The Lesson of Madea

The Law of Forgiving

The movie, Madea Goes to Jail, is a very funny movie. It has some action, some drama, and a plot that impossibly comes together at the end. But mostly it is a comedy. It is a little bit “slapstick”, but that’s OK because it isn’t really meant to be taken seriously, anyway.

But it has a message that is very serious. We ignore this message at our own peril. And we all ignore the message, and then we suffer as a consequence. The message is that if we don’t forgive others when they sin against us, we will suffer the consequence. (But NOT the person who wronged us in the first place!)

The plot of the story is about a pretty college girl, smart and with a promising future who gets abused during a party by members of the college football team. The girl, feeling betrayed by her boyfriend who put her in the situation to begin with and then left: quits school, turns to drugs and eventually prostitution and ends up in Jail; where she meets Madea.

The message is stated directly, by the street-wise prison chaplain and then echoed by Medea (just in case we didn’t get it the first time):

Fool, if you cain’t forgive others you are hurtin’ yourself. They- are out there. And you- are in Here, in prison!

The Scriptures insist that we should forgive others. Jesus taught his disciples to pray, asking that God “forgive us our sins, as we forgive those who sin against us.”

In The Psychology of Positive Thinking we find something similar:

“Dr. Michael Beckwith, on the Oprah Winfrey Show of February 15, 2007, that was discussing the book The Secret, had this to say about forgiveness: when you hold a grudge and are unwilling to forgive, it is like choosing to be a victim, over and over, of the wrong you felt was done to you. James Arthur Ray, another teacher of The Secret on the show, agreed: ‘Being unwilling to forgive is like drinking poison, expecting the other to die.’”