What Forgiveness Really Is (Part 2 of 2)

This is the second part of a 2-part series on Forgiveness. Click here to read the previous post.

Have you ever wanted to forgive someone and thought to yourself, I don’t really know how to do that.

It’s not like forgiveness is some magic switch you can flip where you simply say, “Okay, that person is forgiven. I have forgiven them.”

Because sometimes we forgive people, but we still feel exactly the same as we did before we forgave them.

So what exactly does it mean to forgive?

First, we have to recognize that forgiveness is personal.

What I mean is that you have to name the person who needs to be forgiven. Lots of people say that they were hurt by an institution—a church, a company, an organization—but that’s not really the way it works.

An organization didn’t hurt you; a person did. They may have done it with the weight of the organization or the institution, but it was that person, and it is that person who needs to be forgiven.

So to forgive is to name the person who hurt you and what exactly they did to you.

Whenever someone says, “They hurt me,” or “That group excluded me,” the first question should be, “What was the person’s name?”

Second, forgiveness is a process.

Not long ago, I was working through my ability to forgive a person, and I felt like I had made some real progress. However, that person reappeared in my world and reminded me of how angry I had been with them.

Sometimes we have to forgive the same person over and over again before it really sticks. For some of us, this may need to become a daily routine.

Sometimes forgiveness is the need to unlearn our attitudes of cynicism and bitterness. That can’t be done in a day. It takes time.

Third, forgiveness means giving up the need for revenge.

I wrote about this in a post last week. We have an internal sense of how justice works, and when someone wrongs us, we want them to suffer for it. If we can’t punish them, we want God to do it for us.

Revenge doesn’t make things better. It only escalates the problem. This is why Jesus calls us to forgive our enemies; it’s the only way to get ourselves out of the cycle of violence and destruction.

Finally, forgiveness is the ability to wish the other person well.

This might take years, but it’s where we are try to go. We are trying to become the kinds of people who naturally want the best for other people, even the people who have scarred us.

This is not easy, and it’s not fast. Like I said, it’s a process.

Don’t feel guilty if you struggle with this. We all struggle with it. This is what it means to be human—to struggle with the things that will make us better and will ultimately make the world better.

Can you think of any other things that forgiveness is? Are there methods you have learned that make it easier to forgive people?

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For more on this subject, you can visit the previous posts on this blog:

-When Good Things Happen to Bad People

-Why We Shouldn’t Draw Lines

-Timothy Keller on Forgiveness

What Forgiveness is Not

A long time ago, I was in the midst of an ongoing conflict with someone.

Once the conflict cooled from raw anger to cordial awkwardness, the other person made a request of me. If I had granted this request, it would have given this other person a certain amount of leverage over me, requiring a great deal of trust on my part. The problem was that, in the midst of the conflict, the person had lost my trust.

So as politely as I could, I said no.

“I thought you were supposed to be a pastor,” the other person said with a touch of venom. “Aren’t you supposed to forgive and forget?”

That comment bothered me. It bothered me so much that I almost gave in to the person’s original request. However, thanks to the guidance of a few close advisors, I held my ground, and the other person was mad all over again.

I think comments like this raise lots of questions about how forgiveness really works.

Last week, I wrote a post about drawing lines between us and other people and how Jesus always seems to end up on the other side of our lines. In the Comments section, my friend Stefanie made a good point that sometimes we need to keep a certain level of distance between ourselves and others, not out of hate or anger, but out of a need for self-preservation.

So can we forgive others while still maintaining healthy boundaries? Can we love toxic people without being infected by them?

To answer this, let’s take a look at a few things that forgiveness is not.

1. Forgiveness is not condoning. I think this is why we struggle with forgiveness so often—we feel like the act of forgiving is akin to saying that whatever hurt us was no big deal. But that’s not what forgiveness is. If the offense had been no big deal, forgiveness would not be necessary.

2. Forgiveness is not forgetting. Forgiveness is what we must do when we cannot forget. I don’t know where we got the idea that forgiveness required the act of forgetting, but it just doesn’t work that way.

3. Forgiveness is not always reconciling. This goes back to the story above. Just because I forgave the person who broke my trust does not mean that I have to trust that person again.

