Just before Jesus died, he uttered a phrase of words that I allow to echo right into my mind. As his position dictates, he was powerful to condemn, or to forgive. Willing as God wills, he did the righteous of the two. He uttered those words 'forgive them father, for they do not know what they are doing'.
The Old Aramaic (the language Jesus would have spoken, as opposed to Hebrew) in this instance was translated to mean 'forgive', in somewhat the western sense of the word. But it was so much more than that.
In the text, the word 'shbag' is used, and the literal translation is something like 'to loosen'. But .. and it's a huge but .. our concept of forgiveness is far different to the Eastern Ethos. To us it is something like this;
'You've done something bad to me. So you have made me feel bad. So I have a choice to forgive you.'
It is objective. It puts the person in a position of being less than I am, of needing forgiveness and that it is the trespasser who has made me feel the way that I feel. But in reality, this is a western concept. It is blaming someone else for the output of my own mind. My internal process and reaction to what they have done becomes somehow a product of someone else! Ridiculous when we think about it deeply! Our minds have this trigger, 'You have wronged me, so I react. And I am right, and they are wrong'
'If you didn't say that to me, I wouldn't have had to feel this way!'
Yet the Eastern Concept is far different.
It is more internal. Like this; 'This person has done something which makes me become angry and upset. That anger inside me needs to be 'forsaken''. As in 'let loose', or 'returned into its original state'.
It becomes a matter of 'they have done this, yet I see that I am not also perfect inside of myself'. It becomes less about right and wrong and more about a personal journey. A compassionate way of thought. The word 'shbag' has a concept more alike to 'bring to peace'.
What Jesus had was compassion for his aggressors. I can assume saying to himself 'Oh how lost these sheep are right now'. Instead of being against them, he did not see something that they needed punished for, but rather asked that the whole scenario be forsaken and blotted out!
When we realise our primal reactions and expectations are not a result of someone else's actions, and that they are actually a result of mental processes that we allow, then we can start to understand the consequences and hardships we can cause others simply by what we perceive to be a normal, okay way of thinking.
So the next time we strike a reaction to something that happens to us, let us look inside and realise we are also not perfect!
The Old Aramaic (the language Jesus would have spoken, as opposed to Hebrew) in this instance was translated to mean 'forgive', in somewhat the western sense of the word. But it was so much more than that.
In the text, the word 'shbag' is used, and the literal translation is something like 'to loosen'. But .. and it's a huge but .. our concept of forgiveness is far different to the Eastern Ethos. To us it is something like this;
'You've done something bad to me. So you have made me feel bad. So I have a choice to forgive you.'
It is objective. It puts the person in a position of being less than I am, of needing forgiveness and that it is the trespasser who has made me feel the way that I feel. But in reality, this is a western concept. It is blaming someone else for the output of my own mind. My internal process and reaction to what they have done becomes somehow a product of someone else! Ridiculous when we think about it deeply! Our minds have this trigger, 'You have wronged me, so I react. And I am right, and they are wrong'
'If you didn't say that to me, I wouldn't have had to feel this way!'
Yet the Eastern Concept is far different.
It is more internal. Like this; 'This person has done something which makes me become angry and upset. That anger inside me needs to be 'forsaken''. As in 'let loose', or 'returned into its original state'.
It becomes a matter of 'they have done this, yet I see that I am not also perfect inside of myself'. It becomes less about right and wrong and more about a personal journey. A compassionate way of thought. The word 'shbag' has a concept more alike to 'bring to peace'.
What Jesus had was compassion for his aggressors. I can assume saying to himself 'Oh how lost these sheep are right now'. Instead of being against them, he did not see something that they needed punished for, but rather asked that the whole scenario be forsaken and blotted out!
When we realise our primal reactions and expectations are not a result of someone else's actions, and that they are actually a result of mental processes that we allow, then we can start to understand the consequences and hardships we can cause others simply by what we perceive to be a normal, okay way of thinking.
So the next time we strike a reaction to something that happens to us, let us look inside and realise we are also not perfect!