The Raven Foundation

^{The Boys at breakfast. That's a blueberry stained face. As breakfast continued, so did the stain, as you will see below.}

It’s Holy Week, so I thought that when the opportunity presented itself, I’d talk with the Boys (ages 5 and 3) about Good Friday and the death of Jesus.

Opportunity came this morning at breakfast.

“Dad.” Began the oldest Boy. “What days do we have school this week?”

“Every day except for Friday.” I responded. “Do you know why you don’t have school on Friday?”

“No.”

“Because it’s Good Friday.” At which point I got all excited. “Do you know what happened on Good Friday?”

“No.”

“It’s the day they killed Jesus,” I replied with a little more enthusiasm than I expected.

He became sullen.  “Jesus was killed?” he asked.

Oh boy. This was a little more awkward than I thought. We’ve talked a lot about the life of Jesus, but not so much about his death. How do you talk to a 5 year old and a 3 year old (with a blueberry stained mouth!) about Good Friday? I figured I’d just go for it.

“Yes. And here’s what’s good about it. Jesus responded by forgiving them.  And that’s how God works.  God forgives. You know how Superheroes hurt the bad guys?" (I brought up Superheroes because, well, to be honest, we talk a lot more about Superman than we do about Jesus.) "Well, instead of trying to hurt the bad guys, Jesus forgave them. Pretty neat, huh?”

“Not really.”

Ooops!                                                                                                                                                                                             

I’m not really sure why my 5 year old responded that way, but I can think of at least one reason that Jesus’ forgiveness might not be “neat.” Every year around Holy Week I bring up the forgiveness passage in Luke 23:34 to my youth group. As Jesus died on the cross, he speaks words of forgiveness to those who crucified him. Here’s the quote, “Then Jesus said, ‘Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.’”  A few years ago, a very insightful member of my youth group articulated her difficulty with the passage. She wished Jesus hadn’t said it because it lets people off the hook.

I don’t know about you, but I do understand where she was coming from. We want justice and letting people off the hook feels unjust. But I think Jesus challenges that feeling. The radical forgiveness of Good Friday is universal, so it does let people off the hook. But here’s why I think Jesus’ universal forgiveness is important: if we seek to keep others on the hook, we will soon find ourselves on the hook with them. For example, if Jesus wanted to keep those who killed him on the hook, he would have prayed for vengeance, not forgiveness.  His vengeance would create a cycle of retributive violence, putting both him and his killers on the same hook of injustice and violence.  Instead, Jesus’ radical offer of forgiveness invited those who killed him to step away from the hook of violence and step into the only alternative, which is forgiveness.

So, my 5 year old didn’t think the forgiveness of Good Friday is “neat,” but I know that he gets it. Children understand Jesus’ forgiveness better than many adults do. My boys, for example, will fight over seemingly insignificant things, but the fight will last about three minutes and then they’ve moved on and are back to being friends again. Forgiveness may or may not have been officially offered and received, but forgiveness is there. Indeed, they have let each other off the hook of anger and violence. We adults, on the other hand, will fight over seemingly insignificant things and the fight can last decades. Most of the time we forget what we’re even fighting about! That’s because we’re not really fighting over some “thing.” We hold on to these grudges because they give us a sense of identity. We like to keep people on the hook of our anger and violence because it allows us to identify them as bad and us as good.

Jesus told his followers to become like children. (See Matthew 18:3.) I think Good Friday tells us that it’s time to forgive like children. Yes, we will have conflicts with others, but it’s time to step away from verbal, emotional, and physical forms of violence and step into the spirit of forgiveness. Indeed, it’s time to start letting people off the hook of our vengeance, otherwise the destructive cycles of violence will continue. As René Girard claims at the end of his book The Scapegoat, “The time has come for us to forgive one another. If we wait any longer there will not be enough time” (212).

_{^{We forgave him for the blueberry stains. And yes. It is April 3rd and that is a Jack-O-Lantern. He loves Haloween.}}

(For more on Good Friday and forgiveness, see Suzanne's article "Please Strengthen My Non-Beleif: A Prayer for Holy Week" by clicking here.)

“Why are you fighting?” I asked as I ran into their room.

The Youngest replied, “He not sharing!”

The Oldest exclaimed, “I had it first!”

“Why do you want it?” I asked the Youngest.

“Because he has it!”

Silly, isn’t it?  They just woke up and already were in a fight.  This time it was over the tiny Batman toy shown above.  I’ll be honest with you – I’ve seen a lot of toys in my 32 years, and this is one of the most BORING toys I have ever seen.  I mean, you can’t move his head, arms, or legs.  Batman just stands there.  I don’t get it.  In a room full of Superheroes and Transformers, Legos and Playmobil, what’s the fascination with this Batman figure?  To make the fight even sillier, we have two more Batmans that are exactly the same.  So, I did the rational Dad thing: I gave one of the other Batmans to the Youngest – at which point he threw it at my face.

