When We’ve Wronged Someone

Sorry that I can’t remember the citation or where I read this article … but I thought it might be a blessing to you, so here it is:

Donne and the Return Home
Keith Cox

“John Donne, the Renaissance poet, left us numerous treasures in his work. Recall that he instructed, “No man is an island” (Footnote 1: John Donne, Devotions upon Emergent Occasions, xxvii.) and “Never send for whom the bell tolls, the bell tolls for you.” (Footnote 2: John Donne, Devotions upon Emergent Occasions, xxvii.) Beyond these now famous lines Donne, through his works, has left us the witness of one who deeply understood and insightfully expressed the human condition.

One example of just such an insight comes to us in his Holy Sonnets, where he addresses the state of the soul when under the duress of shame andguilt. He writes:

O my black Soul…Thou art like a pilgrim which abroad hath done treason, and durst not turn to which he has fled. (Footnote 3: John Donne, Selections from Divine Poems, Sermons, Devotions, and Prayers (New York,
Paulist Press, 1990) 78.)

Haven’t we all felt this sentiment when we realize that we have wronged someone, and we don’t know how to deal with what our black souls have wrought? The human reaction is to try to escape facing the evil we have done. We avoid the person we have hurt. Or we deny that we have really hurt them deeply; for who can seriously bear the guilt of the knowledge of one’s own evil? And so like a pilgrim abroad who has committed treason against our homeland, we never dare return home. We never dare to seriously face the hurt we have caused.

Just as this impulse of shame runs deeply in our human relations so to it runs deeply in our relationship to God. We simply follow the lead of Adam and Eve and attempt to hide from God and hope that he does not see our nakedness.

Fortunate for us, God does not sit idly by as we attempt to run from Him. He created the garden for us to inhabit with Him, and He still desires that we do so. He still desires we return to the homeland that we were made for –the garden with Him. And so He has made a way for us to do so.

With our pride, and apathy, and coldness of heart, we have burned the bridges into the garden. But God has built an indestructible bridge back into His presence –the cross of Christ. Christ’s outstretched arms are the bridge between God and man. If you are too ashamed to take this passage, look upon the shamefulness of Christ. Though innocent, He is hung upon a tree, naked, ridiculed, written-off. You need not flee. He is bearing your shame.

Pilgrim, traitor, return to the land for which you were made.“