THE ETERNAL CROWNING OF ABSENCE

This week I had the opportunity to spend time with somebody I hadn’t seen for nearly thirty years. The occasion that brought us together was a funeral. Not always the situation for the best of reunions, but we managed.

The person who had passed away was this person’s father. Like me, he had sadly grown up in a very abusive environment. It had forced him into many years of therapy and he confessed to me the hardest part was that his father never was willing to admit the truth of his behavior.

Complicating this situation was the fact that the person who passed away was someone who publicly regarded as a great man. Like so many such cases the light shining from his career success kept those who didn’t know him privately from being aware of his very dark and sometimes downright sinister nature. Oh the shadows of the soul that can be hidden behind a mask of achievement.

So here was his son, sitting there looking at me and admitting how truly hard it was to have to sit while so many got up and spoke great things about a man who to him had been so evil. His most poignant lament was how in the time of loss as a son one ought to feel some grief, but he honestly felt nothing.

This lead me in one way to a point of prayer and reflection on the issue of how God would deal with an abusive parent who was redeemed. The person might be guilty of sin, but still if they accepted Jesus as Lord and Savior by faith they were forgiven as it also applies to anyone.

Yet I couldn’t help wondering, how does the victim if save coped in eternity with this person apparently being forgiven and the lack of any sense of justice? I just don’t feel that knowing the person is forgiven in any way would help heal me of my tears or scars from my suffering. That just seem too unfair.

So I prayed unto the Lord that he might help me understand. And I feel he answered my prayer through the power of his Holy Spirit in a way that made sense to me.

Essentially he led me to the words of the Apostle Paul about the judgment seat of Christ and the concept of eternal rewards. How any works we do that are not of faith would be consumed and the others would survive.

There is also mention of various crowns. At least as I came to understand it these are not literal crowns, but a radiance of God’s light for one’s faithfulness and obedience. Thus it would be more in a way like a halo in terms of appearance.

And so in that sense, if one was unfaithful as a parent and abusive then as a Christian they would be forgiven, but they would not have any crown to radiate their obedience and love in faithfulness as a parent. That concept truly struck me to the bone when coupled with the idea of nothing being hidden that won’t be revealed. I thought of how truly it would say so much about someone as a parent who appeared in heaven and lacked the radiation of eternal reward for being a faithful loving parent. That absence would be forever and you might be forgiven, but everyone you met would know the truth that you were not in God’s eyes truly someone who loved their child. Knowing this was enough to give me peace when I thought of how it would say more in eternity about what I suffered in my childhood than anything I could ever expect or desire. I only hope by mentioning it will in some way also bless someone else who struggles with the same issues.