When life is gritty, forgiveness is hard to receive

A few hours ago, I finished watching Darren Aronofsky’s film,”The Wrestler”.  The script is about an old independent circuit wrestler dealing with the fallout of his career due to old age and a heart attack.  When facing the reality of a less than fulfilling retirement, living  alone in a broken down mobile home, miles away from an estranged daughter, Randy (the wrestler) finds himself searching for what it’s all added up to, and the depressing result is, not much.  The movie is full of dark and gritty scenes from stripper bars to up close shots of  masochistic wrestling matches.  And at the end of the film, Randy is once again in the ring.  Having been rejected by the world and feeling as though he has failed at his last chance to make things right with his daughter he declares that his only family are the people who scream his name in the stands and applaud him from outside the ring.

I left the movie an emotional wreck.  And my one thought was, it must be hard to feel like you can be forgiven when your life is all grit.

When we go to church, things are clean there, the pastor, his wife and kids, you see how they look like the model family, people dressed in suits and ties siting in their pews, these straight and orderly rows of padded benches, and everybody sing hymns in weird old English.  And there behind the pulpit the Pastor is saying that for all you sinners, you can be forgiven.  And I can just imagine this Randy the wrestler saying. “How could you possibly forgive me? How could I possibly FEEL forgiven after all this? And just thinking back, for all the weeks and months and years of having sex with girls in dirty club bathrooms and snorting blow at parties where I got drunk our of my mind until I puked, and missing all those appointments I made with my daughter to show her that I could change, and for all of it, all of those images that got burned into my mind because I just can’t forget what I’ve done, and how much of it stays with me…”

And all I can say is, Gosh, I take forgiveness so lightly.  I just pop it into my mouth like candy and smile real big and think it’s all okay.  But you know what? it’s not ok.  That’s not forgiveness, that’s …well, nothing.  It’s empty religious movement.

The reason why forgiveness is so hard for people like Randy, is because they feel the weight of their sin.  Because they feel like they are more horrible than anyone could possibly handle.  They feel like they can’t ever be clean again.

But you know what? That’s where I should be. That’s where Christians should all be.  Before we can ever reach out our hands for the forgiveness of the Cross, we need to know why we’re reaching for it.  And we ought to to FEEL why we’re reaching for it.  Because of all the grit and messed up living we’ve done, we are the one’s who should be abandoned, we are the one’s who should die alone, failures, we are the one’s who don’t deserve a second chance, and the last thing we should be expecting is forgiveness.

And that is when the message of the Gospel rises out of the little box we make for it, and becomes the power and the glory of God.  It happens the moment we understand Grace.

And Grace shines brightest, when we are the most helpless.

Yeah it’s got to be hard to receive forgiveness when your life is all grit.  But I bet, that if you end up taking it, that forgiveness is going to be real.