s not acceptable. However, that meeting will take place privately. Publicly, you will simply see people who stand together.

Lessons for the Church

I can’t speak for most churches, but I want Bikers’ Church to function in that way. In fact, it’s been a priority of ours since day one. When someone becomes a member of Bikers’ Church, there are expectations on them. We expect them to treat other members like family. To stand together. To defend one another.

We believe this so strongly that there have been a few times when we have challenged a person who broke this fundamental principle. We challenge those who publicly criticize another member. We take issue with those who treat another member with a lack of respect. We expect our members to stand together. To defend one another. If there’s an issue, we’ll deal with it. But it will be done privately, among those who are affected.

I remember a few years ago one of our guys breaking down a few hours from Ottawa. One phone call and he was looked after. Another member headed to meet him with his truck. It didn’t matter what else was going on. A brother was in trouble and others rose up. I could tell story after story that demonstrates this sense of family.

I think of my family growing up. There was my older brother and my younger sister. There were times when we would get frustrated with each other about one thing or another. I might criticize one of my siblings to my mom. But if someone outside my family attacked my brother or sister, I would rise up to defend them regardless of the validity of the attack. You simply do not go after my family without going through me.

Gossip and Murmuring

I don’t believe there is anything more damaging to a church than gossip or murmuring (groups of people whispering, complaining, and bad mouthing someone). Nothing drives me more crazy. I do everything I can to keep gossipers off the leadership team at Bikers’ Church. I don’t want them around. As far as I’m concerned, they’re dangerous.

When I hear of people within Bikers’ Church who are murmuring, I do what I can to address it. Among our leadership, we have a policy. If someone approaches a leader to criticize another member of the church, the leader is expected to interrupt the person and say something along the following lines: “Tell you what, if you have an issue with that person, then we should address it. Let’s call them and arrange a meeting between the three of us. You can share your criticism directly to them, and I’ll help mediate the issue for you.” It’s amazing how often people don’t want to go to that step. Why? Because they really aren’t trying to resolve an issue, they’re just looking to complain.

Conclusion

Look, I realize that even in the best of motorcycle clubs, there are times when this sense of family falls short. Let’s face it, even in the best of families, the ideal sometimes fails. The point I’m trying to make is that for the most part, that sense of family is celebrated in the club scene. It’s something many churches could learn.

In my last post, I explained what I meant by the terms Church and Motorcycle Clubs (M.C.). Now, I want to dive into some of the specific things that I believe we can learn from each other.

I want to start with membership.

First, let me explain how one becomes a member of a typical motorcycle club. In most cases, it’s not an easier process. Before a club allows you to where their patch (also known as “colours” or “cut”), they want to make sure you fully understand the philosophy behind the club. Membership is something that is earned. The process is rarely easy. But in the end, I believe it’s one of the main reasons that most club guys value their membership above almost everything else. I know many guys who will refuse to take off their patch no matter who asks them to do so. It is their most prized possession.

There are a number of stages to club membership. It begins with a Hangaround stage. A Hangaround has no real status in the club. He is simply someone who, well … hangs around … at club events. He might hang out at the club house or participate in bike runs sponsored by the club. However, he isn’t unnoticed by the club. If someone in the club views the Hangaround as potential club material, he may be invited to move on to the next stage.

That next stage is the Prospect stage. In most clubs, you don’t ask to prospect, you’re invited to do so. If a club member thinks you might be a good fit for the club, he’ll “sponsor” you. As a prospect, you are at the bidding of all the members of the club. You work hard. You do whatever you are asked to do. Your the guy who is washing the floors, carrying food and drinks to the club parties, running errands for club members. The primary job of a prospect is to learn. He follows behind the members, watching them, learning from them. Many clubs have a rule that prospects are to stay quiet at public events. Speak only when instructed to do so by a member. In other words, stay in the background, work like a dog, and learn the ropes. The prospect stage can last anywhere from six months to a few years. Some never move past this stage. Some quite because they find being a prospect demeaning. It’s usually easy to spot a prospect in a club environment. He may be wearing a patch that clearly states he is a prospect. Or, he may be wearing part of the clubs colours (usually the club logo (or emblem) and one rocker (the rockers are the top and bottom patches. One usually states the name of the club, the other usually has the city or state the club resides in).

After a period of time, if the prospect’s sponsor (the guy who originally invited him to join the club) feels the prospect has earned it, a vote will be held by the members of the club. Most clubs require a unanimous vote in order to approve a prospect for membership. The vote is always private and no prospects attend the meeting where the vote is held. If approved, the prospect is granted full membership into the club.

When a prospect becomes a full member, most clubs hold a party to celebrate. After all, it’s a big deal for both the prospect and the club. They are telling this guy that he has worked hard, has proven his value, and is now part of a very close group of friends. He’s family. He now enjoys all the rights and privileges of membership.

