Forgiveness Part I

We've talked about going the extra mile, turning the other cheek, and agreeing with your adversary "in the way", all common relationship skills, and all part of what most people call practical Christian living. These principles work in the daily grind, and help maintain peace with those we care about most.

You can certainly practice these and reap the benefits without being a Christian. The underpinning of all of these, however, is our faith. Seeing tangible results from their application will inevitably increase our faith in God, and our increased faith will surely give us confidence in applying them when the stakes are higher, and especially where the results are not as predictable.

Forgiveness is an essential element of all three. And if you would indulge me, I'll tell you about a message that demonstrated forgiveness to my generation in the best way I believe possible.

Have you ever told your teenager, "What in the world possessed you to do what you did?" Well it probably wasn't as crazy as a stunt pulled by Louis Zaperini. I met Louis in the early '70s when I was working at a Navigator camp near Visalia, California. We hosted church groups, held small conferences, and did back packing in the High Sierras for teens and college students in the summer. The best conference I remember was with Louis Zamperini speaking to a packed house of middle schoolers about forgiveness, then going up to the Sierras for some snow skiing, where Louis demonstrated some stunts for the kids, stunts much safer than the one I am going to tell you about.

So what did Louis Zamperini do that was so wild? Holding the world record for the high school mile, Louis was able to compete on the U.S. team in the 1936 Olympics in Berlin. He told me personally about climbing up on a perch in front of Hitler's Chancellory, jumping out, and grabbing hold of the huge German National flag. It wasn't political, he said; it was just a stunt. So when he was apprehended, Louis was able to convince the German authorities that it was only a prank. If you look up Louis Zamperini on Wikipedia, you see that in their account Hitler wanted personally to meet Louis after his run, although he finished eighth.

In World War II, Zamperini was a bombadier aboard an aircraft that was downed in the Pacific, and he spent 47 days adrift on a life boat until he was finally picked up by the Japanese. He was interned in a war camp, and after the war he was encouraged by Billy Graham to return to Japan as a missionary; on his return to Japan, he even spoke to some of the Japanese guards who remembered him and elected to hear his message.

So Louis Zamperini had a lot of credibility with the packed out room full of middle schoolers. He had credibility talking about forgiveness because he had forgiven the Japanese who imprisoned him during the war. Louis spoke from the scriptures, and there are a lot of scriptures on the subject of forgiveness. When I hear a sermon, I usually forget the commentary, and remember the scriptural points. But in Zamperini's case, I remember the lesson of his life, as I am sure all the young people did as well.

In part two of the topic of forgiveness, I plan to return to the important topic of forgiveness within marriage, and the resistance that comes to forgiveness when there are repeated offenses.