C.S. Lewis
1960
Bill Lin 譯
我們在教會裡(也在教會外面)不經思考的說了一大堆事情。譬如我們在念信經上的“我信罪得寬恕”，我這樣子說了好多年以後，才問自己，為什麼信經會這麼寫? 乍看之下，好像不值得一提；我想：「假如你是個基督徒，你當然相信罪得寬恕，不用說，必然如此。」
但是當年編寫信經的那些人，似乎認為這是我們的信仰中，每一到教會就必須得被提醒的那一部份。而且我也看到了這一點，依我的看法，他們是對的。要信罪得寬恕並不像我當初想的那麼容易。要真正的去相信它，就像某些東西，假如我們不持續的練習，很容易就會忘掉的。
我們相信，神赦免我們的罪；不過，除非我們先寬恕別人的冒犯，祂是不會這樣子做的；這一點也是無庸置疑的。它出自“主禱文”，是我們的主，耶穌特別強調的。假如你不寬恕人，你就不被寬恕。絕無例外。
祂不是說：我們必須寬恕別人的罪，因為他們不那麼可惡，或因為他們情有可原，或類似的種種原因。不管多噁心、多壞、慣犯累犯，通通寬恕。假如我們不這麼做，我們自己的任一過錯也都不被寬恕。
依我看來，有關神的恕罪和我們被教導的寬恕別人的過錯上，我們經常都犯了個錯誤：先講神的恕罪；我發現，當我以為我是在求神恕罪的時候，其實我經常(除非我把自己看得很緊)是在求祂做完全不同的事。我並不求祂赦免我，而是要祂因為我的藉口而放我一馬。但是在這世上，寬恕和原諒是有很大的不同的。
對於寬恕是這麼說的：「是的，你已經做了這件事，但是我接受你的道歉；我不會再拿這件事來責怪你，我們兩者之間的關係，是完好如初。」假如這個人真正沒有什麼好責怪的，那也沒啥好寬恕的。在這個意義上寬恕，原諒幾乎是對立的。
當然，在許多狀況下，不論是在神與人之間或人與人之間，寬恕和原諒或許有些混淆；有些一開始像是有罪過的，結果真的大家都沒錯而不了了之；其餘的那些也被寬恕了。假若你有一個很好的藉口，你並不需要被寬恕；假若你整個行為需要被寬恕，你也不需要有藉口。
****
We say a
great many things in church (and out of church too) without thinking of what we
are saying. For instance, we say in the Creed "I believe in the
forgiveness of sins." I had been saying it for several years before I
asked myself why it was in the Creed. At first sight it seems hardly worth
putting in. "If one is a Christian," I thought "of course one
believes in the forgiveness of sins. It goes without saying." But the
people who compiled the Creed apparently thought that this was a part of our
belief which we needed to be reminded of every time we went to church. And I
have begun to see that, as far as I am concerned, they were right. To believe
in the forgiveness of sins is not so easy as I thought. Real belief in it is
the sort of thing that easily slips away if we don't keep on polishing it up.
We believe
that God forgives us our sins; but also that He will not do so unless we
forgive other people their sins against us. There is no doubt about the second
part of this statement. It is in the Lord's Prayer, it was emphatically stated
by our Lord. If you don't forgive you will not be forgiven. No exceptions to
it. He doesn't say that we are to forgive other people's sins, provided they
are not too frightful, or provided there are extenuating circumstances, or
anything of that sort. We are to forgive them all, however spiteful, however
mean, however often they are repeated. If we don't we shall be forgiven none of
our own.
Now it
seems to me that we often make a mistake both about God's forgiveness of our
sins and about the forgiveness we are told to offer to other people's sins.
