May 29, 2009 • 9:58 am 2
“To triumph fully, evil needs two victories, not one. The first victory happens when an evil deed is perpetrated; the second victory, when evil is returned. After the first victory, evil would die if the second victory did not infuse it with new life.” – Miroslav Volf, The End of Memory, pg. 9
Filed under: Volf, forgiveness , Evil, Miroslav Volf
August 14, 2008 • 10:32 pm 8
Sylvan Lake, SD :: Aug 2008
This is my favorite photo of the summer. I took this picture of my son and one of his grandfathers after Harry and I had a unpleasant confrontation. It was the redemption of what started out as a bad day.
Our family visited Sylvan Lake, SD where my wife’s parents honeymooned almost forty years ago. It is a beautiful place where we all enjoyed a great walk around the water, through a great crack in a rock wall, and through the woods. If you’re a Tolkien fan or Narnia reader you may recognize that “sylvan” is a mythological term used to refer to forests, trees and the wild.
Grandfathers are great.
Filed under: forgiveness, from the profane to the sublime
February 16, 2008 • 3:10 pm 8
…but still don’t know what to think. As a matter of fact, stories like this kind of fry my brain and make me wonder what God is up to.
Give this little post a read and let me know what you think, or don’t think about it. Have any of you heard of this kind of thing?
Filed under: forgiveness, sermon on the mount
January 30, 2008 • 4:24 am 2
This past weekend we discussed God’s forgiveness and the possibility that our refusal to forgive might interrupt our reception of God’s forgiveness. The Sermon on the Mount, and the verses immediately following, may seem threatening. In spite of this, however, I don’t see Mt. 6:14-15 as an example of God’s capriciousness. God doesn’t take his forgiveness away from us when we are slow to forgive as much as we remove ourselves from the source of forgiveness, God himself.
Miroslav Volf, a Croatian theologian and someone who has had much to forgive in his own life, outlines his explanation of this concern below:
There are no people who are too wicked for God to forgive them and for Christ to die for them. And there are no people whom God, for some inscrutable reason, decided not to forgive. Even the so called sin agains the Holy Spirit, which Jesus said would not be forgiven (Matthew 12:31-32), is not an exception. For that is the sin of closing oneself off to the One through whom God forgives all people and all sins. God’s grace more than matches any conceivable sin. “Where sin increased,” wrote the Apostle tersely but profoundly, “grace abounded all the more.” (Romans 5:20).
Filed under: Volf, forgiveness, prayer, sermon on the mount
What You’re Saying