It wasn’t me...

Continuing on the subject of “Forgive us as we forgive”

This line has been cause for much debate, at least in my religious experience.  It’s tossed around as indicating that God’s forgiveness is limited; or that God’s behaviour is controllable.  It’s used as an admonition against real human reactions.  And it’s difficult to really grasp.  In my view, it’s not a way of limiting God, it’s a way to stretch ourselves.  Like the injunction to love our neighbours as ourselves, our ability to forgive tells a lot about us.  How many times I’ve heard people say, “I’ll never forgive you for that!”  But doing that gives our tormentors to live on our peace of mind, while they go around unaware. It’s all covered beautifully in William Blake’s 1794 poem The Poison Tree. 

Serendipity is real. I encountered that poem earlier this week, and later, my lay minister dropped by, as he tends to do.  The reading that day was from the Gospel of Luke, the Sermon on the Plain, where we have the exhortation to “love your enemies, pray for those who hurt you.”  As we discussed this, it became clearer that it’s essential to forgive so that we can be free of the burden of hatred and enmity that can keep us from becoming the fully loving people that we’re intended to be. He asked, “Sonja, do you have people that you haven’t forgiven?”  and I do. There are people who hurt me years ago.  They have no place in my life, nor have they been present for many years.  But in telling about them the anger that I felt because of them is still fresh, and still bleeding. More recently, there are some who hurt me deeply, although that was mostly unintentional. I thought that I had packed that away,  but again the anger sprang up in vivid reality, so I will have to deal with it. There’s that beautiful, shiny apple!

Forgiveness frees me from the burden. The people who have hurt me are not in my life, or if they still are, their role is minimal. They neither know nor care that I still feel the rage that resulted from their actions. I do. And as long as I hold that anger, every time I’m in a similar situation, I may react unjustly. In some ways, it’s easiest to keep the anger and block out the forgiveness. I can justify it - I was hurt, badly. I was mistreated. I didn’t deserve that, and I must protect myself from opportunistic and malicious, or at least uncaring and callous people who can cause me more hurt. 

But, and back to the initial question, does my inability to forgive prevent me being forgiven by God?  Do I bind His hands so that I cannot receive forgiveness?  No. I’m of course open to correction, but I don’t believe that God goes out of the way to throw up obstacles against us being in a more perfect union with Him. Asking to be forgiven as I forgive is a constant reminder that I am frail and faulty, and very imperfect. I know that there are times when I surrender to the very human urge to bear a grudge. But the grudge-holding can shape my personality into being hard and unkind. Recognizing that, I am obligated to strive to be more like Christ, more Christian, and ask for the grace to pardon the hurt that I’ve received and therefore release the burden that I carry of anger, enmity and rancour.   It’s my choice whether I want to become the bitter, crabbed soul who rehashes a decades-old incident, pouring my energy into remembering every slight, every nuance of the interaction or whether I move on to recognize that I was hurt, that I should not allow myself to fall into that situation again and that the perpetrator has no more power over my peace of mind.

So my lay minister instructed me to dig deep and forgive those who hurt me.  He said that if possible I should tell them directly, but if I couldn’t (because they were dead or had left the country or were incapacitated) then I must say that I do forgive them.  Because I’m human, I said that it could take a while for that.  I was again reminded of the need to let go and trust God. That once I began to take the steps to forgive, and I remain open to love, then it will, in fact, happen that I will forgive.  After that conversation, I then had a short chat with my oldest friend who said exactly the same thing!  (See, Jo, I do listen!) She pushed me to talk to someone who hurt me, because holding it did nothing for either of us.

All that being said, I’m taking the first step.  I forgive those who inflicted me with some deep cuts so many years ago.  I will no longer justify holding on to that anger.  The more recent hurt, I also forgive those who caused it by their misguided judgement, and acknowledge that it was intended to be an act of kindness. And I forgive the people whose thoughtless words or actions made me feel inadequate, unimportant and unloved. If anyone thinks that they are the ones to whom I refer, please accept my forgiveness, and I will not hold a grudge against you. I ask God to grant me the grace that I need to fully release the hurt, and to help me heal.