When Corrie Made Mistakes
Corrie ten Boom
We want heroes, we struggling Christians -- people who've found the answers. We want them infallible. We don't want to hear about their confusion and weariness and battles with doubt; we want them safely on their pedestals.
Corrie hated pedestals. "God is good," she'd say, "and he's the only one who is."
All of us have particular failings we wrestle with. Corrie's was impatience. I believe this was the consequence of a mind that just worked faster than other people's. Though people who heard her speak in English seldom guessed it, Corrie was dauntingly bright. She knew that what she called "Corrie ten Boom English" was limited, sometimes even comical. And so in this country she kept her talks simple, playful, straightforward, all the more compelling because her sincerity had no eloquence about it.
But I also heard Corrie speak in Holland. I understood not a word of the Dutch; what I heard from her lips, in churches and lecture halls, was a clarion call to faith, delivered with the speed and force of a machine gun. Corrie especially liked to speak in prisons where her own experiences as a prisoner of the Nazis gave her an instant rapport with inmates. Her tone on such occasions was the stern, no-nonsense scolding of an exasperated schoolmarm. Sitting at the side of the stage I'd watch a roomful of pretty tough-looking men pinned to their seat-backs by a volley of straight talk from this benign-seeming old lady.
The down side of possessing a mind this quick was having to live with the rest of us -- taxi drivers, airport clerks, her young women companions, John and me. I'd hear her snap at someone, then see her wince with disappointment at herself. Since in the press of the moment there might be no time to set things right, Corrie had made an inviolable rule for herself. At the end of each day she asked forgiveness of anyone she could get in touch with...for a sharp word...a tactless remark...an unfair criticism..a hasty judgement. And in the openness and vulnerability of those close-of-day moments, others were able to examine our own actions -- and growth and healing and new closeness always followed.
"Corrie," I said to her one day -- I was still nursing the someday-I'll-be-perfect fantasy of a new Christian -- "I've heard you pray so often for more patience. And I've seen that prayer answered... for a while. But, well -- shouldn't God's gifts be permanent?"
"Oh no!" If we could store up love and understanding and self-control, she said, we would stop turning to God. "He wants us to draw our supply fresh from him each day."
This daily need for God's help was true for Corrie even in the matter of forgiveness. This was her great message to the world, learned in the hard school of Nazi persecution: our need to forgive those who harm us. Yet it was a message she herself had to keep learning throughout her life.
John and I once had the chance to watch her draw her supply "fresh from God." We were staying with her in Holland, some time after The Hiding Place was published, when some old friends came for coffee. We knew some of her history with these people: once trusted co-workers, they'd cheated her out of lecture fees she counted on for her work with concentration camp victims.
Because they'd practiced the deception with smiles, she'd found it even harder to forgive them than the brutal Nazi guards at Ravensbruck. But she'd done it at last, she told us happily. "When we forgive others," she liked to say, "God forgives our sins and throws them into the deepest part of the ocean!"
It was a pleasant party with these old associates, seated in the glow of Corrie's coal-burning grate, hard feelings on her part and guilt on the friends' side nowhere in evidence. "Obviously," John said, as we cleared away the dishes after they left, "they've accepted your forgiveness."
Corrie shook her head. "They say there's nothing to forgive! They deny that they ever cheated me. But I can prove it!" She ran to her desk and rummaged in the bottom drawer. "I have it all down here in black and white!" She straightened up triumphantly, a sheaf of papers in her hand.
Gently, John took the papers from her. "Corrie!" he said. "Aren't you the one whose sins are at the bottom of the sea? And you keep the sins of your friends on record in black and white?"
I watched realization, then dismay, then shame play one by one across Corrie's stricken face. TEyes brimming with tears, she spoke -- not to us, at that moment I'm sure she'd forgotten us --- but to God. "Lord Jesus, who takes all my sins away, forgive me for preserving all these years the evidence against others!"
And for a few hallowed minutes the three of us fed pieces of paper into Corrie's coal fire.
Corrie hated pedestals. "God is good," she'd say, "and he's the only one who is."
All of us have particular failings we wrestle with. Corrie's was impatience. I believe this was the consequence of a mind that just worked faster than other people's. Though people who heard her speak in English seldom guessed it, Corrie was dauntingly bright. She knew that what she called "Corrie ten Boom English" was limited, sometimes even comical. And so in this country she kept her talks simple, playful, straightforward, all the more compelling because her sincerity had no eloquence about it.
But I also heard Corrie speak in Holland. I understood not a word of the Dutch; what I heard from her lips, in churches and lecture halls, was a clarion call to faith, delivered with the speed and force of a machine gun. Corrie especially liked to speak in prisons where her own experiences as a prisoner of the Nazis gave her an instant rapport with inmates. Her tone on such occasions was the stern, no-nonsense scolding of an exasperated schoolmarm. Sitting at the side of the stage I'd watch a roomful of pretty tough-looking men pinned to their seat-backs by a volley of straight talk from this benign-seeming old lady.
The down side of possessing a mind this quick was having to live with the rest of us -- taxi drivers, airport clerks, her young women companions, John and me. I'd hear her snap at someone, then see her wince with disappointment at herself. Since in the press of the moment there might be no time to set things right, Corrie had made an inviolable rule for herself. At the end of each day she asked forgiveness of anyone she could get in touch with...for a sharp word...a tactless remark...an unfair criticism..a hasty judgement. And in the openness and vulnerability of those close-of-day moments, others were able to examine our own actions -- and growth and healing and new closeness always followed.
"Corrie," I said to her one day -- I was still nursing the someday-I'll-be-perfect fantasy of a new Christian -- "I've heard you pray so often for more patience. And I've seen that prayer answered... for a while. But, well -- shouldn't God's gifts be permanent?"
"Oh no!" If we could store up love and understanding and self-control, she said, we would stop turning to God. "He wants us to draw our supply fresh from him each day."
This daily need for God's help was true for Corrie even in the matter of forgiveness. This was her great message to the world, learned in the hard school of Nazi persecution: our need to forgive those who harm us. Yet it was a message she herself had to keep learning throughout her life.
John and I once had the chance to watch her draw her supply "fresh from God." We were staying with her in Holland, some time after The Hiding Place was published, when some old friends came for coffee. We knew some of her history with these people: once trusted co-workers, they'd cheated her out of lecture fees she counted on for her work with concentration camp victims.
Because they'd practiced the deception with smiles, she'd found it even harder to forgive them than the brutal Nazi guards at Ravensbruck. But she'd done it at last, she told us happily. "When we forgive others," she liked to say, "God forgives our sins and throws them into the deepest part of the ocean!"
It was a pleasant party with these old associates, seated in the glow of Corrie's coal-burning grate, hard feelings on her part and guilt on the friends' side nowhere in evidence. "Obviously," John said, as we cleared away the dishes after they left, "they've accepted your forgiveness."
Corrie shook her head. "They say there's nothing to forgive! They deny that they ever cheated me. But I can prove it!" She ran to her desk and rummaged in the bottom drawer. "I have it all down here in black and white!" She straightened up triumphantly, a sheaf of papers in her hand.
Gently, John took the papers from her. "Corrie!" he said. "Aren't you the one whose sins are at the bottom of the sea? And you keep the sins of your friends on record in black and white?"
I watched realization, then dismay, then shame play one by one across Corrie's stricken face. TEyes brimming with tears, she spoke -- not to us, at that moment I'm sure she'd forgotten us --- but to God. "Lord Jesus, who takes all my sins away, forgive me for preserving all these years the evidence against others!"
And for a few hallowed minutes the three of us fed pieces of paper into Corrie's coal fire.