This past week the NFL and NFL-loving sports fans were rocked by a scandal surrounding the 3-time Super Bowl Champs--the New England Patriots. Their coach, Bill Belichick, had authorized the illegal video taping of the opposing team. Belichick received a stiff fine and the team will lose a top draft pick next year. Clearly what he did was not only illegal, but unethical. (Sometimes something can be legal but unethical and even, at times, ethical but illegal). Belichick did very little to express any kind of remorse.
Last night the Patriots took on the San Diego Chargers in New England. Apparently, special mention was made of Coach Belichick before the home crowd to which the crowd responded with a long ovation. After the game the owner of the club apparently awarded the game ball to Belichick.
Let's face it. If it had been any other coach doing what Belichick did, if, say, the Chargers had been caught videotaping the Patriots, the Patriots fans would have demanded the coach's head on a platter. But since it was their own coach, all is forgiven. No harm, no foul.
It raises the question of what forgiveness really is. Forgiveness is not a free pass. Looking the other way is not forgiveness. Letting a person off the hook because "he's your guy" when you'd demand vengeance if someone else did the same thing is not forgiveness.
Forgiveness is transformational. Forgiveness digs deep into the wrong committed and seeks to remove it so that the wrong is not done again. Forgiveness seeks not simply to give people a free pass but to set them free so that they don't hurt themselves or others again. Jesus didn't say to the woman caught in adultery--hey, it's ok. You're only human. He said, "Neither do I condemn you. Go, and sin no more." The power of forgiveness gives us a fresh start and the power to live out that fresh start.
When a wrong has been done forgiveness gives us the power to apologize for it. It gives us the power to own up to the wrong and rectify it if possible.
A free pass does no one no good. It simply empowers them to continue on in their behavior because they got away with it. Forgiveness, on the other hand, cleanses and transforms us from the inside out so that we live, not as those who got away with something, but as those who have been truly, deeply, washed clean.
Real forgiveness comes only through a cross.
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