Can a person ever move down the “ladder” from member to prospect. Absolutely. There are a few reasons why a member can be put back to prospect status, but I’ll explain those reasons in a later post.

Lessons Learned

So, what can the Church learn from the membership process of a Motorcycle Club? I believe a lot. However, there are a few challenges we must face when we compare the two.

First, most churches strive to be inclusive. In other words, churches want everyone to feel welcome. M.C.s don’t carry that same desire. While they want to be friendly with most people, M.C.s are very exclusive. Members are seen very differently than non-members.

In a lot of churches, there has been a movement away from membership. Again, it’s done out of a desire to make everyone feel welcome. But I think in the end, it hurts one of the very key principles that membership offers: value to the church. You see, in a club, members will do just about anything for the club because they have poured a lot of “blood, sweat, and tears” into the club. It’s difficult to have that same value in a local church if there isn’t an effort required to be part of any area of the church.

At Bikers’ Church, one of our key values is that you belong just by showing up. We want every person who walks through our doors to feel he/she is a part of the Bikers’ Church family. It’s important to us. However, that doesn’t mean that every person who comes through the doors at Bikers’ Church can dictate the direction of the church. Just because you attend a few weeks doesn’t mean you get to have a say in the philosophy of the church.

From the very beginning we felt it was important to have a membership. To be a member at Bikers’ Church, you are required to take a course that goes over the history of Bikers’ Church. It tells the story of how we began and why we do what we do. It explains our foundational beliefs and the core values that make us Bikers’ Church. If, after the course is completed, you want to become a member, then you are required to sign a paper committing to living out the core values. Membership is only valid for the calendar year, and every person, including staff, are required to make a fresh commitment each January. Each membership form is reviewed by the Servant Leadership Team (Church Board). Those approved are acknowledged during a service.

Even so, I’m not convinced that we value membership at Bikers’ Church enough. I wonder if there should be a minimum waiting period before one can become a member. We don’t require someone to be a member in order to serve in certain areas of the church, however we do ask people to attend a minimum of six months before they serve in any area (such as behind the bar, running a video camera, etc.). We want people to have a basic understanding of why we do what we do before they get involved in an area within the church.

I think membership should be something that we value much higher. It should be celebrated. Not so that we make a clear separation from members and non-members. I do believe that you can still make everyone feel like they belong and still celebrate those who commit fully to being part of the church family.

When you become a member of a motorcycle club, you are proud of that connection. It’s easy to spot a club member. They are almost always wearing their patch. They bike often has club images on it. Even their cars usually have club stickers. Heck, I’ve seen club members who even plaster the front door of their house with club logos. They get tattoos with the club’s name. They boast about their club to others. It would crush a lot of them to ever lose their membership within the club.

How many churches can boast that? Now, I do admit that Bikers’ Church has that kind of “loyalty.” Most of the members have a CCBC sticker somewhere on their motorcycle. Most wear Bikers’ Church t-shirts or sport the church’s logo patch on their vest. I don’t think anyone has tattooed the church’s logo on their bodies, but it wont surprise me if someone does.

I realize that there are many reasons why we don’t emphasize church membership the same way a club does. I understand that the focus of most churches is to life up the name of Jesus not the name of the church. What matters most is that God is honoured and glorified, not Bikers’ Church.

Still, I wonder if there’s something we could learn about how we view our local church from the way a club member views his club.

You turn. Comments?

Note: This is part two of a series of posts. To read the previous post, go here.

I thought it would be good to explain a few things before I actually dive into specific areas that I think these two groups could learn from each other. After all, when you use words like Church or Motorcycle Club (M.C.) you cover a lot of diverse areas. There are so many different ideas of what is meant by Church. The same is true when it comes to Motorcycle Clubs. So, let me take a few minutes and explain what I mean with both terms.

The Church

When it comes to Church, I am speaking of an institution that is made up of people who consider themselves followers of Jesus Christ. I am not talking about a specific denomination or style of worship. The Church is an incredibly diverse subculture. As such, it can be very difficult to define. Many critics of the Church argue that one of the primary problems of the Church is it’s lack of respect for various cultures. They argue that the Church strives to force people of different cultures into specific molds. Timothy Keller, in his book, The Reason For God, argues that nothing could be further from the truth.

Christianity … allegedly forces people from diverse cultures into a single iron mold. It is seen as an enemy of pluralism and multiculturalism. In reality, Christianity has been more adaptive of diverse cultures than secularism and many other worldviews….Christianity was first dominated by Jews and centered in Jerusalem. Later it was dominated by Hellenists and centered in the Mediterranean. Later the faith was received by the barbarians of Northern Europe and Christianity came to be dominated by western Europeans and then North Americans. Today most Christians in the world live in Africa, Latin America, and Asia. Christianity soon will be centered in the southern and eastern hemispheres. (pp 40-41)

When I use the term Church it can be very difficult to generalize. How the Church functions in North America can be very different than in Asia or Latin America. So, let me be clear that since my experience with the Church is limited to Canadian Evangelicalism, I will be talking about the Church in that context. I’m sure that most of my criticisms and suggestions can fit nicely into any part of the North American Protestant Church, but I wont assume such.

