The YMCA & Forgiveness For All

The emphasis on inclusion in the YMCA is admirable and crucial.

For Christians in the Y we see inclusion as central to our original purpose, which is why we highlighted the prayer of Jesus “that we all may be one” in our early logo (John 17:21).

The religious and social motivations for initiating the Young Men’s Association are an example of what radical inclusion looked like in 1844 industrial London.

On Founders Day, June 6, YMCA’s pause to remember Sir George Williams and his 11 Christian friends who prayerfully launched the Y in order to save young men in spirit, mind and body.

Here we are, almost 180 years later, benefiting from their religiously and socially inclusive work, still striving to keep living out our mission; remarkable really.

Inclusion in the YMCA and our world has gotten more difficult and complicated, for many reasons which include globalization, technological and proliferation of social media, and cross-cultural human migration.

More diverse people are more uprooted from their traditions and tribes, are more scattered across the globe, and thus more kinds of different people must interact with each other.

It doesn’t always go well.

Which is why the Y is so wise to emphasize inclusion the way it does.

However, one element I have rarely ever seen taught in the YMCA regarding inclusion is the practice of forgiveness.

What happens when people are bigoted and exclusionary? Is this just a misunderstanding? Is it just lack of understanding? Is it at least a character flaw? An area for improvement? Is prejudice wrong or just unpreferred?

Can we call bigotry “sin” in the Young Men’s Christian Association?

If we can, then we open up opportunities to really nurture a transformation in the spirit, mind and body of our fellow members that hold on to ugly stereotypes and bigoted habits.

To be honest, every single Y member has some kind of prejudice that they have to work on. If bigotry and prejudice foment hate and violence, we need a strong word and concept to describe it: sin.

Within the Christian tradition of the Y there are beautiful examples and practices for people to be transformed from sin-full exclusive bigots to grace-full inclusive neighbors.

One example is the life and teachings of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. His Christian faith was undeniably central and crucial to his accomplishments for civil rights and a just peace.

When MLK taught about inclusion, it required teaching about and modeling forgiveness.

The Y is at a place in our inclusion work where we need to recover the teaching and practice of forgiveness. Without it we will have slogans with no spirit, policies to embody but no way to recover from hurt hearts and broken promises.

Social responsibility and being for all includes the practice of forgiveness – this is what enables there to be any kind of diverse social cohesion and survive the chronic misunderstandings and human foibles.

If the Y is as serious as we say we are about our inclusive mission, we must utilize our Christian heritage, in particular its tradition on forgiveness.

The brokenness and violence in our communities is more than just poverty of jobs and resources, it’s the sinful spirit of us all without recourse for letting go of grudges and making amends.

If nothing else, for the majority of Y members that identify with a Christian tradition, the Y ought to resurrect specifically Christian teachings on forgiveness so that Christian Y members who are racist or bigoted or holding on to grudges have proximity in the Y to the Jesus of John 17:21.

When it comes to forgiveness for all, where to start for resources and models?

For the many Christians in the Y, we start with Jesus Christ and what he taught and modeled on forgiveness. The Y ought to explicitly endorse and encourage Christian Y members to be more like Christ Jesus. It’s needed, no?

It’d be worth remembering and reflecting on the Christian sermons of Rev. Martin Luther King, especially the collected in the edition Strength To Love in particular his writings on forgiveness for all.

For a fresh and startling Christian perspective on forgiveness for all, I strongly recommend these provocative reflections by Soren Kierkegaard, a Danish Christian who wrote extensively around the time that George Williams was forming the YMCA. Kierkegaard was also a deeply formative influence on MLK. And me, for what it matters.

Take these Christian comments on forgiveness for all by Kierkegaard and reflect on them with a humble, inclusive spirit and mind.

I think they could be a powerful catalyst for Christians in the YMCA to reawaken as a powerful force for radical inclusion and reconciliation, healing and just mercy, inspired by the truth and grace of Christ Jesus.

That Jesus Christ died for my sins certainly shows how great his grace is, but it also shows how great my sins are.

Christ abandoned ‘an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth,’ and turned the relationship around. He introduced a different like-for-like: as you relate yourself to others, so God relates himself to you. Forgiveness is to forgive.

To forgive sins is divine not only in the sense that no one is able to do it except God, but also because no one can do it without God.

It is God’s joy to forgive sins. Just as God is almighty in creating out of nothing, so he is almighty in uncreating something; for to forget is to uncreate something.

When I hate someone or deny that God is their Father, it is not they who lose, it is I. It is I who then have no Father. With unforgiveness there is always the reversed echo.

The anguished conscience alone understands Christ.

Is this the test: to love Christ more dearly than mother and father, than gold and goods, than honor and reputation? No, the test is this: to love the Savior more than your sin.

God created out of nothing – marvelous you say. Yes of course but he does something more marvelous- he creates saints out of sinners.

You will get a deep insight into the state of Christianity in each age by seeing how it treats Judas.

Father in heaven! Hold not our sins up against us but hold us up against our sins, so that the thought of you when it wakens in our soul, and each times it wakens, should not remind us of what we have committed but of what you forgave, not of how we went astray, but of how you saved us!

The need for forgiveness is a sign that one loves God. But both parts correspond to one another – when a person does not comprehend what a great sinner he is, he cannot love God; and when he does not love God, he cannot comprehend how great a sinner he is. The consciousness of sin is the very passion of love. Truly the law makes one a sinner, but love makes one a far greater sinner! It is true that the person who fears God and trembles feels himself to be a sinner, but the person who in truth loves feels himself to be an even greater sinner.

You may think that the sin remains just as great whether it is forgiven or not, since forgiveness neither adds nor subtracts. But this is not so. Rather, when you refuse to forgive you increase the sin. Does not your hardness of heart become yet one more sin? Ought not this be brought into the reckoning as well?