Christ’s own ‘non-negotiable’

In Catholicism there are certain non-negotiables, things you have to adhere to in order to be a faithful Catholic. Here are just a few examples: As Catholics we have to recognize the authority of the pope; no matter who the pope is, whether you like him or not, to be Catholic is to recognize in some way or another that the pope has authority over the Catholic Church. Another non-negotiable is the abortion issue. “Catholics for choice” is an oxymoron. As Catholics we cannot be in favor of abortion any more than a triangle can have four sides; once it has four sides it is no longer a triangle. And finally the Eucharist: The Eucharist is the key to everything Catholic, so you cannot reject the church’s teaching on the Eucharist and then think you can still be a Catholic. 

There are other non-negotiables that we would call dogma, but these three give us a good sense that there are certain things that a person needs to adhere to in order to be considered Catholic. 

Christianity in the broader sense also has some non-negotiables. Even though there are literally thousands of different Christian religions, there are certain things that they all hold in common. Let’s just look at one of these. You cannot read too far into the New Testament before getting to the clear message of the necessity of forgiving our neighbor. 

Heck, it’s in the most prayed prayer in all human history, the one that Jesus himself wrote, “… forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.” In other words, every time we pray the Lord’s Prayer, we are asking God to forgive us only insofar as we are willing to forgive. Think of that next time you say the Our Father! 

In the Gospel of Matthew, after Peter asks Jesus how often must he forgive his neighbor, Jesus tells the parable of the man who owed a huge amount to his master and was about to be sold into slavery along with his wife and children in order to pay the debt. He pleads for patience, and the master, moved with pity, forgives the whole thing. Then that servant, in turn, refuses to show mercy and patience with a fellow servant who owed a much smaller amount. In the end, the master throws the first servant to the torturers until he pays the last penny. Then Jesus offers a sobering moral to the story: “My heavenly Father will treat you in exactly the same way unless each of you forgives his neighbor from his heart” (Matthew 18:35). 

OK, we are all familiar with the parable, and the moral Jesus gives at the end of the parable seems pretty straightforward, but there is a component to his parable that might be easily missed. Jesus says we have to forgive our neighbor “from the heart.” So what does that mean, exactly? 

Words are cheap. We can say that we forgive someone but then continue to harbor bad feelings or even disgust towards the people who hurt us. That is not forgiveness from the heart. True forgiveness is not only forgiving but also letting go of the ill will towards the person who hurt us. Until we give up our harsh feeling towards that person who hurt us, even if the hurt is really bad, then we have not done what Christ commanded at the end of the parable. Forgiving someone from the heart, as Christ charges us, is more than simply saying “I forgive you,” because many times, even after we say those words, our ill will can and often does still remain. 

Mother Teresa said to her sisters, “Non-forgiving can destroy your life.” Having contempt towards a person who hurt us and being disgusted by them or even hating them does nothing to the person who hurt us. Those types of feelings only hurt us! Mother Teresa was right; not forgiving someone can truly destroy our lives. 

Though there are many denominations of Christianity, one thing all of them hold as a non-negotiable is certainly the gravity of forgiving people who hurt us. We all hold this in common because there is no way to interpret the Gospels any other way. So if you are holding a grudge, you need to fix that. 

Father Richard Kunst is pastor of St. James and St. Elizabeth in Duluth. Reach him at [email protected].