We have a choice to make. We can live our lives defined by wrath, clenched against the wrongness of others, or we can release that unholy anger. We pray each week as Jesus taught us, “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.” If we want compassion and second chances for our own mistakes, we have to give that to others. As Elizabeth Oldfield writes in Fully Alive, we “have to wean ourselves off the high of self-righteous rage, the hit we get from finger-pointing, and stand our ground instead, look the other person in the eye, refuse to let our mental image of them collapse into stereotype, maybe even try to bless them.”
