Welcome to Breakpoint, a daily look at an ever-changing culture through the lens of unchanging truth. For the Colson Center, I'm John Stonestreet.
Well, maybe the most striking and the most discussed part of Ross Douthat's 60-minute interview with President Trump last week was a question about forgiveness. Douthat, who might be the single best interviewer in the country right now, asked the president this: "Quote: Let's say you pass away, you're entering the next life, and all you have to do to enter paradise is to feel love and forgiveness for James Comey, Nancy Pelosi, anyone you have expressed hate for over the years. Do you think you can do it?" The president. That it would be easy to say yes, but it wouldn't be honest. I find them to be extremely dishonest people, very bad people, very bad for our country.
I love our country far more than I can love people, and people like that. No, I think they were very bad people, and I do hate some of my enemies, and I always will.
Well, the president's correct to say that when it comes to forgiveness, the easy thing to do is to claim moral high ground while never actually forgiving the one who wronged you. To his credit. Having refused to forgive his enemies, he then refused to claim that he had forgiven his enemies. Clearly, more than a few of his critics are guilty of that hypocrisy. In fact, most of us are hypocrites in that way.
Depending on the seriousness of the offense, forgiveness is somewhere between difficult and impossible. While discussing the president's comments on Newsnight with Abby Phillip, philosopher and political activist Dr. Cornell West accurately explained this particular aspect of the human condition. When he said this, every human being's going to hate their enemies. That's what it is to be human.
The question is, are you open enough to a divine grace that will empower you to be aid to you in order to enable you to love your enemies? You can't do that by yourself. I say that as a Christian because I got a lot of gangster in me, just like Trump got gangster in him. But he chooses to be gangster, and I'm a gangster. But I'm a redeemed sinner with gangster proclivity, so that I know I have a grace that I have access to that allows me to love my enemies to the best of my ability.
Yes, forgiveness is in fact unique within the Christian worldview. Within more fatalistic worldviews like critical theory or naturalism or fundamentalist versions of Islam, there's no undergirding for forgiveness. There's no support for it. And within other worldviews, especially Eastern religions and their Western revisions, forgiveness is only good for the self. It's not for the restoration of anyone else.
But within a Christian vision, it's God who is ultimately offended by our sin, deception, hate, and rebellion. And thus, it's only if God forgives us that forgiveness has some ultimate value in His world beyond being just mere therapy or expression of weakness. But if He has secured our forgiveness, well, then forgiveness is substantial, and it's even binding over those who belong to Him. In fact, Scripture repeatedly describes a kind of reciprocal relationship between being forgiven by God and offering forgiveness to others. We are to forgive because we have been forgiven.
Unless we forgive, we will not be forgiven, and we're not able to forgive unless we are forgiven. Jesus concluded his parable about a servant forgiven a great debt, but who refused to forgive a smaller one, by saying this. And in anger, his master delivered him to the jailers until he should pay all his. Debt.
So also my heavenly Father will do to every one of you if you do not forgive your brother from your heart. Matthew eighteen. Paul also instructed the church at Ephesus: be kind to one another, tender-hearted, forgiving one another as God in Christ forgave you. That's Ephesians chapter four. Jesus taught his people to pray: of course, forgive us our debts as we have forgiven our debtors.
And then he added, for if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive others, Their trespasses, neither will your father forgive your trespasses. Matthew six, and then of course in that striking scene from the Last Supper, Jesus told Peter, "Unless I wash you, you have no part with me." John chapter thirteen. All of this explains the difficulty that the president admitted to about forgiving his enemies. When he was asked back at the family leadership summit in 2015 if he'd ever asked God for forgiveness, Trump replied, "I'm not sure I have." And later he told Anderson Cooper, "Why do I have to repent or ask forgiveness if I'm not making mistakes?
I work hard. I'm an honorable person." What Trump is saying out loud here is something that we all think outside of Christ—that we aren't that bad, that we can work our way into God's favor, that it's really the other guy who's worse. Though in many cases it's the other guy who is worse, God doesn't grade on a curve, as John Newton, the former slave trader, famously put it. Although my memory's fading, I remember two things very clearly: I'm a great sinner, and Christ is a great Savior. That we need to be rescued, and that He has provided rescue for us.
These are difficult things for any of us to actually admit, but it's what's at the heart of the gospel. It's what's at the fountainhead of true forgiveness, and it's the wonderful gift that Christians have to offer the world right now. For the Colson Center, I'm John Stone Street with Breakpoint. If you appreciate these daily commentaries from a Christian worldview, please leave us a review wherever you download your podcast. For more resources and to find a version of this commentary that you can share with others, please go to colsoncenter.org/radio.
Tickets are going fast for the 2027 Colson Center National Conference this June in Charlotte, North Carolina. If you want to be there, now is the time to claim your spot. Our theme is Pursue Wisdom. We'll discover how to discern and lay hold of God's wisdom for our ever-changing cultural moment, with the help of amazing speakers like Malcolm Guite, Amy Orr-Ewing, Henry Kaisner, and more. Yes, wisdom seems to be in short supply today, but God is ready and willing to grant wisdom to all.
All who ask, and he calls us to pursue it with urgency. Let's pursue wisdom together at CCNC 2027. Register now before tickets are gone at ColsonConference.org. That's ColsonConference.org.
