Embittering others

I stayed home today. I don’t know that you could call me “sick”, but yesterday I felt so wiped out at work and the back of my throat was starting to fire up, so I thought I’d be wussy today. Before I started the job I now have I’d never taken a sick day, except for two, because I was actually under general anaesthetic having my salivary duct unblocked for one of those. Maybe I am getting slack, but these days I don’t bother soldiering on so much. I also have a hygiene-freaked colleague, who will let you know in no uncertain terms that you shouldn’t come to work and share your germs, so she’s a good excuse to stay home.

Anyway, as I've mentioned already, I started reading CS Lewis’s Reflections on the Psalms. As Lewis says in his introduction “Our generation was brought up to eat everything on the plate; and it was the sound principle of nursery gastronomy to polish off the nasty things first and leave the titbits to the end”. So he begins with the chapter on ‘Judgment’, followed by one on ‘The Cursings’. I was with him on judgment till about the last four pages, and as for the cursings, I am still working it out! But, as always, he has these little side observations about people, that have been quite challenging and convicting along the way. I hesitate to call the Psalmists “vindictive” myself, but here’s something that comes up the ‘The Cursings’ chapter:

It seemed to me that, seeing in them hatred undisguised, I saw also the natural result of injuring a human being. The word natural is here important. This result can be obliterated by grace, suppressed by prudence or social convention, and (which is dangerous) wholly disguised by self-deception. But just as the natural result of throwing a lighted match into a pile of shavings is to produce a fire – though damp or the intervention of some more sensible person may prevent it – so the natural result of cheating a man, or “keeping him down” or neglecting him, is to arouse resentment ... He may succeed in resisting the temptation; or he may not. If he fails, if he dies spiritually because of his hatred of me, how do I, who provoked that hatred, stand? For in addition to the original injury I have done him a far worse one. I have introduced into his inner life, at best a new temptation, at worst a new besetting sin. If that sin utterly corrupts him, I have in a sense debauched or seduced him. I was the tempter.

There is no use in talking as if forgiveness were easy. We all know the old joke, “You’ve given up smoking once; I’ve given it up a dozen times.” In the same way I could say of a certain man, “Have I forgiven him for what he did that day? I’ve forgiven him more times than I can count.” For we find that the work of forgiveness has to be done over and over again. We forgive, we mortify our resentment; a week later some chain of thought carries us back to the original offence and we discover the old resentment blazing away as if nothing had ever been done about it at all. We need to forgive our brother seventy times seven not only for 490 offences but for one offence. Thus the man I am thinking of has introduced a new and difficult temptation into a soul which had the devil’s plenty of them already. And what he has done to me, doubtless I have done to others; I, who am exceptionally blessed in having been allowed a way of life in which, having little power, I have had little opportunity of oppressing and embittering others ...

I do believe that how you respond to what comes your way is your responsibility, but I did find that challenging and convicting. There are times when we might think someone should just ‘get over something’ without being fully aware of the injury we’ve caused, or taking any responsibility for embittering others. It’s interesting that when I was working with OO, at Step 4 you do your “resentment inventory” (and I reckon there’s something in these steps for all of us, so I had a go myself), and it’s amazing what you can dredge up to write down there. And I remember thinking that I’d totally forgiven someone for something, then I still recall that, one day I was jogging on the other side of the world in Sweden, deciding what to do about a difficult situation, and something snapped in my mind and there it was again, and somehow it had something to do with them ... and I was almost surprised to find that I had to forgive them all over again.