This is the third part of my three-part summary of John Ortberg’s Everybody’s Normal Till You Get to Know Them.  If you haven’t already, you may want to read my Part I and Part II summaries first.  Again, the chief purpose of these summaries is to act as memory props, not provide an exhaustive, accurate literary summary, and they are clearly summaries through my eyes, with my choice of what to include as important and where to add commentary.

After detailing in Part I how everybody comes with more or less noticeable flaws that have the potential to hurt others, and looking at how we can get closer to others despite the flaws everyone has in Part II, Ortberg turns to the characteristics that make relationships great in Part III.

Ortberg first takes a look at forgiveness, the miracle he hinted at at the close of Part II.  Books could be and have been written on the topic, so Ortberg’s chapter is little more than an outline based on the parable of the unforgiving servant.  He begins by clarifying a few things about forgiveness.

“Forgiveness is what is required precisely when there is no good rationale to explain away why someone did what they [sic] did.  (…)  When an action is excusable, it doesn’t require forgiveness.  (…)  Forgiving is what’s required precisely when we can’t forget.  (…)  Forgiveness takes place within the heart of one human being.  It can be granted even if the other person does not ask for it or deserve it.”

Ortberg splits forgiveness into three stages.  The first stage is refraining from retaliation: “When I forgive you, I give up the right to hurt you back.  Even though you may hurt me deliberately, personally, and deeply, I suspend the law of vengeance.  (…)  Of course, letting go of vengeance doesn’t mean letting go of justice.  (…)  The next stage of forgiveness involves a new way of seeing and feeling.  (…)  When we hold fast to unforgiveness toward another person, we tend to believe only bad things about them.  We want to think of them only in terms of the hurt they have caused us.  We want to forget their humanity.”  (I consider the [sic] above to cover all further references where Ortberg uses an unwarranted plural.)  “When we forgive each other, we begin to see more clearly.  We do not ignore the hurts, but we see beyond them.  (…)  The third stage of forgiving (…) is when you find yourself wishing the other person well.”  I agree with his three stages, but believe there’s no sharp dividing line between stages.  We progress and regress largely in sync with circumstances – wishing the other person well on a good day and stewing on a bad one.

After talking about the structure of forgiveness, Ortberg adds a few more observations.  “As a general rule, where there is hurt, I am both the victim of and the agent of wrongdoing.  In most relationships where deep pain is involved, I must both forgive and seek forgiveness.  (…)  God commands us to forgive whenever we’re hurt, and reconcile whenever we can, because life is too short not to do so.  (…)  [F]orgiveness is not the same thing as allowing someone to avoid pain.  It is longing for their spiritual well-being, which includes desiring that they become loving persons.”

Ortberg begins his next chapter with a Bonhoeffer quote: “Nothing can be more cruel than the leniency which abandons others to their sin.  Nothing can be more compassionate than the severe reprimand which calls another Christian in one’s community back from the path of sin.”  Confrontation, Ortberg says, is how people “get on the scale” in community.  “We need someone to remind us of our deepest aspirations and values and to warn us when we may be getting off track,” and this despite “our nearly endless ability to justify what we do or say so that it is consistent with our self-concept.”  He again quotes Bonhoeffer: “One who because of sensitivity and vanity rejects the serious words of another Christian cannot speak the truth in humility to others, [but w]ords of admonition and reproach must be risked.”  I believe it’s important that the person doing the admonishing realizes the risk inherent in his words, or he will not have the gentleness and caution required to make the admonition heard.

Ortberg then quotes the questions that accountability groups under Wesley asked new members before accepting them.  “Does any sin, inward or outward, have dominion over you?  Do you desire to be told of your faults?  Do you desire to be told of all your faults – and that plain and clear?  Consider! Do yoou desire that we should tell yoou whatsoever we think, whatsoever we fear, whatsoever we hear concerning you?  Do you desire that in doing this we should come as close as possible, that we should cut to the quick, and search your heart to the bottom?  Is it your desire and design to be on this and all other occasions entirely open, so as to speak everything that is in your heart without exception, without disguise, and without reserve?”

