Forgiveness, the Struggle to Forgive

I’m not the best at reflecting on and understanding my feelings, nor upon how my feelings then inspire my actions or words.  It’s something I’m working at.  One recent revelation is how deep-seated bitterness can rise up in me and boil over as irrational rage, misplaced frustration and shattering sadness.  Feeling those feelings “out of the blue” (or so I thought), with the associated actions and words, was disorienting to me and unfair to those around me. I tended to look to the most proximal event as cause—a messy house, a petty argument, being tired, being premenstrual, being hungry—rather than identifying that some other trigger resulted in the release of old (sometimes even ancient) memory-feelings of sadness, anger, betrayal, frustration, abandonment and hopelessness, related to specific events in my past that I had not yet fully confronted nor truly and fully forgiven.  

Forgiveness is a hard thing. As a Christian, it is a concept that became so deeply ingrained in my identity—forgiveness in Christ; the command to forgive others—that I stopped thinking about what it actually entailed and was meant to do for me personally, for my relationships, and for other people. At the moment, I have a weirdly large and semi-permanently located “floater” in my left eye. Yay aging.  The optometrist said it is relatively normal and benign; the annoyance of being able to see it in a distracting way should pass with time.  It bothers me more at the end of a long day or when I am typing on a computer or reading a book—which is much of the time, frankly.  The optometrist said that our eyes are full of little bits of old things—material left over from when my eye was being formed, for example—that we only see when they move dramatically, as most of the time the eye ignores them as background noise.  This floater is apparently some of the adhering material from the back of my eye that came loose and is not as easy to ignore. For Christians, we let the concept of sin and forgiveness become like those floaters.  It’s just part of how we are supposed to live—in the case of sins and offenses, we are encouraged by the attitude of church and peers to just ignore them.  The attitude seems to be that sins and offenses are just part of life and “the Christian” thing to do is to look past them.  We get pretty good at doing that—letting insults, hurts and betrayals slide off into some kind of subconscious soup, like figurative water off of the figurative ducks back.  But we are not ducks, and those hurts are not floaters.  We are complicated people with complicated responses to the complicated actions of others.  When an event of betrayal happens, when that betrayal is never really addressed and is repeated and repeatedly not addressed, “forgive and forget” as a response creates a quagmire of unresolved emotions.  That “forgive and forget” is not really the cleansing and freeing event it should be; instead, it is a bizarre packaging-up, an encapsulation.  Like a cyst forming around a pocket of unresolved infection, “forgive and forget” creates a pocket of pus-y emotion tied to that specific chain of unresolved hurts.  Eventually, those floaters we ignore are too big to ignore, they become distracting, frustrating, even painful.

For me, I believe part of the problem is also the implication that forgiveness must begin with repentance and acknowledgement of wrong by the other party.  Jesus says in Luke 17: 4 “If he [your brother] sins against you seven times in a day, and seven times comes back to you and says, ‘I repent’, forgive him.”  This passage definitely upholds the “forgive people who repent” idea.  Previous to this writing, I didn’t specifically note the details of this—it’s not just forgive seven times, but seven times in a day.  The image is of one who is continually wounding, continually offending, continually sinning against me.  A similar passage on forgiveness in Mark 11: 24-25 says “Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours.  And when you stand praying, if you hold anything against anyone, forgive him, so that your Father in heaven may forgive you your sins.”  This passage creates a corollary—forgive others so that God will forgive me.  It says nothing of repentance by the one sinning against me, only about my lack of forgiveness being a barrier to God forgiving me as I approach Him in prayer.  The Lord’s Prayer in Matthew 6 says the same in verse 12 “Forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors.”  Forgiving others is portrayed as an essential component of my healthy relationship with God; un-forgiveness in my own heart is a barrier between me and God.