Also, please note that when I use the lower case church, I am referring to a local body of Christ followers. For the most part, it will be Bikers’ Church that I am referring to. The Capital “C” Church is the larger context of the Global Church.

Motorcycle Clubs

In many ways, we face the same challenge when we talk about Motorcycle Clubs. After all, there are a lot of different types of motorcycle groups. There are Clubs, Associations, One Percenters, Affiliations, and groups that simply rally around a specific cause. In some cases, these groups have very little expectations or rules that dictate the behaviour and expectations of their adherents. Some have formal memberships, some do not. In some cases, it’s as simple as going to a website and ordering a “patch.” For other groups, membership takes years and requires a number of steps that the potential member must pass. Some groups have hundreds of members in one location, while others limit the size of each “chapter” to a few dozen at most. Even Wikipedia’s definition of a Motorcycle Club is unbelievably general: A motorcycle club is a group of individuals whose primary interest and activities involve motorcycles. No kidding.

When I speak about Motorcycle Club, I am talking very specifically about those groups that follow a very clear set of rules and expectations. Generally speaking, these rules and expectations can be found in just about any group that has a three piece patch. Most of these clubs also have a small patch with the words M.C. on it. While all outlaw clubs (One Percenters) will follow these rules in some fashion, the rules are not limited to these clubs. There are many Christian clubs, family related clubs, sobriety clubs, law enforcement clubs, to name a few, that also follow the general rules of an M.C. As well, there are groups who choose not to use the M.C. label (Motorcycle Ministries (M.M.), for example) who often follow the same expectations. You can see the challenge one faces when endeavouring to write about Motorcycle Clubs.

While this may seem over simplified, I believe there are a general set of rules and expectations that one assumes have been met and are being followed when they see a biker wearing an M.C. patch. It is from this list of expectations that I will draw on some ideas that I think the Church could learn.

Misunderstood

Now that we’ve made that all clear as mud, let me talk about an area that both groups have in common. Both are very misunderstood by those outside of their groups.

I believe both groups are often misrepresented by the Media. Now, I’m not a “let’s blame everything on the media” type of guy, but the reality is, both groups are often thrown in with the “radicals” of their respective groups. Call it lazy reporting. Call it misinformed sources. Call it bias. Whatever the reason, the fact is that most of the time, M.C.s are labeled as gangs. In fact, often a Motorcycle Club is actually referred to as a Motorcycle Gang. I’ve seen Christian and Sobriety M.C.s referred to as “gangs.”

The reality is most M.C.s are made up of law-abiding people. In fact, many have zero tolerance for any type of illegal activity among club members. Are the members of some clubs actively involved in criminal activity? Sure. But they are the exception, not the norm. In fact, there’s a reason why some Clubs wear an additional patch with “1%er” on it. Most do not, and almost all of the ones that do not wear the “1%er” patch have zero interest in illegal activity. The debate of questionable behaviour within “1%er” Clubs is best left for another time. Although it’s an interesting debate to say the least.

At the same time, the Church is often labeled because of the behaviour of a few. The majority of Christ followers strongly believe that their role is to make a difference in the lives of their family, friends, and the people of their community. They’re not mean-spirited, judgmental, or bigoted. They don’t hate certain groups. They love God. They love Jesus. They strive to live a life that would represent Jesus to others. Yes, there is a small group of “fanatics” who do stupid things. They carry signs that speak of God’s hatred for certain groups. They justify their behaviour because they believe the end result is what truly matters, even if the behaviour is contrary to everything Jesus taught. However, I believe that this group is a very small group – perhaps the Church’s “1%ers.”

I love what Keller says about Christian fanatics in The Reason For God:

Think of people you consider fanatical. They’re overbearing, self-righteous, opinionated, insensitive, and harsh. Why? It’s not because they are too Christian but because they are not Christian enough. They are fanatically zealous and courageous, but they are not fanatically humble, sensitive, loving, empathetic, forgiving, or understanding – as Christ was….What strikes us as overly fanatical is actually a failure to be fully committed to Christ and his gospel.

How very true.

Reasons for the Misunderstanding

As I already said, I’m not a “blame everything on the media” kind of guy. I think there are a couple of other reasons why both these groups are so misunderstood by the general public. Motorcycle Clubs are designed to keep people at a distance. Let’s face it, grab a bunch of big guys with long hair and beards, dirty jeans, leather jackets and loud Harleys and you’re going to intimidate some people. And, for most Club members, that’s just fine with them. If someone is intimidated by you, they are less likely to bother you. Most club members like being left alone. They are part of a group because they’ve connected with others. They are quite happy just hanging with their brothers, and the less you bother them, the better. Bikers like having a bravado or machismo that keeps others at a distance.

