The Power to Forgive. The Power to Kill.
You must not be afraid to address the mistakes and sins of others.
Your willingness to have tough conversations will determine your fate. That fortitude to embrace the unfortunate in others will determine whether your life becomes anything at all.
If you ever want to live a life of order, your loves must be ordered in your life. You must choose. You must rank. You must kill away those lesser likes for the higher loves. For in so doing, you allow yourself to become a true man more than remain a false boy.
But there, in our human depravity, we notice the sins and mistakes of others while ignoring our own.
"You must kill away those lesser likes for the higher loves."
Tweet this
This is why we were told to remove our own blindness before claiming to see the faults of others. This is why we must give forgiveness in order to receive pity for ourselves. But before this, we defer. We meander. We pause unwilling to subvert our past prideful blindness to the light of seeing a truer future. And in this state, we die a thousand deaths declaring the sins of all others – while denying our own.
"One may stand perplexed before some thought, especially seeing men’s sin, asking oneself: ‘Shall I take it by force, or by humble love?’ – Fyodor Dostoevsky "
Tweet this
And there, in our prideful hearts, we sit blindfolded to who we really are. We attack the sins of others while we hold ourselves hostage, bound up by our own ego. Our tied-up hands turn in futility. As blind hostages have lost the power to get free.
And losing hope for power, we lose our freedom.
But let me show you a more excellent way.
"Always resolve to take [that sin] by humble love. If you so resolve one and for all, you will be able to cover the whole world. Loving humility is a terrible power, the most powerful of all, nothing compares with it. – Fyodor Dostoevsky "
Tweet this
Dostoevsky proclaims we best defeat evil sin with humble love. And resolve.
But we cannot second-guess his strategy. We must be determined. We must believe that the love in us is not our own. But it is rather a special kind of overcoming love. A love which defeats, not with niceness but with authentic service to a proper master. Scorched and proven infallible by the flames of a divine love. A love which hates the mere platitudes and passive nature of the false likes we see all around us.
An imputed love that spits out lukewarm comfort because it believes that such a thing as a blessing exists.
"An imputed love that spits out lukewarm comfort because it believes that such a thing as a blessing exists."
Tweet this
And somehow in that humble love, we get power.
Not because we humble ourselves to the sin or to the mistaken men who we despise. But rather because the kneeling of our hearts to a higher help enables us to achieve a more real future. Your power to stand arrives through He to whom you truly kneel.
And in that kneeling is your opportunity to cede your blindfold and remove your handcuffs. To speak as one who has himself had his sins and mistakes taken away by one who Himself was bound and tied up. Humbled into the darkness which He stooped to address your sin as he calls you to address the sins of others. A love worth mirroring. And a mirroring of humility reflecting the greatest power imaginable which overcomes even the threat of death itself. But only because a good man kneeled.
And in the humility of love, your power lurks. In the dark. In the cold, damp meandering of your frustrations of what should have happened. In the experience in which you kneel in humility instead of advance in hatred.
Kneeling to be knighted by love. And there, to be brought up into the grandest sort of life which lifts others out of their mire. The power of humble love.
Is there someone who offended you? Go serve them. Is there someone whose sins have hurt you? Forgive them, not with words, but with your time.
For your own forgiveness comes no other way than to first forgive others. And to forgive means to love and to humble yourself. To forgo your rights to a remedy. To reject justice for yourself. To give away that part of yourself that was taken away: that pride, that bit of money, or that promotion you lost when that person lied about you.
And you must offer that forgiveness without it being requested.
Inversion: Ordered Loves
Not all loves and sins are against you. Yet they remain your responsibility.
Yes, you must forgive those who sin against you. But you have no right to protect those who assault those under your duty to protect. You cannot shirk your duty. Your loves must be ordered.
Your wife over your coworkers. Your kids over your community. Your country over your world. The unborn over the inconvenienced. The closer the identity and likeness with you, the higher your responsibility to protect.
You cede your authority by failing to care for those under your responsibility. And no one with any authority keeps it without responsibility. And shirking responsibility means losing power.
"No one with any authority keeps it without responsibility. And shirking responsibility means losing power."
Tweet this
And in this protective love, you must take up the same humble love to defeat the attacks on your loves. The knight who bears the armor to protect must always carry a sword to strike. But be not humbled to the aggressor.
Your humble love of your own offender must be turned. Turned into the obedient aggression towards your protectees’ offender. You have no right to give up the safety and rights of those in your care, so you must act. Only one man could forgive without being offended, and you are not that man.
And you must act with severity. A man whose hands are untied can fight. A man who can see despite his own flaws can be dangerous. And only a dangerous man can become a good man.
Because there can be no good humility without obedience to a higher good. And no love without a dangerous passion which threatens to defend the loves when put in proper order.
The man who can never rightly hate can never truly love.
And this punishing severity to rightly order the loves of your life will be what my next book, The 9 Steps to Build a Meaningful Life, is all about.
