Once again, it has taken me the remainder of the day to simply recover from listening to Miroslav Volf speaking at Calvin today. I don't think I was the only one, I was there with Ben Ingebretson and Randy Buist (and a local friend who's name I can't remember, sorry!). After Miroslav was finished, we all sat there and breathed in deeply. It was simply beautiful.
Miroslav mostly stood behind a podium and read his prepared address which was basically a summary of his book "Free of Charge" (referred to below). Interestingly, he was introduced by a theology prof from Hope College - this revelation is only really relevant to people who get the rivalry between Calvin and Hope.
He began by talking about a shift happening in Western medicine, in that doctors have begun to stop calling the people they treat "patients" and now refer to them as "customers." As he stated, this may seem trivial, but its ramifications are severe. When someone is treated as a "patient," they are cared for, listened to, talked with and the basic idea is that health of the patient matters. Conversely, when one is cared for as a "customer," they are seen as a 'sale' and it leads to the practioner to spend as little time as possible to maximize the bottom line for profit. It is this shift that represents our countries' seemingly loss of grace, love for others and selflessness.
He described three types of people interaction. One steals, one sells and the last gives. The first person takes with no regard to others. They take what is not their own for their own gain. The second barters for (hopefully) mutual benefit, but behind this tends to be a self-inflating desire...which lead to a critique on many pastors who leverage their churches as vehicles to swell their own ego through slick speaking when their "audience" has come hungry for authentic faith and healing. This leads the Church to be boiled down to a service for sale and worship becomes something that people pay for (tithe - refer to Doug Pagitt's article from like 5 years ago) goods and services rendered. The last is giving from a self-less expectation. One who gives, gives with no thought of return. (like one who sends a friend a new book for their birthday simply due to their friendship, and perhaps there's a deeper hope that the sentiment may be returned on their own birthday - but this is the nature of real relationships).
This is such a simplified representation of this talk, but I could write all night...
Anyway, he then talked about the nature of forgiving. How forgiving in the Jewish tradition was: the one who wrongs repents then forgiveness is given. From the Christian tradition, our view of forgiving is the exact opposite. We understand that God has already forgiven all humanity, and the Word that was evidenced fully in Jesus has been seeded in all mankind which gives us the capacity to forgive as Jesus did. He cited the healing of the paralytic. Pharisee's present stated that only God has the power to forgive sins - of course, suggesting that the mans illness was a result of an inherit sin and questioning Jesus' nature of divine - Jesus turns and heals the man in front of them to squelch this idea and shows them that he is, in fact, divine. Jesus then commands his disciples to forgive as He has done.
The Q&A was great. One women asked the nature of the relationship between repentance and forgiveness. Basically, he responded that repentance is the completion of the gift of forgiveness. He cites an example from his book when he says, "imagine I send my sister an expensive necklace as a birthday gift. when she receives this gift she thinks to herself "this is way too expensive, he can't afford this, what does he want from me?" and refuses to open it. so what happens to the forgiveness? I sent the gift, but it was never accepted." With this, he talked about how forgiveness becomes stuck or incomplete.
Anyway, please go to Calvin.edu and listen to it. You won't be disappointed. Better yet, buy the CD so you can listen to it over and over...
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