I love the video of a well known Christian motorcycle group that shows a bunch of the members pulling over to help a lady in a broken down car. She’s sitting inside with the doors locked, refusing to unlock the door or roll down the window. The guys show her their patch which clearly identifies them as Christians, and yet she remains frightened. It’s no surprise if you were looking at the situation through her eyes! Even today, although I’m not a part of an M.C., if I’m riding in a pack of bikes, we intimidate those around us. Cars generally move over when they see ten or fifteen bikes pulling up behind them.

Most Motorcycle Clubs have little interest in changing this perception. They want to be seen as tough and intimidating. Yes, I’m speaking generally here, and there are a few exceptions. For the most part club members have little interest in changing this misunderstanding.

The misunderstanding that the Church faces is different. Most Christ followers do not want to be viewed in the same light as the fanatics. The challenge for them is how to change the public perception without coming across as self-serving. You see, a Christ follower focuses on doing things quietly, behind the scenes. Most are not wanting recognition for the good that they do. That’s not why they do it. Christ followers serve their communities because they believe God wants them to do just that. They don’t do it so that people will applaud them.

So, how does the Church change this public misunderstanding. To be honest, I don’t think they need to worry about it. I believe that when Christ followers focus their attention on loving their family, friends and neighbours, they will achieve more than any “media campaign” could ever do. I believe that Bikers’ Church has proven this. I have heard or read of many times when a biker in Ottawa has criticized Bikers’ Church by lumping us in with “all churches” only to be corrected by another member of the motorcycle community. Often, the person doing the correcting will say something like, “I’m not a part of Bikers’ Church, but they are good people and they are nothing like what you are describing.” I believe the more we do good within the motorcycle community, the less we’ll have to explain public misunderstandings about the church.

Alright, there you have it: one way that the Church and M.C.s are the same is the misunderstanding both experience within the general public. However, the reasons and response can be somewhat different.

Next time, I’ll start to focus in on some of the specific expectations that you find in an M.C. and what the Church could learn from them.

Feel free to share your comments.

Yeah, I know. Having the Church in the same title as the M.C. seems like a strange thing to do. In the words of my friend Kelly would say, it’s a juxtaposition! Just how do these two groups fit together?

I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about both these subjects. My thoughts about the Church are focused mainly on a church called Capital City Bikers’ Church. My church. It’s filled with some amazing people. People I love dearly. Many of them I haven’t seen in a few months while I’m on this three month break. But that doesn’t mean I haven’t been thinking of them. I’ve been contemplating the many areas of Bikers’ Church, considering ways we can improve and strengthen what we do. I’ve been asking God to give some clear direction for the future of Bikers’ Church. I believe he is doing just that.

At the same time, my mind has been on the biker culture. There’s a bunch of reasons for that. In an older post, I shared about some friends (the aforementioned Kelly and her man Jase) who experienced a major fire at their bike shop. After talking with a couple of bikers (Mike & Fred), I decided to set up a way for people to donate to help these bikers. I was amazed at how many people rose to the occasion. Total strangers donated. It was is amazing.

Another reason for why I’m spending a lot of time thinking about the M.C. (Motorcycle Club) culture is the time I spent with a friend during my road trip. His passion and love for his patch was very evident to me. Whether he continues in his club or not, he reminded me again of the dedication required to be part of a true M.C.

Finally, I find myself thinking a lot about M.C. culture because I’m addicted to the television show Sons of Anarchy. Without question, it is the most well written, character driven drama on TV right now. Every episode keeps me captivated and once I’m done watching, I find myself drawn to the culture. Not the gun-running, illegal activity of the culture, but the no-holds-family-first passion that M.C. members have for each other.

Before we started Bikers’ Church, we actually established a Christian M.C. here in Ottawa. We did it right. The club followed all the typical rules of any M.C. I was very excited about the club. Once the church got going, I found myself struggling with trying to do both. Specifically, I struggled with the need for a church to be inclusive while a club is, by nature, exclusive. In the end, we decided to shut down the M.C. in order to put all our efforts into the church. I still believe it was the right decision.

During the club days, I remember many pastors asking me about the process for becoming a member. Hangaround, Prospect, dues, regulations were all words that pastors found fascinating. Over and over, I heard statements like, “If only I could implement the same process in the church.” “If we put the same expectations on a church member that a club does on one of their members, we’d accomplish so much more in the church.” There’s so much truth in their thoughts.

And so, over the next few blog posts, I want to share my perspective on what the Church can learn from the M.C. culture. And, perhaps I’ll even toss in a few thougths about what the M.C. culture can learn from the Church. I think you’ll be surprised at how many ways these two groups can imitate one another.

More to come. Click here to read part two.

Comments?

On Friday night I had the privilege of officiating a wedding for a couple of friends. They had decided to do a “50′s style” wedding. They asked all the guests to come dressed in 50′s style clothing. The reception hall was decorated to fit the era, and of course, the music was all geared to the 1950′s. Even the band they had play was Rockabilly music. It was a blast.

