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What’s the most unsettling word in the English language?
Etymologists have made plenty of suggestions.
Words like macabre, phantasmagoria, and sinister are somehow able to combine meaning, sound, and cultural associations to trigger a sense of fear. Horror expert Sydney Bermudez would add that words like uncanny, mimic, and threshold can generate a similar effect.
Then there’s Ronald Reagan, who famously said that the nine words that ought to scare us to death are, “I’m from the government, and I’m here to help.”
Author Charles Williams offered a different take. When pondering the Lord’s Prayer, he said, “No word in English carries a greater possibility of terror than the little word ‘as’ in that clause.”
He meant the place where Jesus teaches us to pray, “And forgive us our sins as we forgive those who have sinned against us.”
So, does that mean we ask God to wipe our slates clean in proportion to, concurrently with, or in the same spirit as we clean the slates of others? That is scary, indeed.
Theologian Walter Wink once recounted what happened when a team of peacemakers sat down with Polish Christians a few years after World War II. Would they be willing to meet with a group of German Christians? The latter were intent on seeking forgiveness for the deep evil that had been unleashed in association with the war – a conflict in which the Polish people had been especially singled out for destruction.
Crickets.
“What you are asking is impossible,” one of the Polish Christ-followers finally said. “Each stone of Warsaw is soaked in Polish blood. We cannot forgive!”
The meeting eventually ground toward an awkward finale. The peacemakers and Poles agreed to wrap things up by reciting together the Lord’s Prayer.
When the voices of those present arrived at that “as,” silence once again fell upon the group. The Polish believers were devastated by the implications. One finally muttered, “I must say to you…I could no longer call myself a Christian if I refuse to forgive.”
According to Wink, the Polish and German Christians met 18 months later in Vienna. They established a friendship that endured for the rest of their lives.
Every religion on the planet informs us that it makes sense to love people who will love us back.
In the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5:43-48), Jesus says, “What’s so impressive about that? Even the Mafia takes care of its own. The real measure of spiritual maturity is choosing to love those who are intent on doing us wrong.” He himself prayed for those who were aligned against him. “Father, forgive them,” he said from the cross.
In the mind of Sigmund Freud, the father of psychoanalysis, that was proof positive that Jesus was clinically insane. Rational people do not forgive the people who are lynching them.
According to most of America’s foreign policy wonks and Hollywood screenwriters, the only realistic way to stop violence is with violence.
Last January, when senior White House adviser Stephen Miller was challenged on that point by CNN’s Jake Tapper, he said, “We live in a world in which you can talk all you want about international niceties and everything else, but we live in a world, in the real world, Jake, that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power. These are the iron laws of the world that have existed since the beginning of time.”
Jesus, essentially, was challenging the iron laws of the world that have existed since the beginning of time.
It’s legitimate to say that the application of the Sermon on the Mount to international relationships is likely to be different from its application to personal relationships. But experience has shown that forgiveness at the personal level is often much harder.
The “as” in the Lord’s Prayer may seem absurd. Or useless. Or even offensive. If it scares us, at least we know we have heard Jesus clearly.
What if I don’t want to forgive someone?
Then I must ask myself this question: Do I at least want to want to forgive?
If so, then the hard but transforming work of forgiveness is already underway.