This article was originally published by the Ooze, but I think it fits well with my last entry. I wrote this during a pretty hard time in my life about two years ago….click here to read it on the Ooze.
After just getting through a really tough breakup and being scarred almost unbearably I have learned many important lessons. The relationship ended abruptly, but only after I found out that my significant other was crushingly in love with someone else, and she was acting on those feelings. I was completely torn apart, there was part of me that knew something like this would happen, but the other part of me was able to blind me from those facts. I’ve been struck with a decision like this before, and I have learned this lesson before. I have just began to understood though that what need to come from me was not a learned lesson or a spiritual achievement, but instead it was a lifestyle that I needed to adapt to
The lesson, the goal, the lifestyle: Forgiveness.
What a dreaded word. Growing up it seemed like an easier thing to do. Steve stole your ball? Watching him humiliated as he was dragged to you to apologize was more than enough consolation that he had learned his lesson and overall you won, so you forgave him. What happens when you need to forgive someone who continually offended you and had no remorse for what they were doing? This is when we are faced with an intolerable injustice that doesn’t go away. We know we need to forgive, but now we don’t want to. C.S. Lewis sums it up like this, “Everyone says forgiveness is a lovely idea, until they have something to forgive, as we had during the war. And then, to mention the subject at all is to be greeted with howls of anger. It is not that people think this too high and difficult a virtue: it is that they think it hateful and contemptible.” Forgiveness means frankly to give up your rights of holding a grudge against them, and once again loving them undeservedly.
The first thing we need to recognize is that forgiveness is not excusing the wrong doing, nor is it watering it down. Forgiveness isn’t something that allows people to get away with wrong, nor is it accepting the fact that it never happened. It is simply choosing to look beyond the mess up and acknowledging that they are human and that you will still love them in spite of the circumstances. Before, I was always under the impression that forgiveness was having the attitude that “it’s ok; it’s not a big deal.” I was wrong, forgiveness is admitting that it was a big deal, admitting that you were hurt and then choosing to still love them even though that is true. There is no need to pretend; pretending buries reality. Accepting reality and still loving is forgiveness.
This is not an easy task, but it is a necessary one. Not essentially for them, but for you. To not forgive is to trap yourself, it is to constrain yourself from the freedom that Christ has promised. Luke 11:4 says “Forgive us of our sins, as we forgive those that sin against us.” C.S. Lewis again noted that “there is no slightest suggestion that we are offered forgiveness on any other terms” in speaking about this verse. Forgiveness is an ongoing battle that you will have to fight with until the day you die. I still wrestle with thoughts of anger and bitterness from circumstances that I went through five minutes ago to ones that happened years ago. We need to get it out of our heads that forgiveness is an action of accepting sin, and understand that forgiveness is a lifestyle we choose to live going against the flow of our emotions. We will have to constantly battle our emotions and feelings of anger and rage and try to replace them with love.
The hardest part for me about forgiveness is forgiving when the apology wasn’t asked for. Why should we forgive Osama Bin Laden? He didn’t apologize, he doesn’t regret his wrongs. The point isn’t about them, it’s about us. Forgiveness isn’t so they can move on their lives, it’s so we can continue on in ours. If forgiveness depended on someone else’s apology we would never forgive, because in most serious cases, true regret will follow true forgiveness. I don’t really understand why it works that way. God definitely is testing us with this. When we have absolutely no reason to forgive someone, that’s when they should receive our forgiveness all the more. Besides, we could never truly understand love and forgiveness if we didn’t first understand Christ.
“We love because he first loved us.” That is the only possible way you can love, and when you love, forgiveness comes natural. I think the verse could also be translated properly that the more you recognize how much God love’s you and forgives you the more you can love and forgive someone else. Think about it, how much did Christ suffer emotionally from us. Every sin, every little one is simply spitting in our Savior’s face, yet every time he wipes away the saliva, stretches out his arms and welcomes us wholeheartedly. When we learn to forgive and learn to live a forgiving lifestyle, then we will be free from these worldly emotions that bottle up inside us. Forgiving doesn’t necessarily mean forgetting, forgiving means accepting, keeping perspective and allowing God’s love to shine through you even on to the dirtiest creatures.