During supper, I sat beside the drummer from the band. He was an incredibly interesting guy. He lived in England in the ’70′s and was part of the second wave of the Mods. He talked about life as a Rocker during those days. It was a lifestyle that he was immersed in. When he moved to Canada, he was excited to learn that there was a punk rock movement here. That is, until he met most of the people in the culture. He told me how frustrating it was to find so many who were “punk rockers” on the weekend, and yet fit into the mainstream during the week. Posers, he called them.

“You must find that to be true within the bike culture.” He added. “I don’t ride, but I certainly see lots of guys standing around downtown with their leather chaps that look like they’ve been ironed the night before.”

I agreed with him that it was true, there are a lot of “weekend” bikers. A lot of guys who aren’t quite sure about the whole culture. They don’t really jump in both feet.

But then the conversation took an interesting turn. He suggested that it is because of the posers that the real thing can survive. As a band, they need posers. They need people who liked to dress up in 50′s gear and have fun for the night. People who aren’t serious about a Rockabilly lifestyle. People who aren’t punkers full time. Those people pay the bills. They allow the true lifestyle guys to live it every day.

As we talked, I realized the same is true of the bike culture. Look at the state of the motorcycle industry today. Dealerships are hurting. Why? Because people have stopped spending their money on motorcycles. But perhaps the industry would have crashed years ago if it wasn’t for the posers. Perhaps.

Come to think of it, the only group that is probably hurt more than they are helped by posers would be Christ followers. Those who take seriously the life of Jesus Christ and strive to live each day according to his leadership. True followers are often misrepresented by those who are simply “weekend Christians.”

What do you think?

So, my daughter Brittany is hoping to get enough votes to be considered for the EF Tour. Many of you remember following her adventure in Costa Rica, where she spent a year with the Education First program. She hopes to do more with the program through this opportunity.

If you have Facebook, you can vote by clicking here.

This is her video:

Every once in awhile a song just hits me and I find myself playing it over and over.

This song, “How Great Is Our God” by Chris Tomlin is not a new song. However, I put it on this morning while in the car alone, and found myself turning it out very loud. I just keep playing it over again.

So, I thought I’d share it with you.

Click here to listen

Fifty people in Brooklyn, New York were asked one question. See how they respond. How would you answer the question?

Fifty People, One Question: Brooklyn from Fifty People, One Question on Vimeo.

During the past week, I’ve been sharing a few of my older talks. Last time, I shared a messaged about forgiveness. I want to follow that up with this message: why forgive?

I hope it speaks to you.

–

Last time we I made a very important statement regarding grace:

The gospel of grace begins and ends with forgiveness

We talked about the fact that God expects us to forgive. In fact, He more than expects it … He commands us to forgive.

God linked our willingness to forgive others to His ability to forgive us. He did it in the Lord’s prayer when He told us to pray: “Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors” – or “Extend grace to us in the same measure as we extend grace to others.”

But, as we learned last time, forgiveness is an act of faith. It’s truly believing that God is a better judge than you are. By forgiving, you are trusting God to deal with the situation better than yourself.

We also tried to be honest: Forgiveness is not easy. It’s not just a matter of saying, “Oh well, I forgive you.”

The idea of forgiveness goes against everything in us. When I feel wronged, I can come up with a hundred reasons why not to forgive: He needs to learn a lesson. I don’t want to encourage irresponsible behaviour. I’ll let her stew for a while; it will do her good. She needs to learn that actions have consequences. I was the wronged party – it’s not up to me to make the first move. How can I forgive when he’s not even sorry? When I finally decide to forgive, it’s like a leap from sound argument to mushy sentiment.

So why forgive?

Well, we already discussed the first reason: God commands us to forgive.

Another reason to forgive is only forgiveness can stop the cycle of blame and pain, breaking the chain of ungrace. In the Bible, the most common Greek word for forgiveness means, literally, to release, to hurl away, to free yourself.
The word resentment describes what happens when the cycle of ungrace continues. It means, literally, to “feel again”: resentment clings to the past, relives it over and over, picks each fresh scab so that the wound never heals.

Forgiveness offers a way out of the cycle. It doesn’t settle the questions of fairness and blame – it fact, it often evades those questions – but it allows for a fresh start.

You see, forgiveness is not just for the guilty person. It also frees the innocent party. When you forgive, you release yourself. As one author put it: “The first and often the only person to be healed by forgiveness is the person who does the forgiveness … When we genuinely forgive, we set a prisoner free and then discover that the prisoner we set free was us.”

A third reason to forgive is that forgiveness loosens the stranglehold of guilt in the perpetrator.

