Always Forgive

Passing this along:

Never Forget, Always Forgive

By Jarrod Cochran

I, like so many in the United States, will never forget where we were and what we were doing when we heard of the attacks on the World Trade Center’s Twin Towers. I was climbing up a ladder and making entry into a second-story window in my firefighter recruit class. I was but a little over a month in as a recruit for the fire department that I work for and I still knew that the job was forever changed by the events of that day.

We all know the rest of the story. Our country went to war on the pretenses of faulty “intelligence” as a way to exact revenge for the deaths of American citizens on our soil. We lost 2,752 lives that day. According to a report from The Washington Post in October of 2006, the Iraq War death toll had reached 655,000. I would say that our misplaced vengeance has, by simple calculation, been sated about 238 times over. To put that another way, we have killed over two-hundred-thirty-eight times more people in Iraq in 2006 than those who had died in the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.

As a nation, we all mourn the lives that were extinguished that day. We continue to be saddened by this loss and will always remember the horror and heroics of that day. As a firefighter, I am constantly aware of the sacrifice that those fellow men and women in the fire department made that day. As a follower of Jesus and a minster, I am also constantly aware of something else.

I see signs on the backs of vehicles and on billboards around the city I live in, they all refer to 9/11/01 and state: “Never Forget!” While I agree that we should never forget those lives that were lost, I believe that sometimes we confuse this catch-phrase with “Never Forgive!”

As a follower of Jesus, the mindsets of vengeance and an unwillingness to love my enemy, let alone not offer forgiveness, is unacceptable. Jesus taught us another way. Jesus revealed to us another path that does not end with an “eye for an eye” (or in our case, “several deaths for an eye”).

Though it is very hard – especially when it is so easy to get caught up in the faux- patriotic fervor that pervades during these times – we must, as followers of the Way, work to practice authentic forgiveness to those who wish to – and do – harm us, to pray for those who plot against us, and to love those who persecute us.

As the Apostle Paul has written so eloquently, that we can speak with the tongue of angels and do the greatest of deeds, but if we do not have love, we truly have nothing and are nothing.

As I hear televangelists and members of the Religious Right claim that America is a “Christian Nation,” and as I look at pictures and hear of the tortures and deaths of soldiers, insurgents, and civilians by both sides of this war, I can only respond to those who claim America is a godly nation that this is not what my God looks like.

Let us choose this September 11, to forgive. Let us choose to walk a higher path that does not lead to the never ending cycle of retributive violence. Let us decide to actually follow that Rabbi of Nazareth we claim to know so well. Let us choose, like that Rabbi, to love – even when it hurts the most.

Jarrod Cochran is a progressive Christian minister, speaker, author, and activist. Jarrod serves as a Leadership Council member and coordinator for the State of Georgia Conference of The Progressive Christian Alliance as well as a firefighter and chaplain for a Metro- Atlanta fire department.