Sometimes we have to make very hard decisions and say, “I wish you well, and I don’t harbor any anger against you, but we cannot go back to the way things were.”

In the book of Proverbs, there is a passage that says this-

As a dog returns to its vomit,
    so fools repeat their folly. (Proverbs 26:11)

The writer is saying, “There are people who are toxic, and just by forgiving them you will not make them less toxic. Be careful.”

Just because you forgive someone does not obligate you to trust them or give them any part of yourself.

4. Forgiveness is not the same as justice and consequences. It’s okay to call the police if someone breaks into your house. Forgiveness does not require you to be someone else’s victim.

Tomorrow we will continue this discussion with an exploration of what forgiveness is. But for now, may you be set free from false ideas about forgiveness.

Can you think of other things that forgiveness is not? Do you ever feel like people use your willingness to forgive as a weapon against you?

When Good Things Happen to Bad People

 I was recently in a conversation with someone who had been wronged in a very deep and personal way. What made things worse was that the person who had wronged my friend seemed completely unconcerned with the suffering he had caused.

This kind of thing makes me crazy. It’s one thing to hurt someone inadvertently, which is something we all do from time to time; it’s a whole other thing to hurt someone, realize what you have done, and then do nothing to make the situation better, even acting smug about it the process.

This kind of person makes it very hard to forgive.

Expressing feelings of pain and betrayal, my friend said to me, “I can’t believe [this person] just gets to keep living his life as if everything is fine. I mean, eventually he’s going to fall on his face, isn’t he? God wouldn’t bless someone who treats people this way, would he?”

That’s a tough one.

Most of us have a very acute awareness of right and wrong, which gives us a deep hunger for justice (as long as it applies to other people, of course). We also believe (correctly) that God loves justice. So we assume and expect that God will extend justice onto all those who harm us.

I’ve heard people say things like this a lot, and I’ve even wished for it a time or two. We see something wrong in the world, find a person to blame for it, and say, “Well, they’d better enjoy it while they can. God is going to make them pay for this.”

While I do like this idea (again, as long as it applies to other people), in Matthew 5, Jesus says something that bothers me a little bit. He’s talking about how we treat our enemies, and he says this-

“You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.” (Matthew 5:43-45)

In that culture, both the sun and the rain were good things. In a world where agriculture was one of the primary sources of most household incomes, you needed both the sun and the rain to keep your crops alive.

Jesus is saying, “Good things are going to happen to people who don’t deserve it. Your job is to be the kind of person who loves in spite of what other people are receiving.”

As much as I hate this, it is consistent with the world that I have observed.

Corrupt businessmen receive huge bonuses while those who are devoted to ethical practices are laid off.

Bad teachers receive tenure while great teachers fall victim to budget cuts.

Spiritually abusive pastors see growth in their churches while good-hearted and loving ministers struggle to be heard.

Mean people have lots of friends while those who practice kindness and compassion often feel completely alone.

The rain falls on the just and the unjust alike.

So if the point is not for God to dole out rewards for the good people and punishment for the bad, what is left?

The answer to this question is that we have choices about what kinds of people we are becoming.

To my chagrin, Jesus doesn’t seem to have much interest in punishing my enemies.

Instead, Jesus seems interested in changing me into the kind of person who can love even the people who try to destroy me.

Maybe that’s what Jesus means when says that the road is narrow. Some of the things he calls us to do seem crazy and nearly impossible. However, there is no question that these are the kinds of things that make the world a better place.

What do you think? Have you ever expected God to punish someone else on your behalf? Do you think God punishes people for doing bad things?

Timothy Keller on Forgiveness

I've been reading through Timothy Keller's book The Reason for God , and this morning I came across one of the best descriptions of forgiveness that I have ever heard. I have no additional commentary as I don't think anything else needs to be said. In my opinion, this passage is perfect, which is why I wanted to share it with you.  

I'm not sharing this as someone who is good at this. Rather, I'm sharing it as someone who needs to learn from it. I hope you gain as much from this passage as I have. 

“Most of the wrongs done to us cannot be assessed in purely economic terms. Someone may have robbed you of some happiness, reputation, opportunity, or certain aspects of your freedom. No price tag can be put on such things, yet we still have a sense of violated justice that does not go away when the other person says, “I’m really sorry.” When we are seriously wronged we have an indelible sense that the perpetrators have incurred a debt that must be dealt with. Once you have been wronged and you realize there is a just debt that can’t simply be dismissed— there are only two things to do.