Let me read you a few stories from Yancey’s book to explain:

In 1993 a Ku Klux Klansman named Henry Alexander made a confession to his wife. In 1957 he and several other Klansmen had pulled a black truck driver from his cab, marched him to a deserted bridge high above a swift river, and made him jump, screaming, to his death. Alexander was charged with the crime in 1976-it took nearly twenty years to bring him to trial-pled innocent and was acquitted by a white jury. For thirty-six years he insisted on his innocence, until the day in 1993 when he confessed the truth to his wife. “I don’t even know what God has planned for me. I don’t even know how to pray for myself,” he told her. A few days later, he died.

Alexander’s wife wrote a letter of apology to the black man’s widow, a letter subsequently printed in The New York Times. “Henry lived a lie all his life,- and he made me live it too,” she wrote. For all those years she had believed her husband’s protestations of innocence. He showed no outward sign of remorse until the last days of his life, too late to attempt public restitution. Yet he could not carry the terrible secret of guilt to his grave. After thirty-six years of fierce denial, he still needed the release only forgiveness could provide.

Another member of the Ku Klux Klan, the Grand Dragon Larry Trapp of Lincoln, Nebraska, made national headlines in 1992 when he renounced his hatred, tore down his Nazi flags, and destroyed his many cartons of hate literature. As Kathryn Watterson recounts in the book Not by the Sword, Trapp had been won over by the forgiving love of a Jewish cantor and his family. Though Trapp had sent them vile pamphlets mocking big-nosed Jews and denying the Holocaust, though he had threatened violence in phone calls made to their home, though he had targeted their synagogue for bombing, the cantor’s family consistently responded with compassion and concern. Diabetic since childhood, Trapp was confined to a wheelchair and rapidly going blind; the cantor’s family invited Trapp into their home to care for him. “They showed me such love that I couldn’t help but love them back,” Trapp later said. He spent his last months of life seeking forgiveness from Jewish groups, the NAACP, and the many individuals he had hated.

Forgiveness is not the same as a pardon: you may forgive one who wronged you and still insist on a just punishment for that wrong. However, forgiveness will release its healing power both in you and in the person who wronged you.

Reginald Denny, the truck driver assaulted during the riots in South Central Los Angeles, demonstrated this power of grace. The entire nation watched the helicopter video of two men smashing his truck window with a brick, hauling him from a cab, then beating him with a broken bottle and kicking him until the side of his face caved in. In court, his tormentors were belligerent and unrepentant, yielding no ground. With worldwide media looking on, Reginald Denny, his face still swollen and misshapen, shook off the protests of his lawyers, made his way over to the mothers of the two defendants, hugged them, and told them he forgave them. The mothers embraced Denny, one declaring, “I love you.”

I do not know what effect that scene had on the surly defendants, sitting in handcuffs not far away. But I do know that forgiveness, and only forgiveness, can begin the thaw in the guilty party.

Rebecca’s story a powerful illustration of forgiveness and the power of grace.

She had married a pastor who had some renown as a retreat leader. It became apparent, however, that her husband had a dark side. He dabbled in pornography, and on his trips to other cities he solicited prostitutes. Sometimes he asked Rebecca for forgiveness, sometimes he did not. In time, he left her for another woman, Julianne.

Rebecca told us how painful it was for her, a pastor’s wife, to suffer this humiliation. Some church members who had respected her husband treated her as if his sexual straying had been her fault. Devastated, she found herself pulling away from human contact, unable to trust another person. She could never put her husband out of mind because they had children and she had to make regular contact with him in order to arrange his visitation privileges.

Rebecca had the increasing sense that unless she forgave her former husband, a hard lump of revenge would be passed on to their children. For months she prayed. At first her prayers seemed as vengeful as some of the Psalms: she asked God to give her ex-husband “what he deserved.” Finally she came to the place of letting God, not herself, determine “what he deserved.”

One night Rebecca called her ex-husband and said, in a shaky, strained voice, “I want you to know that I forgive you for what you’ve done to me. And I forgive Julianne too.” He laughed off her apology, unwilling to admit he had done anything wrong. Despite his rebuff, that conversation helped Rebecca get past her bitter feelings.

A few years later Rebecca got a hysterical phone call from Julianne, the woman who had “stolen” her husband. She had been attending a ministerial conference with him in Minneapolis, and he had left the hotel room to go for a walk. A few hours passed, then Julianne heard from the police: her husband had been picked up for soliciting a prostitute.

On the phone with Rebecca, Julianne was sobbing. “I never believed you,” she said. “I kept telling myself that even if what you said was true, he had changed. And now this. I feel so ashamed, and hurt, and guilty. I have no one on earth who can understand. Then I remembered the night when you said you forgave us. I thought maybe you could understand what I’m going through. It’s a terrible thing to ask, I know, but could I come talk to you?”

Somehow Rebecca found the courage to invite Julianne over that same evening. They sat in her living room, cried together, shared stories of betrayal, and in the end prayed together. Julianne now points to that night as the time when she became a Christian.