(Okay.  Maybe it wasn’t directly at my face, but it was close.)

How is it that the boring Batman action hero became sacred?  The Youngest knows why: “Because he has it!”  There is nothing inherently desirable about that toy – except that the Oldest possessed it.  And this is how desire works.  We desire certain things because another desired that thing first.  This is the way human desire works, from children to adults.  As the anthropologist Rene Girard has pointed out, humans have “an irresistible desire to desire what others desire” (Deceit, Desire and the Novel, 12.)

This key to understanding human desire is counter-intuitive to our modern world.  Our modern world idolizes our individuality.  It tells you that your desire starts and ends with you.  You came up with it and you need to fulfill it.  It’s all about You.  You are your own man!  In fact …

You are the MAN!!!!  (Or the WOMAN!!!  You know, depending.)

But, and I really hate to break this to you, it’s really not about you.  And it’s definitely not about Batman, the perfect house, car, or job.  It’s about relationships.  (Which for this introvert, that’s hard to admit.)  No one exists as an individual.  Rather, the key to understanding desire is that we exist as inter-dividuals.  Our desire for objects is given to us by others, who desired them first.  And you can see how our shared desires can easily lead all of us, from children to adults, into conflicts.

So, you’re probably wondering how I solved the Batman issue.  The important thing that I’ve learned is that our desires need to be redirected to something positive, deep, and meaningful.  So that’s what I tried to do.

“Who wants breakfast?”

It worked.  It was simple.  And, I’ll be honest, I was hungry.

I officiated my Brother-in-Law’s wedding last Sunday.  My Wife’s[1] brother was married on August 27^th.  And to one awesome Woman.  She’s great.  He’s great.  And it was a great weekend, filled with family, friends, and joy.

Eight years ago, I bawled at my wedding.  Yup.  I’m man enough to admit it.  I was waterworks.  Tears streamed down my face as my future Wife walked down the aisle, and the tears continued as we stood there, facing each other.   Fortunately, I held it together for my Brother-in-Law.  It went without a hitch, er, without a tear streaming down my face.  I did what pastors do at weddings:  I said some God stuff, some Bible stuff, some marriage stuff, and had a little sermon.  They said their vows and kissed at the wrong time.  As they went in, people were all, “Nooo!”  But I figured, to hell with tradition.  It’s their wedding.  It’s their day.  They can kiss whenever they want to kiss.  So, they got to kiss twice at their wedding.  The more kissing at a wedding, the better.  As long as they don’t last longer than three seconds.  That’s my time limit.  Longer than three seconds and I call the wedding off.  FYI.

For me, the only thing that really matters at a wedding is that the Bride and Groom say, “I do.”  Despite my Brother-in-Law asking me about 45 seconds before the wedding, “Dude, do you think I’m doing the right thing?” and then laughing in my face when I said, “Uhh…” (he’s a very funny guy) they both said “I do.”  So, it was a success.  Everything else either doesn’t matter or is icing on the (wedding) cake.

My favorite icing at the wedding was on the dance floor.  My Wife and I have two Boys.  They are, of course, amazing, especially when they dance.  So, after the ceremony, we all went to the back lawn for the reception.  There was a 10 x 10 wooden dance floor.  The DJ was playing music, but for the first half hour no one was dancing.  Then the Boys found the floor.  And they danced.

It was awesome.

They danced together for a few minutes.  People started commenting about how cute they were.  Then the flower girl and the bridesmaids joined them.  My Boys and the ladies.  I was so proud.

Forgive me for adding theory to this, but that’s what I do.  It was beautifully mimetic.  Our mimetic nature means we are open to suggestion from one another.  Before the Boys were dancing, dancing wasn’t an option for people.  It would have been awkward.  But the Boys didn’t care what anyone thought.  They just wanted to have a good time.  The adults at the reception needed a model to show us it was okay to dance.  My Boys were the model.  They were smiling the whole time.  And when the flower girl and the bridesmaids joined them, they were all smiles, too.

[1] I have a habit of capitalizing Wife, Boys, etc.  It’s because the Wife doesn’t want me using Her real name.  But she does deserve to be capitalized.  So, there you go.

Raven Founder Suzanne Ross was a keynote presenter at the Theology and Peace conference held in Baltimore, MD, in June 2011. Her paper, Beyond Power Struggles: Teaching Without Rivalry, illustrates how the teaching of Maria Montessori supports child development while avoiding teacher/child rivalries.