"Forgiveness built on forgetfulness
is a Christian version of
a frontal lobotomy."
is a Christian version of
a frontal lobotomy."
Dan Allender -
The Wounded Heart, p.15
Sunday, June 22, 2008
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- ROBERTA
- a Spiritual Director and Hospice Chaplain, enjoying life on the Olympic Peninsula - reaching out through the medium of encouraging quotes and occasional musings.
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Ding Dong Merrily7 years ago
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13 comments:
One flew over the cuckoo's nest
What's the prize?
a sceene from one flew over the cuckooos nest
Is it "One Who Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest"????
Jack Nicholson as R.P. McMurphy and Will Sampson as Chief Bromden in the 1975 film "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest," directed by Milos Forman, adapted from the 1962novel by Ken Kesey.
"One flew over the Cuckoos nest", 1975 Jack Nicholson as R.P. McMurphy don't remember the Native Americans name
One who flew over the kookoo's (sp?) nest, love that movie, we should watch it together sometime in our group I can pretty much identify my family in all of the characters!! Kim
jack nicholson?
Oh, oh, I can!
It’s from One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest!
Great seeing you today. Thanks for coming to the EV workshop.
Your pal,
Gin
I never saw the movie!
I immediately remember "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" like everyone else. Jack Nicholson with the Chief.
Roberta, the picture is a still from "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's
Nest." I recognized Jack Nicholson and made the lobotomy connection
- that was a VERY powerful film. And hurrah for me - I figured it
out before I looked at the names of the attached files - the picture
file is "Cuckoo's Nest." I am bothered by the apparent message,
however. Forgetfulness MUST accompany forgiveness. We've got to
forget the things we've forgiven others for and we must forget the
things we did that needed forgiveness, just as God promises to forget
what he forgives us for. This is no lobotomy, but rather the freeing
of our bodies, minds, and spirits to grow in God's grace and in love
for everybody. It's a core truth in Jesus' message. We are free -
it's as if we never did those things or never had them done to us.
That's quite different, though, from remembering NOT to do them again!
That's my story and I'm sticking to it! - Brad
hey brad!
great response.....i probably should have put this into some sort of context.this quote is from a book on sexual abuse - and there has been a large section of the christian church that has demanded that women immediately forgive their abusers.....and if they don't then they are seen as the ones with the problem -here is the rest of the paragraph....
"an abused woman was told by her pastor that she was to forget the past and stop pitying herself, because many people have had a lot worse things happen to them than being abused by their father. this advice made any reflection
on the effects of the abuse selfish and illegitimate. his comment felt as painful to her as the original abuse.
to be told "the past is the past and we are new creatures in christ, so don't worry about what you can't change" at first relieves the need to face
the unsightly reality of the destructive past. after a time, however, the unclaimed pain of the past presses for resolution, and the only soultion is to continue to deny. the result is either a sense of deep personal contempt
for one's inability to forgive and forget, or a deepened sense of betrayal toward those who desired to silence the pain of the abuse in a way that feels similar to the perpetrator's desire to mute the victim. Hiding the past always involves denial; denial of the past is always a denial of god.
to forget your personal history is tantamount to trying to forget yourself and the journey that god has called you to live.
what might be the motivation of the forgive and forgetters? the answer may be found in a deep and legitimate desire to protect the honor of god. a central question in the mind of the abused person, "where was god?" compels
many to answer by denying the influence of past events on present day functioning. if the past is insignificant then i don't need to ponder the question "why did god not intervene?" ...etc. etc.......it is
labor eminently worthy of every believer to reclaim the parts of one's soul that remain untilled and unproductive for bearing fruit. and the denial of
the past hinders this work of reclamation." dan allender, the wounded heart pp. 15-16
Roberta, thanks for the context. Forgetting that you've been hurt - pretending that the injury isn't there - is indeed no way to heal. And all too often an abused woman or man or child is already into denial, so the "forgive and forget" line seems at first to help when actually it's like not treating a wound and letting it get infected because you wish you weren't hurt. God can forgive and not remember how we have abused him, but it takes a long time in his love before we can do that, and doing that is not a condition for his redemption of us, praise be! - Brad
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