“For a long time, I had felt foolish about forgiving my husband,” Rebecca said. “But that night I realized the fruit of forgiveness. Julianne was right. I could understand what she was going through. And because I had been there too, I could be on her side, instead of her enemy. We both had been betrayed by the same man. Now it was up to me to teach her how to overcome the hatred and revenge and guilt she was feeling.”

Conclusion

Forgiveness is never easy. And yet, it’s necessary.

Comments?

Last time, I shared the introduction talk from the series, “What’s So Amazing About Grace?” I received a number of emails and comments and so I’ve decided to share the next talk in that series. A talk about learning to forgive others. I hope it challenges and encourages you.

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Let me begin by quoting Philip Yancey again:

In 1898 Daisy was born into a working-class Chicago family, the eighth child of ten. The father barely earned enough to feed them all, and after he took up drinking, money got much scarcer. Daisy, closing in on her hundredth birthday as I write this, shudders when she talks about those days. Her father was a “mean drunk,” she says. Daisy used to cower in the corner, sobbing, as he kicked her baby brother and sister across the linoleum floor. She hated him with all her heart.

One day the father declared that he wanted his wife out of the house by noon. All ten kids crowded around their mother, clinging to her skirt and crying, “No, don’t go!” But their father did not back down. Holding on to her brothers and sisters for support, Daisy watched through the bay window as her mother walked down the sidewalk, shoulders a droop, a suitcase in each hand, growing smaller and smaller until finally she disappeared from view.

Some of the children eventually rejoined their mother, and some went to live with other relatives. It fell to Daisy to stay with her father. She grew up with a hard knot of bitterness inside her, a tumor of hatred over what he had done to the family. All the kids dropped out of school early in order to take jobs or join the Army, and then one by one they moved away to other towns. They got married, started families, and tried to put the past behind them. The father vanished-no one knew where and no one cared.

Many years later, to everyone’s surprise, the father resurfaced. He had guttered out, he said. Drunk and cold, he had wandered into a Salvation Army rescue mission one night. To earn a meal ticket he first had to attend a worship service. When the speaker asked if anyone wanted to accept Jesus, he thought it only polite to go forward along with some of the other drunks. He was more surprised than anybody when the “sinner’s prayer” actually worked. The demons inside him quieted down. He sobered up. He began studying the Bible and praying. For the first time in his life he felt loved and accepted. He felt clean.

And now, he told his children, he was looking them up one by one to ask for forgiveness. He couldn’t defend anything that had happened. He couldn’t make it right. But he was sorry, more sorry than they could possibly imagine.

The children, now middle-aged and with families of their own, were initially skeptical. Some doubted his sincerity, expecting him to fall off the wagon at any moment. Others figured he would soon ask for money. Neither happened, and in time the father won them over, all except Daisy.

Long ago Daisy had vowed never to speak to her father- “that man” she called him-again. Her father’s reappearance rattled her badly, and old memories of his drunken rages came flooding back as she lay in bed at night. “He can’t undo all that just by saying ‘I’m sorry,’” Daisy insisted. She wanted no part of him.

The father may have given up drinking, but alcohol had damaged his liver beyond repair. He got very sick, and for the last five years of his life he lived with one of his daughters, Daisy’s sister. They lived, in fact, eight houses down the street from Daisy, on the very same row-house block. Keeping her vow, Daisy never once stopped in to visit her dying father, even though she passed by his house whenever she went grocery shopping or caught a bus.

Daisy did consent to let her own children visit their grandfather. Nearing the end, the father saw a little girl come to his door and step inside. “Oh, Daisy, Daisy, you’ve come to me at last,” he cried, gathering her in his arms. The adults in the room didn’t have the heart to tell him the girl was not Daisy, but her daughter Margaret. He was hallucinating grace.

All her life Daisy determined to be unlike her father, and indeed she never touched a drop of alcohol. Yet she ruled her own family with a milder form of the tyranny she had grown up under. She would lie on a couch with a rubber ice pack on her head and scream at the kids to “Shut up!”

“Why did I ever have you stupid kids anyway?” she would yell. “You’ve ruined my life!” The Great Depression had hit, and each child was one more mouth to feed. She had six in all, rearing them in the two-bedroom row house she lives in to this day. In such close quarters, they seemed always underfoot. Some nights she gave them all whippings just to make a point: she knew they’d done wrong even if she hadn’t caught them.

Hard as steel, Daisy never apologized and never forgave. Her daughter Margaret remembers as a child coming in tears to apologize for something she’d done. Daisy responded with a parental Catch-22: “You can’t possibly be sorry! If you were really sorry, you wouldn’t have done it in the first place.”

I have heard many such stories of ungrace from Margaret, whom I know well. All her life she determined to be different from her mother, Daisy. But Margaret’s life had its own tragedies, some large and some small, and as her four children entered their teenage years she felt she was losing control of them. She too wanted to lie on the couch with an ice pack and scream, “Shut up!” She too wanted to whip them just to make a point or maybe to release some of the tension coiled inside her.

