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09/15/2002 Entry: "Forgiveness"
The gospel reading for today was Matthew 18: 21-35
then Peter came to Jesus and asked, "Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother when he sins against me? Up to seven times?" Jesus answered, "I tell you, not seven times, but seventy times seven.Jesus words are hard to take, aren't they? I mean, how can you keep track? With so many friends, acquaintences and family members in constant need of forgiveness it can be very difficult to count the number of times we've "let them off".So I was thrilled to discover Forgiveness Tracker for PalmOS™, a new bit of software for PDA's that combines a contact manager with some simple spreadsheet functions. It's very easy to use. Everytime you forgive someone, you simply tap their name in your list once with the stylus and the number of times they've been forgiven is incremented by one. You can call up a list of your most frequently forgiven and most recently forgiven contacts, whilst it's statistical functions allow a prediction of 'most likely to need forgiving' over a chosen period (a week is the default). This last function is a lot of fun, but only works reliably after several weeks of data has been input.When a particular contact has been forgiven 490 times, an alarm sounds for ten seconds and their record is permanently deleted from the contact list. The name is still held invisibly though, and should you later try to include them again the name can no longer be input. The attempt is met with a flashing "Shunned" screen which is ample warning that you should no longer should have anything to do with them.All in all, I'd say that Forgiveness Tracker for PalmOS™ is an elegant use of technology which enables Christians to more closely follow the commands of scripture and I highly recommend it.Email me for more details.
Replies:
Genius. :)
Posted by Wood @ 09/16/2002 08:55 AM CST
Richard, as I read about the "Forgiveness Tracker" I found myself chuckling. I thought it was a really interesting tool until the shun-screen.
I've always had difficulty with the concept of shunning. Part of that comes from Jesus' instruction a bit earlier in Matthew 18.17 - that we treat those who have sinned and not repented as one would "a gentile or tax-collector". Seems to me that Jesus repeatedly invited gentiles and tax collectors into (back into?) the family of God.
I guess the other difficulty I have goes something like this... I serve as minister to a congregation. There are a couple of people who have worked to undermine the task to which I have been called... through gossip, mistruth, etc. I work on forgiving them, so they'd have more than a couple of "ticks" in my forgiveness list. Now, my beloved and I have been married for 4.5 years, and in relationship for a few longer. I'm sure she's hit the "490"... and I'm at least as sure that I've probably gone past the "490" mark at least 10 times. (I'm a pain in the neck.) I'd hate to think what our relationship would be like if we didn't have anything to do with each other because of it.
I guess I understand Jesus' "seventy times seven" as a rabbinic technique of using hyperbole. Other teachers were teaching that forgiving someone 3 times was enough. Peter doubled that, added one, and came up with one of the "perfect" numbers in a couple of hebraic tradiitons. Jesus went wayyyy beyond it to a number that was almost unimaginable.
Then, again... I could be absolutely wrong. :)
I thought it would be kind of interesting to use this programme on my Palm to help me understand who I am continuing to "bind" because of my unwillingness to forgive. (I figure I'm going to get this forgiveness stuff down pat in about 1.2 million years. *sigh*)
Thanks for an interesting post, Richard. Really made me think!
Blessings and peace - Richard B.
Posted by Richard B. @ 09/16/2002 01:47 AM CST
