What does it mean when one says, “love means never having to say you’re sorry?”
First, what kind of love are we talking about?
As was in the last article, love is a very loaded word in the English language. It means so many different things from erotic love to love of objects (mercenary love) like pizza and money. Finally, there is charitable or agape love like the love one has when giving from the heart or making sincere sacrifices.
What kind of love would not require one to say, “I’m sorry” before forgiving?
Let’s take a closer look at the famous prayer, “The Our Father.” Jesus knew what he was saying but I sometimes wonder about the words and translations. Check out the Wikipedia site on the Our Father for lots of wonderful descriptions of all the translations over the millenniums.
The two sentences I want to focus on are the ones about forgiveness.
Here are a few translations:
Most common English today:
forgive us our trespasses,
as we forgive those who trespass against us,
some translations change the word trespasses into sins or debts.
Latin:
et dimitte nobis debita nostra,
Sicut et nos dimittimus debitoribus nostris;
Debita and debitoribus are the only Latin words I have ever seen and they translate to debt or debts.
Spanish:
Perdonanos nuestras deudas,
Como nosotros perdonamos a nuestro deudores
Some translations use the words “culpas” and others “ofensas.”
If someone has a debt, one could say they can have trespassed on “property.”
If someone trespasses, one could say they at least owe an apology.
Consider the debt we have to God for all he has given us! He has given us life, land, love, the universe, bullheads, basically everything. How can we ever repay that debt?
When we consider the case of lending someone $10 and then say: “Keep it.” This is forgiving a debt but more importantly, it is charity. Isn’t this in a sense following through with the statement that “love means never having to say you are sorry?” Isn’t forgiving a debt or trespass without a prompting executing on agape love?
Jesus’ teaching on love is one of the best we have. He said that we need to love God above all else and we need to love our neighbors, too, even and especially the ones we have trouble with. As He put it, even the major league sinners love people who love them. We all need to take a step further and love those who don’t or won’t love us back. In other words, everyone can forgive one who asks to be forgiven, but we need to go further and love those who won’t ask for forgiveness. Isn’t the best way to love these unrepentant neighbors to forgive them?
The American/secular way is to have a “fault assessment phase.” Whenever something goes wrong or someone is wronged, the first thing is to find out “whose fault is it?” Who did the trespassing? Who owes the debt? Next, we need to make the perpetrator pay! This teaching is in complete opposition to the teaching of love. Yes, we need to keep a safe society and defend our loved ones, but where is the love that Jesus talked about? Where is forgiveness?
When Jesus said on the cross, “Father, forgive them, they know not what they do?” Who was He forgiving? Are we naïve enough to say he was directing that at the soldiers or Jews? He was directing that forgiveness at you and I for we all sinned and thereby put him on the cross. He died on the cross before anyone of us said, “I’m sorry.” This is the agape love we need to follow.