Her son Michael, who turned sixteen in the 1960s, especially got under her skin. He listened to rock and roll, wore “granny glasses,” let his hair grow long. Margaret kicked him out of the house when she caught him smoking pot, and he moved into a hippie commune. She continued to threaten and scold him. She reported him to a judge. She wrote him out of her will. She tried everything she could think of, and nothing got through to Michael. The words she flung up against him fell back, useless, until finally one day in a fit of anger she said, “I never want to see you again as long as I live.” That was twenty-six years ago and she has not seen him since.

Michael is also my close friend. Several times during those twenty-six years I have attempted some sort of reconciliation between the two, and each time I confront again the terrible power of ungrace. When I asked Margaret if she regretted anything she had said to her son, if she’d like to take anything back, she turned on me in a flash of hot rage as if I were Michael himself. “I don’t know why God didn’t take him long ago, for all the things he’s done!” she said, with a wild, scary look in her eye.

Her brazen fury caught me off guard. I stared at her for a minute: her hands clenched, her face florid, tiny muscles twitching around her eyes. “Do you mean you wish your own son was dead?” I asked at last. She never answered.

Michael emerged from the sixties mellower, his mind dulled by LSD. He moved to Hawaii, lived with a woman, left her, tried another, left her, and then got married. “Sue is the real thing,” he told me when I visited him once. “This one will last.”

It did not last. I remember a phone conversation with Michael, interrupted by the annoying technological feature known as “call waiting.” The line clicked and Michael said, “Excuse me a second,” then left me holding a silent phone receiver for at least four minutes. He apologized when he came back on. His mood had darkened. “It was Sue,” he said. “We’re settling some of the last financial issues of the divorce.”

“I didn’t know you still had contact with Sue,” I said, making conversation.

“I don’t!” he cut in, using almost the same tone I had heard from his mother, Margaret. “I hope I never see her again as long as I live!”

We both stayed silent for a long time. We had just been talking about Margaret, and although I said nothing it seemed to me that Michael had recognized in his own voice the tone of his mother, which was actually the tone of her mother, tracing all the way back to what happened in a Chicago row house nearly a century ago.

Like a spiritual defect encoded in the family DNA, ungrace gets passed on in an unbroken chain.

Ungrace does its work quietly and lethally, like a poisonous, undetectable gas. A father dies unforgiven. A mother who once carried a child in her own body does not speak to that child for half its life. The toxin steals on, from generation to generation.

Margaret is a devout Christian who studies the Bible every day, and once I spoke to her about the parable of the Prodigal Son. “What do you do with that parable?” I asked. “Do you hear its message of forgiveness?”

She had obviously thought about the matter, for without hesitation she replied that the parable appears in Luke 15 as the third in a series of three: lost coin, lost sheep, lost son. She said the whole point of the Prodigal Son is to demonstrate how human beings differ from inanimate objects (coins) and from animals (sheep). “People have free will,” she said. “They have to be morally responsible. That boy had to come crawling back on his knees. He had to repent. That was Jesus’ point.”

That was not Jesus’ point, Margaret. All three stories emphasize the finder’s joy. True, the prodigal returned home of his own free will, but clearly the central focus of the story is the father’s outrageous love: “But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion for him; he ran to his son, threw his arms around him and kissed him.” When the son tries to repent, the father interrupts his prepared speech in order to get the celebration under way.

Last week, the focus was on Grace.

The opposite of Grace is ungrace

What is ungrace?

Ungrace = Unforgiveness

The gospel of grace begins and ends with forgiveness

Jesus saw forgiveness as so vital that He linked it to God in the Lord’s Prayer:

Matthew 6:15: Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.

Paraphrase: “Show us grace the same way we show grace to others.”

There’s a cool little verse tucked away in Romans 12. The Apostle Paul writes things like: Hate evil, Be joyful, Live in harmony, Do not be conceited – the list goes on and on. Then appears this verse: Do not take revenge, my friends, but leave room for God’s wrath, for it is written: ‘It is mine to avenge, I will repay,’ says the Lord.

FORGIVENESS IS AN ACT OF FAITH

By forgiving another, I am trusting that God is a better justice-maker than I am. By forgiving, I release my own right to get even and leave all issues of fairness for God to work out. I leave in God’s hands the scales that must balance justice and mercy.

Forgiveness is not a natural act – it’s hard to do – just forgive someone. Even when we are in the wrong, we want to earn our forgiveness … not just receive it.
Matthew 5:23-24: Therefore, if you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there in front of the altar. First go and be reconciled to your brother, then come and offer your gift.

How serious to most Christians treat that verse?

Forgiveness is an act of faith.

Once again, I welcome your comments and thoughts on this post.

If you’d like to read more about this subject, here are some passages from the Bible

2 Samuel 11:1-27
2 Samuel 12:1-25
Psalm 51
Psalm 32
Colossians 3:1-17