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I Beg Your Forgiveness
Eden Grace
Read all the articles in this series
1. Introduction: New England Yearly Meeting Friends Explore their Relationship with Friends United Meeting
2. "Encouraging Each Other's Faith and Truths" by Hannah Zwirner
3. "I Beg Your Forgiveness" by Eden Grace
4. "Love is Rigorous" by Brian Drayton
5. "God Has No Hands on Earth but Ours" by Anne-Marie Witzburg
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About two weeks ago I was at Indiana Yearly Meeting, where the main speaker was Jan Wood, who is well known among Friends. Maybe some of you have had the opportunity to hear her speak. She's from Northwest Yearly Meeting, and wherever she goes, she has a very powerful witness and message that she brings about the importance of confession and repentance, and how healing it can be to confess not only our personal sins but the sins of our people. This is something I've experienced in Rwanda, and I've seen how transformative it can be. From her ministry at Indiana Yearly Meeting I felt that my message to you this morning came clear to me, and it's a message of confession.
I think many people here carry deep wounds from damaging religious experience in our past. I know I do. Those wounds may be closed over, but for many of us I think there's still some shrapnel trapped inside. Sometimes when we talk to each other as a community and we seek God's will together, those wounds become activated. That shrapnel causes a new sharp pain. An old wound can become a new pain or a reminder of pain. I know that happens for me, and I believe that many of us have experienced religious trauma in our past that becomes a factor, an obstacle, or just something that we bring into this room together.
Taking the challenge that Jan Wood presented, and that I felt God calling me to embrace, I want to confess to you the sins of my people. Who are my people? I identify as a born-again Christian standing in the evangelical theological tradition, and I want to speak to you today as a Christian and on behalf of my Christian people. Whether I agree with them or not, whether I have done any of these things personally or not, doesn't matter, because these are my people and if I choose to stand in the river of faith and identify with it, then I bear the sins of my people as a personal responsibility.
On behalf of myself and my people, I confess that we have denied the full humanity and spiritual gifts of those who are different.
Therefore, on behalf of myself and my people, I confess that we have done terrible damage in the name of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. On behalf of myself and my people, I confess that we have denied the full humanity and spiritual gifts of those who are different, that we have used the loving and liberating word of God as a weapon. On behalf of myself and my people, I confess that we have claimed that some people are not worthy to be used by God in faithful service. I confess that we have behaved as if some sins are graver than others and some biblical texts are more rigidly applied, bringing hypocrisy and inconsistency to our own biblical scholarship.
On behalf of myself and my people, I confess that we have hijacked the symbols and texts of Christian faith and drastically narrowed their meaning. I confess that we have used violence in the name of the Prince of Peace. We have accused those who read the Bible differently than we do of not being loyal and obedient believers, or of not loving the Bible as much as we do. I confess on behalf of myself and my people that we have cared more for spiritual and otherworldly salvation than for justice and suffering and liberation from oppression. We have been consumed by our fear of how we might be contaminated by our fellowship with you. We have arrogantly believed that we have a full and complete understanding of the will of God and the proper application of the Bible in every context.
We have been judgmental, uncompromising, harsh, and uncharitable. I confess that we have desecrated the name of Jesus by acting in ways of which He would be ashamed. I'm so sorry. I humbly repent and beg your forgiveness. In these and so many other ways, Christians, people who love Jesus, have presented a counter-witness. We have pushed people away from God, from the love and the liberation of God, instead of drawing them closer.
On behalf of myself and my people, I beg your forgiveness.
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December 2011 issue of Friends Journal.If you enjoyed it, we encourage you to subscribe! You can also make a donation to support our work.
Comments
Thank you
Thank you, Eden Grace, for articulating something that has concerned me about myself and "my people" for some time. You have accurately described my evangelical experience and done it in the spirit of Jeremiah. It will serve as an invaluable example.
Though I am inclined at times to dissociate myself from my fellowship I know it is necessary to remain in order that my life and journey may serve as witness to my fellow believers of the Spirit's transforming work in us leading to the recognition and acknowledgment that we are not now all that we must become.
I am grateful for my encounters with Friends and am refreshed by the example of the seeking of truth together and the witness for peace.
Forgiveness for the "Quaker people"
Thank you Eden for your confession on behalf of your people called Christians. Having grown up in the tribes called unprogrammed Friends.......some Christian, some identify as non-Christian, I too wish to confess.
Please forgive my people, called Quakers, for their divisiveness. Please forgive those Friends who have worked to subvert the Religious Society of Friends from it's Biblical and Christian basis, and forgive those Friends who have resisted Truth that does not come from the Bible.
Please bless these peculiar people called Quakers that they may find the Middle Way that upholds Biblical ethics and allow for non-Biblical Genuine ethics.
These people called Friends were once regarded as Exemplars of "primitive Christianity revived" whose hallmark was true Christian Love, which Love allowed for the coexistance of "non-Christian Friends" in the midst...........some of which have evidenced a battle against basic Christian ethics, and have gone so far as to try to push out the Bible altogether.
I pray for a true co-existence of Christian and non-Christian Friends within the same Meetings....one that can honor the set of ethics of both, in peace and unity.
Thank You
Dear Friend,
Thank you for article. We must look to heal these wounds. As a liberal FGC friend, I am praying that we find better ways of articulating our faith to our children and seekers. A huge part of this is dealing with the pain from previous religious painful experiences. Our words for God are imperfect, describing something that is in my personal experience infinite, difficult to describe and who's true meaning lies under words - words that are human constructions, where as God is all powerful (in my experience). Without healing, we cannot communicate and deepen our faith to each other, because we are too afraid to re open those wounds.
Your article contributes to religious healing, which I feel is an essential part of our ability as a faith to be able to teach our children and new comers how to experience the gathered meeting.
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