The Interpreter

Throughout the course of a conversation today, I vividly remembered a scene from the movie "The Interpreter." We were talking about forgiveness. Forgiveness is tough. When someone has done or said something to you that is either totally out of line or just strikes you the wrong way, there is nothing within you that makes you want to forgive them. There is some innate part of our human nature that causes us to hold a grudge and either retaliate or just flee the situation altogether. I will venture to say that neither of these are the responses demonstrated to us by Christ. Granted, sometimes the only way to deal with the situation is to run the other way and cut off whatever relationship existed, but we still must ask that God will condition our hearts so that we can forgive them...regardless of whether or not they ever admit that they were wrong.

In "The Interpreter," the main character and her family lived in Africa. Her parents and younger sister were killed by a roadside bomb on the way back from school one day, leaving this girl and her brother all alone. When this girl grew up, she became an interpreter at the UN...hence the name of the movie. When she tells one of her friends about the way her parents and sister died, she tells him of a particular African custom that really hit me when I was talking about it not too long ago. In this area of Africa, if someone was killed, the villagers brought the killer to a lake (assuming that they could find the killer), tie him up, take him in a boat to the middle of the lake, and drop him in the water. It was then the family's decision if they were going to leave him to drown, thus receiving the punishment and justice he deserves for his crime, or swim out and save him, showing him abundantly more grace, mercy, love, and forgiveness than he deserves for what he has done. Sound familiar? We, every single one of us, are that man tied up in the boat. We deserve the punishment for our sins. But God does not stand on the shore and let us drown...since the beginning of time, with Jesus' infathomable sacrifice on the cross, every time we repent of a sin, God swims out to save us from the death we deserve. He shows us His unfailing love every moment of every day, just by letting us live. So how could we ever do anything but live for Him?! How unfathomable is the redemption that we have in Him.

Yet it was our weaknesses he carried; it was our sorrows that weighed him down. And we thought that his troubles were a punishment from God, a punishment for his own sins! But he was pierced for our rebellion, crushed for our sins. He was beaten so we could be made whole. He was whipped so we could be healed." --Isaiah 53:4-5