The first option is to seek ways to make the perpetrators suffer for what they have done. You can withhold relationship and actively initiate or passively wish for some kind of pain in their lives commensurate to what you experienced. There are many ways to do this. You can viciously confront them, saying things that hurt. You can go around to others to tarnish their reputation. If the perpetrators suffer, you may begin to feel a certain satisfaction, feeling that they are now paying off their debt.

There are some serious problems with this option, however. You may become harder and colder, more self-pitying, and therefore more self-absorbed. If the wrongdoer was a person of wealth or authority you may instinctively dislike and resist that sort of person for the rest of your life. If it was a person of the opposite sex or another race you might become permanently cynical and prejudiced against whole classes of people. In addition, the perpetrator and his friends and family often feel they have the right to respond to your payback in kind. Cycles of reaction and retaliation can go on for years. Evil has been done to you— yes. But when you try to get payment through revenge the evil does not disappear. Instead it spreads, and it spreads most tragically of all into you and your own character.

There is another option, however. You can forgive. Forgiveness means refusing to make them pay for what they did. However, to refrain from lashing out at someone when you want to do so with all your being is agony. It is a form of suffering. You not only suffer the original loss of happiness, reputation, and opportunity, but now you forgo the consolation of inflicting the same on them. You are absorbing the debt, taking the cost of it completely on yourself instead of taking it out of the other person. It hurts terribly. Many people would say it feels like a kind of death.

Yes, but it is a death that leads to resurrection instead of the lifelong living death of bitterness and cynicism. As a pastor I have counseled many people about forgiveness, and I have found that if they do this— if they simply refuse to take vengeance on the wrongdoer in action and even in their inner fantasies— the anger slowly begins to subside. You are not giving it any fuel and so the resentment burns lower and lower. C. S. Lewis wrote in one of his Letters to Malcolm that “last week, while at prayer, I suddenly discovered— or felt as if I did— that I had really forgiven someone I had been trying to forgive for over thirty years. Trying, and praying that I might.” 1 I remember once counseling a sixteen-year-old girl about the anger she felt toward her father. We weren’t getting anywhere until I said to her, “Your father has defeated you, as long as you hate him. You will stay trapped in your anger unless you forgive him thoroughly from the heart and begin to love him.” Something thawed in her when she realized that. She went through the suffering of costly forgiveness, which at first always feels far worse than bitterness, into eventual freedom. Forgiveness must be granted before it can be felt, but it does come eventually. It leads to a new peace, a resurrection. It is the only way to stop the spread of the evil.

When I counsel forgiveness to people who have been harmed, they often ask about the wrongdoers, “Shouldn’t they be held accountable?” I usually respond, “Yes, but only if you forgive them.” There are many good reasons that we should want to confront wrongdoers. Wrongdoers have inflicted damage and, as in the example of the gate I presented earlier, it costs something to fix the damage. We should confront wrongdoers— to wake them up to their real character, to move them to repair their relationships, or to at least constrain them and protect others from being harmed by them in the future. Notice, however, that all those reasons for confrontation are reasons of love. The best way to love them and the other potential victims around them is to confront them in the hope that they will repent, change, and make things right.

The desire for vengeance, however, is motivated not by goodwill but by ill will. You may say, “I just want to hold them accountable,” but your real motivation may be simply to see them hurt. If you are not confronting them for their sake or for society’s sake but for your own sake, just for payback, the chance of the wrongdoer ever coming to repentance is virtually nil. In such a case you, the confronter, will overreach, seeking not justice but revenge, not their change but their pain. Your demands will be excessive and your attitude abusive. He or she will rightly see the confrontation as intended simply to cause hurt. A cycle of retaliation will begin.

Only if you first seek inner forgiveness will your confrontation be temperate, wise, and gracious. Only when you have lost the need to see the other person hurt will you have any chance of actually bringing about change, reconciliation, and healing. You have to submit to the costly suffering and death of forgiveness if there is going to be any resurrection.”

— Keller, Timothy. The Reason for God (pp. 185-188).