Ortberg seems to hold this up as a model, contrasting it with the prevalent conflict avoidance in today’s churches.  He has a point, but I think he misses two important ones.  First, Wesley’s questions are fair warning.  Apparently, Wesley’s groups only entered into totally open accountability with willing participants, and excluded those who couldn’t agree with these questions.  If our church culture is to shift back to this more ruthless openness, it needs to be balanced with a mechanism that keeps the unwilling and the untrustworthy from participating.  Second, according to Ortberg Wesley called this accountability “watching over one another in love.”  This presupposes something that’s missing from the questions: Are you committed to love, support, and encourage us?  Will you stick around when you fail? when we fail?  Without this foundation of firm gentleness and long-term commitment such open accountability will be hurtful, not helpful.  (It’s also a pretty good reason to stick with a church long-term.)

Later on, Ortberg does talk about love as a prerequisite.  “There is a kind of person who speaks ‘truth’ recreationally, but does it without love.  Such a person blasts away and passes judgment in a spirit of arrogant superiority, which they cover up by saying. ‘I am a prophet.’  (…)  [I]n the heart of a true prophet,” Ortberg writes, “what burns deeply (…) is not just anger but love.”  Sin cannot be handled alone, Ortberg concludes: we all need someone who loves us enough to be our truth-teller.

Inclusion is the theme of the following chapter.  Every little mouse needs a hole, and our tendency to exclude others in order to feel more exclusive prevents others – and us – from truly belonging anywhere.  “At the core of Christian community is the choice (…) between exclusion and embrace.  (…)  When people truly begin to follow Jesus, they find themselves becoming Embracers.”  Ortberg mentions the sociological difference between bonding (connecting with people with whom you have a lot in common) and bridging (connecting with people across diverse social cleavages), and points out that “Jesus is the greatest bridger the world has ever seen.  When the church understood his heart, it became a community like nothing else the world has ever seen.”

“[W]herever the spirit of exclusion reigns, it marks those farthest from the Fellowship of the Trinity.  When we exclude, we don’t just hurt those we keep outside; we damage our own souls far more.  And when we embrace, we ourselves are the ones who receive the greatest gift.”  So: Notice.  Care.  Act.  Give.  But what Ortberg doesn’t talk about is how to include those with exclusionary tendencies – which, if we’re honest, we all are.  In a strange reversal he probably didn’t intend, it sounds like we’re supposed to include all except those exclusionist types.  Certainly those who would exclude us are hardest to meaningfully include, but do we really get a free pass?  It reminds me of the “tolerate everyone” mantra, where “everyone” only applies to those we deem tolerant enough.

Ortberg then moves on to the connection between gratitude and love.  “People who live deeply in community,” he writes, “learn to discern and express the value of other human beings.  They are masters of expressing love in word and gesture.”  This requires understanding the etiquette of the corresponding culture, for “[e]very society adopts ways to welcome and host people, to honor and value people whom we treasure, or to ignore and hurt those we choose to demean.”  If we don’t understand our society’s etiquette, we run the risk of unintentionally hurting people, and their hurt and our blame is real regardless of how noble our motives may have been.

But on to the connection between gratitude and love.  “We think of people having the capacity to love who have mostly gotten life right – healthy people with high self-esteem and low regret factors.  (…)  Jesus says the great lovers are those who have come face-to-face with their own great brokenness and have been undone by great grace.  (…)  The greatest command is the command to love.  The greatest sin is refusal to obey the greatest command.”  Love treats others as children of God (and that, I would argue, regardless of whether we’ve heard them make a proper confession of faith).  Do I speak love and encouragement into the lives of those who meet me, or just hard truth and correction?

In the last chapter, Ortberg turns his pen to heaven, because heaven is where God “is building a community of blessed life, and he will be its primary sustainer and most glorious inhabitant.”  He talks about how all will be made right in heaven, redeemed; how we will be home; how we will finally be normal.  Here is were his tendency to insert comic relief trips him up most.  Nearly every set of imagery or explanation of symbolism includes a goofy joke that calls into question how serious he is, that shatters the image and longing he hopes to evoke.  It’s unfortunate, because I think he is right: we have a poor, incomplete notion of just how great heaven will be, which is betrayed by our lack of enthusiasm to go there now.  And heaven is indeed where people and their relationships will be restored, and should therefore function as a guiding star for us, helping us to “choose hope (…) and live in hope that one day God will set everything right,” helping us live his love in difficult circumstances.

For if what’s broken will not be redeemed, what keeps us from judging and excluding, from wheat-and-chaffing in order to be more efficient and successful down here?  The promise of redemption speaks hope to our broken souls, and a warning to our haughty spirits: God treats that untouchable better than you do.  Take heart; take heed.  And take action.