Pedant: a person who is excessively concerned with minor details and rules or with displaying academic learning.
Hello, my name is Dalyn, and I'm a nitpick. I really am. Not all the time, but yes, I am, depending on how you define it. It's not about displaying academic learning. I'm not showing off, and I don't like to consider myself fussy. I prefer the term fastidious, very attentive to and concerned about accuracy and detail. I guess the most important question to me is whether or not the fastidious fault-finding I engage in because I am excessively concerned with is over minor issues. They are usually little things, I readily admit, and I will also concede that sometimes they are probably minor aspects. But they never feel minor to me.
My areas are of nitpickery are almost always about language and how an idea is expressed or what it really means. You see, I'm one of those old-fashioned people who believe that words matter. I don't believe that you can always simply interchange home and house. Dorothy didn't say there's no place like house for a reason. She left her house lying on the witch to find her way back home. And ET didn't say phone house. Words matter. And no, I didn't make up nitpickery, even though it isn't a well-established word, it is a word and is defined as the high crime of excessive, minute, and unusually unwarranted criticism, for all you Scrabble players out there. And by this, I am a nitpick, because I engage in nitpickery, at least I am sure it feels that way to those hearing me tear apart a meme because of the way it expresses its nugget of philosophy or motivation.
But personally, I think nitpickers are important. Nitpick was first used in 1962, and nitpicker came first, from the idea that nitpickers search for faults the way they might pick nits, or lice eggs, from someone's hair. If you're on the sidelines it may appear that a nitpicker is fussing over something small. Lice won't kill you. But if you're the person with the lice, having someone help rid you of the nits is huge and important. I know from experience, and I am grateful for the nitpickers who helped me. So, I would like to share an example of why I believe words matter to life and why I nitpick about them. Perhaps my sharing this can help someone rid themselves of an infestation that is eating away at them.
There's a saying that goes like this, "When someone reminds you of your past, just tell them Jesus dropped the charges." I understand what this is trying to say, and I love the idea behind it. The pain of the past is something that can be hard to find freedom from, and the forgiveness of Jesus is the answer. I would also like to point out, for the record, I love, and I mean love, the song "Jesus Dropped The Charges" by the O'neal Twins. That's some classic gospel music right there. "I was guilty of all the charges, doomed and disgraced, but Jesus with His special love saved me by His grace." I love the song, and don't like the saying above.
What? Aren't they the same? No. And this is why I admit I am a nitpicker. I may simply prove it to the world. I may have already lost most readers, since this may seem unimportant and minor and it's a long blog entry in a world with the attention span of goldfish. But if you've ever been hurt by the concept of God's forgiveness, then perhaps my words can help remove some of those nits of confusion and hurt. Hurt by God's forgiveness? What on earth are you talking about?
The difference in the saying and the song is minor in detail, but not in importance. In the song, the person who has been released from the charges they know they were guilty of is rejoicing about the great grace of God towards them. As they should. But that the charges were dropped is not the whole story. Further into the song we hear, "Jesus dropped the charges, now I'm free down in my soul... at Calvary I heard Him say, 'case dismissed, case dismissed, saved by grace'." Hallelujah! I've been there, and it is indeed something to dance and shout about.
But the saying is from the perspective of someone reminding you of your past. A person who is throwing your past in your face usually has some pain of their own regarding your past, even if indirectly. Yes, you've been forgiven. No, you don't have to keep paying forever or bear the weight of condemnation from those who will not release you. And there are more things that are true about how you can be free, but the love of Jesus, the love of the One who forgave me and forgave you and released us from our charges, demands that we be concerned about their freedom as well as our own.
Imagine you were wronged, horribly hurt. Many don't have to imagine. The pain and damage within us scream for justice. Our hurt finds empathy in the hurt of others, and this is why we can scream in anger at injustice. Someone should pay for what happened. It's not right when they don't. A few weeks ago, social media flooded with anger over a judge basically letting a rapist go free because he said date rape isn't really rape, though the young man called it rape himself when bragging about it to his friends. Outrage exploded, as it should. We scream with the poor woman who was brutalized by this man and then brutalized again by the judge who denied her justice and treated her as worthless. It's wrong. Right? Of course it is. Justice demands satisfaction. That woman deserves justice. And you deserve justice for every wrong ever committed against you. Your pain demands it.