Take it first about God's forgiveness, I find that when I think I am asking God
to forgive me I am often in reality (unless I watch myself very carefully)
asking Him to do something quite different. I am asking him not to forgive me
but to excuse me. But there is all the difference in the world between
forgiving and excusing. Forgiveness says, "Yes, you have done this thing,
but I accept your apology; I will never hold it against you and everything
between us two will be exactly as it was before." If one was not really to
blame then there is nothing to forgive. In that sense forgiveness and excusing
are almost opposites. Of course, in dozens of cases, either between God and
man, or between one man and another, there may be a mixture of the two. Part of
what at first seemed to be the sins turns out to be really nobody's fault and
is excused; the bit that is left over is forgiven. If you had a perfect excuse,
you would not need forgiveness; if the whole of your actions needs forgiveness,
then there was no excuse for it. But the trouble is that what we call
"asking God's forgiveness" very often really consists in asking God
to accept our excuses. What leads us into this mistake is the fact that there
usually is some amount of excuse, some "extenuating circumstances."
We are so very anxious to point these things out to God (and to ourselves) that
we are apt to forget the very important thing; that is, the bit left over, the
bit which excuses don't cover, the bit which is inexcusable but not, thank God,
unforgivable. And if we forget this, we shall go away imagining that we have
repented and been forgiven when all that has really happened is that we have
satisfied ourselves without own excuses. They may be very bad excuses; we are
all too easily satisfied about ourselves.
There are
two remedies for this danger. One is to remember that God knows all the real
excuses very much better than we do. If there are real "extenuating
circumstances" there is no fear that He will overlook them. Often He must
know many excuses that we have never even thought of, and therefore humble
souls will, after death, have the delightful surprise of discovering that on
certain occasions they sinned much less than they thought. All the real
excusing He will do. What we have got to take to Him is the inexcusable bit,
the sin. We are only wasting our time talking about all the parts which can (we
think) be excused. When you go to a Dr. you show him the bit of you that is
wrong - say, a broken arm. It would be a mere waste of time to keep on
explaining that your legs and throat and eyes are all right. You may be
mistaken in thinking so, and anyway, if they are really right, the doctor will
know that.
The second
remedy is really and truly to believe in the forgiveness of sins. A great deal
of our anxiety to make excuses comes from not really believing in it, from
thinking that God will not take us to Himself again unless He is satisfied that
some sort of case can be made out in our favor. But that is not forgiveness at
all. Real forgiveness means looking steadily at the sin, the sin that is left
over without any excuse, after all allowances have been made, and seeing it in
all its horror, dirt, meanness, and malice, and nevertheless being wholly
reconciled to the man who has done it.
When it
comes to a question of our forgiving other people, it is partly the same and
partly different. It is the same because, here also forgiving does not mean
excusing. Many people seem to think it does. They think that if you ask them to
forgive someone who has cheated or bullied them you are trying to make out that
there was really no cheating or bullying. But if that were so, there would be
nothing to forgive. (This doesn't mean that you must necessarily believe his
next promise. It does mean that you must make every effort to kill every taste
of resentment in your own heart - every wish to humiliate or hurt him or to pay
him out.) The difference between this situation and the one in which you are
asking God's forgiveness is this. In our own case we accept excuses too easily,
in other people's we do not accept them easily enough. As regards my own sins it
is a safe bet (though not a certainty) that the excuses are not really so good
as I think; as regards other men's sins against me it is a safe bet (though not
a certainty) that the excuses are better than I think. One must therefore begin
by attending to everything which may show that the other man was not so much to
blame as we thought. But even if he is absolutely fully to blame we still have
to forgive him; and even if ninety-nine per cent of his apparent guilt can be
explained away by really good excuses, the problem of forgiveness begins with
the one per cent of guilt that is left over. To excuse, what can really produce
good excuses is not Christian charity; it is only fairness. To be a Christian
means to forgive the inexcusable, because God has forgiven the inexcusable in
you.
This is
hard. It is perhaps not so hard to forgive a single great injury. But to
forgive the incessant provocations of daily life - to keep on forgiving the
bossy mother-in-law, the bullying husband, the nagging wife, the selfish
daughter, the deceitful son - How can we do it? Only, I think, by remembering
where we stand, by meaning our words when we say in our prayers each night
"Forgive our trespasses* as we forgive those that trespass against
us." We are offered forgiveness on no other terms. To refuse it is to
refuse God's mercy for ourselves. There is no hint of exceptions and God means
what He says.