Within the context of both the Matthew and Luke passages about forgiveness, I see Jesus discussing, and His disciples asking for, faith.  In Luke 17, after Jesus tells His disciples to forgive seven times daily if needed, His disciples cry out “Lord increase our faith!”  Jesus tells them that if they have faith like a mustard seed, they can “…say to this mulberry tree, ‘be uprooted and planted in the sea’ and it will obey you.”  In Mark 11 verses 12 and following, Jesus tells His disciples to have faith in God, which will enable them to tell mountains to be thrown in the sea; the following verses are those discussing answered prayers and forgiveness.  In both passages, the command to forgive is connected to—at least in context and I believe conceptually—strong faith.  The disciples pray that Jesus strengthen their faith to forgive a seven-sinning brother; Jesus tells His disciples that faith can move mountains and give power to prayer, but that un-forgiveness can be a barrier to God’s forgiveness and to answered prayer.  In James 5: 13 -15, we are told to pray in sickness, trouble and joy; verse 16 "Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed.  The prayer of a righteous man is powerful and effective."  I read this verse to mean that the righteous person is one who has confessed sin and been reminded and assured of the forgiveness present through Christ Jesus; the prayers of this righteous (forgiven) person are powerful--the prayers of a repentant person are not hindered by sin.

Praise God, faith comes from God and is not something we “will” ourselves into having enough of.   Faith comes through the word of Christ (Romans 10: 17).  It is by faith that we overcome the world, live in love, and receive eternal life; our faith is in Jesus Christ (1 John5).  I am reconciled to God through forgiveness in Christ, and because His righteousness is credited to me, I am clothed in Christ’s righteousness and declared God’s child. 1 John 5: 2 and 3 says “This is how we know that we love the children of God:  by loving God and carrying out His commands. This is love for God:  to obey His commands.  And His commands are not burdensome.”  His command to forgive others may feel burdensome—Lord increase my faith!—but I am given faith that is strong enough to toss mountains and mulberry trees into the ocean.  God commands us to forgive others and He empowers us with the faith to do so.  To deny this command, to fail in our forgiveness of others, is to fail to live in faith and obedience.  And this failure is failure by choice, not failure by ability; we have faith to move mountains, if we do not forgive others it is not because we lack the power and ability to do so.

 Back to Luke 17.  Immediately after Jesus tells His disciples their faith can uproot mulberry trees, He tells them a mini parable of a master and servant, wherein the master—by virtue of his position of authority and honor—is right in expecting deference and obedience from his servant.  In verse 10 Jesus says “So you also, when you have done everything you were told to do, should say, ‘We are unworthy servants; we have only done our duty.’”   In Matthew 18, we again find Jesus talking about forgiveness; He admonishes His disciples to forgive not just seven times, but seventy-seven times.  This statement is immediately followed by a parable in which a servant is forgiven a massive debt by his master.  That servant then goes and refuses to forgive the small debt a peer owes to him; this unmerciful and unjust response earns the first servant imprisonment by his master.  We are servants of God.  Living in faith and obeying the commands of God—to love, to serve, to sacrifice self, to forgive those who wrong us—is what we do as unworthy servants who are only doing our duty.  Anything less than forgiveness toward others is to disregard and dishonor the forgiveness we have in Christ.  He has forgiven the massive debt of our entire life of sin, our entire sinful existence.  While the sins of others do not feel small to us, this is what we are expected to do as worthy servants, as those who show our love of God by our obedience to His commands.

Heavenly Father, You have reconciled me to you through the death of Jesus Christ Your Son.  Through His sacrifice, I am declared holy; because of His righteousness, I am forgiven.  Remind me daily, even hourly, of my need for and Your gift of forgiveness.  Bless me with joyful humility to respond with generous forgiveness toward others.  Protect me from bitterness, from grudges, from festering wounds caused by old and unresolved hurts.  Renew my mind, my heart and my imagination; suffuse me entire with the joy of Your salvation and with a desire to forgive others as You have forgiven me.  In Jesus Name, AMEN.