Thoughts on "I'm Sorry"

Thursday morning I finished reading Deadly Viper: Character Assassins. It was a book that was handed out free this year at Catalyst. It was a good read, and a very quick read. It was written in an Eastern Martial Arts format. Master Po, Grasshopper, and the Assassins that will attempt to defeat a warrior (the most interesting being the assassin of Boom Chicka Wah Wah, simply because now I like to walk around saying, Boom Chicka Wah Wah...). It was more moral than Christian. Yet, if the authors tried to force Christianity into the book, tried to force the correlation between Master Po and God, the book would have been cheesy. I digress...

After work Friday I was pondering the phrase I'm sorry. In one of the book's chapters there were a couple of paragraphs devoted to one of their leader friends who made a point when late for an appointment, in this case a lunch appointment, not to say, Sorry I'm late. It was the traffic. Instead he would say, The traffic was terrible. I'm buying you lunch. Basically a gesture, taking some ownership, of holding up the person he was meeting. Even if it wasn't completely his fault.

It made me think of how easy it is for others, for me, to say, I'm sorry. Yet, that I'm sorry really doesn't cost us anything. I started thinking about how the I'm sorry may be cheapened because it didn't really cost us anything more than the breath to spew those words from our lips.

When Adam and Eve were expelled from the garden, God made Adam and Eve clothes. Their sin caused an animal or several to need to be killed in order for God to make them clothing. There was a cost.

I'm not promoting a victim mentality where if someone hurts you, you take on the attitude of You owe me, and big. That doesn't help. What I am contemplating for me is taking on the attitude of grieving and restitution when someone is frustrated, broken, angry, weary (you get the point) and I was involved, no matter how little control we had over traffic, getting held up by someone else, or whatever. The bottom line is we were involved in hurting someone else. We can't think, eh, it was no big deal. Or, they'll understand. Or, if they don't understand they need to grow up. That attitude is one of saying the other person doesn't matter. How often when I sin do I say an, Sorry God and go on. While God forgives, I have cheapened Christ's death for that sin. I haven't adequately grieved for the hurt I've done and that sin nailing Jesus to the cross. Saying I'm sorry should cost something. Even if it is as simplistic as healthy grief.