Searching for Real Atonement

We all search for atonement. Maybe not all the time. But you do something you swore you wouldn’t. Something that you didn’t even realize you did until it was too late. And shame sets in. There is no way to make it right. No way to take back what was said or done. The reaction is our desire for atonement. Our desire to make it right. Our desire to forget. Everyone’s search is not the same some hide, dispel reality through movies and books, write, run. Some blog. We donate to charity. We do something that hurts us in order to somehow atone for what was done to feel the pain like we inflicted.

And for a little while it seems to work. We can forget reality, what was done. We have made up for our own mistakes. We can make our problems disappear or at least make up for them.

But the relief is fleeting.

This type of atonement is not real. It is the fiction that we momentarily have to believe in order to continue.

I don’t know that everyone experiences this. I have never asked. But I have to believe that this is something we all experience, search for and fight. I know I do. I cannot believe it is just me. Something about it seems to be too…human, for it to be something only I search for.

We cannot make our own atonement. Yet we keep running to these things, trying new options and combinations. At the end of it reality always comes back. We must still live and deal with what was done.

We are filled with the potential for good and evil. Solzhenitsyn thought that the dividing line of good and evil was not us and them, but through the center of all of us. Humanity is fallible, but it is what we do with our fallibility that defines us.

At some point we have to stop running. We have to face our faults and each other. Life is not about covering our shame with pills. We need to stop believing that a perfect façade means a perfect life, and that that kind of perfection is desirable. Until we are willing to be honest with each other we will not find earthly atonement.

It is only through brokenness that we can find real atonement. Not the kind that comes from ourselves.  There cannot be forgiveness where it is not asked.

Maybe if we began to offer real forgiveness to each other. Maybe if we began to offer real acceptance with dignity. Then maybe would we not only find something closer to wholeness on earth, but begin to really believe the offer of Divine atonement in way that radically changes life.

… and to think we still claim the greatness of our society and culture.

Truth of Kindness

First off, I want to say I’m all for honesty. I think there are too many situations we have created where truth has not been spoken. Ultimate love takes truth. Love is often speaking truth where no one else will. However, I think too many of us in my generation have jumped on the honesty bandwagon and forgotten the beauty of kindness. Being honest is not mutually exclusive to being kind.

In fact, the best honesty is spoken with kindness, love allows no other way.

I don’t often advocate for sugar-coating tough truths, that often makes them even more difficult to handle. And this is not me pushing for a sugar-coated world. It is me saying we need to consider the dignity of others in our speech and action.

Many people are striving to be so ‘real’ with others that they forget that everyone has feelings that must be accounted for. This is not to baby a person, but when giving an opinion that may be harsh there are kind and cruel ways to do. Let us not continue to confuse honesty and cruelty.

We need honesty. There is often so little of it in our conversations and culture. Our need for honesty does not justify us treating others as if their thoughts and needs did not matter.

We are taught kindness in kindergarten, and like many of the other seemingly simple kindergarten lessons it is for a reason. Kindness is important. However, kindness to those we do not like can be an agonizing task. A worthwhile task, but a difficult one. We are often remembered by our choices in terms of kindness. Emma Woodhouse has undergone condemnation for generations because of her one major unkind act.

Even if you do not particularly like or love a person or their actions that does not excuse unkindness. We are all human beings innately deserving of dignity and decency. Believing anything else allows for atrocities of cruelest degree. There is enough wrong with our world that we do not need to add our own pettiness to it. Leave the manipulations and cruelty to middle school girls. And let our words be filled with truth in kindness.

Let us speak truth in all we say. But also allow all we say to reflect our love.