And the reason this is so intrinsic within us, is because we are made in the image of a just God. We understand innately the necessity of justice, at least when we are not the wrong doers. We all know life isn't fair. We also all know that it should be, because fairness is just, and life should be just. So, imagine, if you will, that I hurt you in the past and you hold it over my head. You drink the poison of resentment waiting for me to die, and since I continue to live you do the only thing you know to do, hold my past against me. I understand. I do. I've done it to others, and you're probably more than justified in doing so. I did some extreme damage to people. There are things that I have done that there is nothing I can do to make right and being or saying sorry just doesn't fix a hole through a heart. How much worse does the pain become for you if you bring it up again, and tired of it, I say, "Well, Jesus dropped the charges, so I'm free"?
This is what I meant by being hurt by God's forgiveness. It's not really being hurt by the forgiveness, but by a misunderstanding of the forgiveness I believe the saying perpetuates, which is why I don't like it. The grace that set me free came at Calvary as the O'neal Twins pointed out, and while making sure the entire truth is expressed isn't critical when rejoicing over it, It is when dealing with the victim who was wronged by the guilty who have been set free. It's not that Jesus didn't drop the charges. It's that He didn't just drop the charges.
Justice demands payment. Someone should pay for what has been done to you. I agree. So does God. That's right; God believes someone should suffer for every sin committed against you. Not just suffer but suffer to death. Isn't that really what the pain in our hearts tells us is the only thing that will satisfy the hurt? If we're honest, regarding those life-changing traumas, someone should suffer, and haven't we wished our mental, emotional, physical and spiritual rapists dead for the damage they did? Doesn't our heart scream at the injustice behind the idea that that person can simply ask for forgiveness and get the slate wiped clean? But that's a misconception.
It's more than simply asking. It's accepting what Jesus did on the cross, and the slate isn't wiped clean; it's washed clean in blood. Jesus may have dropped the charges against me, but He died to satisfy the justice the blood of your wounded life calls for. Jesus didn't just die for our sins. He died for the justice my wounds demand. I have done damage, and I have been damaged. Broken people break people. I was guilty of the charges against me, but others were just as guilty for crimes against me. My wounds demanded I see justice served on my walk to the gallows.
Jesus didn't just drop charges. God isn't letting wrong go or sin slide. He isn't grading on a curve or saying it's OK forget about the debt that is owed. Every debt is paid. Every wrong avenged. Every. Single. One. He died for my hurt. He died for yours. He paid the price that not even the death of those who hurt us would satisfy. How can I say that? Because two men hurt me over 30 years ago, and I have no way to know if they are even still alive. But if they are dead, it didn't release me, didn't stop the pain. Jesus did.
Jesus did. Repetition until like the scene from Good Will Hunting we fall into the arms of our Savior weeping. He wants you to have justice. And even more, He wants you to have healing and restoration and freedom from the past. Only God can give mercy and justice simultaneously because He paid. He didn't just erase debt. He paid it. My charges were dropped because someone else served my sentence, and that person did it so you could receive justice. God's forgiveness isn't a slap in the face to your wounded need for justice, it is mercy for every wrong you've done, justice for every wrong done to you, and healing for the wounds those wrongs have caused for every person who will take their wounds to Jesus.
That's why I don't think it's minor. That's why I think words matter. That's why I nitpick and why forgiveness makes me rejoice instead of cry in frustration. That past that haunts you can be healed, whether you were hurt or did the hurting. There is mercy. There is justice. Someone suffered horribly and died for your hurt. Justice. Someone suffered and died for the hurt you've done. Mercy. Someone was torn apart so that you can be healed. That's the overwhelming, never-ending, reckless love of God. And when we see that justice is satisfied and healing can progress, we can stop drinking the poison. We can forgive, as we have been forgiven, not because it lets someone off the hook. Because just as I accept the work of Jesus to pay the price for my sin, I can accept the work and blood of Jesus to pay the price for the sins against me. And when I release my right to hold onto the pain and bitterness and hurt, I find freedom and the healing happens.
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