Forgiveness... How?

Forgiveness is something that I know, at least for myself, I've struggled with, and I'm sure many of you have as well. There's nothing wrong with the fact that you've struggled, it's a really important, and yet really difficult principle. And I know it's important, and I know why it's important. I've seen the wonderful things that can happen when you do forgive . . .

But it's the nuts-and-bolts of making it happen that's the hard part. And that's what I want to talk about today.

But first, a little groundwork. What is 'forgiveness'?

The popular idea of forgiveness is usually encapsulated in the snippet 'forgive and forget'. This dime-store psychology implies that, sooner or later, you should just put everything behind you, and get back to a point in your relationship with the person that hurt you, to when you were chums. That may be an achievable goal if you're only mad at your BFF for roasting you on the group chat.

But what if that person is your abuser? What if they have done so much damage to you, or those you love, that you will be years sweeping up the pieces of a shattered soul and trying to figure out why you shouldn't just chuck it all in the dustbin? If you will be needing professional help to deal with the fallout? What if this person has figuratively, or literally, burned you alive?

What if they've made you wish you were dead?

I'd like to take a moment to review what's actually expected of us. We are encouraged to forgive as many times as someone asks it of us, and is genuinely repentant. However, if they are not, and they pose a real threat to our welfare, we are allowed to defend ourselves. After all, if they take your coat, you should be willing to give them your cloak, but there is nothing said about handing over your shirt and your shoes as well. (A thoughtful and knowledgeable friend of mine once pointed out that in ancient Jewish culture, the shame of seeing someone naked was on the beholder, not the person with no clothing. So to give someone the rest of your clothes was actually forcing them to acknowledge the shame of your destitution that they caused, and was in fact a form of passive resistance.)

So forgive as often as forgiveness is asked, but protect yourself. We are expected to forgive those who ask it of us, but the other person must put something into it – they must be asking with repentance and real intent. We're better off giving them the benefit of the doubt if we're not certain of their sincerity, but in any case we are not required to put ourselves in harm's way again indefinitely.

But what about to the process of forgiveness? How do we actually make this work? I want to explain this with a metaphor, and I'm going to use a debt of money.

You make someone a loan. They have now received something of yours, that wasn't theirs. Eventually you want payment made on that loan. You want your money back.

What payment do we want made on an offense?

We want . . . revenge.

We want to see them suffer.

We want them to feel our pain.

That's really it, isn't it?

If you forgive a monetary debt, you no longer require the money to be returned. You don't require that pound of silver. In like fashion, when you forgive an offense, you no longer expect to get back that pound of flesh.

You no longer desire, or at least expect, to watch the other person suffer. We aren't supposed to seek the misfortune of another, and desiring to see them suffer falls under that.

Training yourself to forgo wishing suffering onto another person, even if, or especially if, they deserve it, makes you a better person.

What about forgetting? This, I think, is really the hardest part. Once a trust has been broken it's very difficult to rebuild it. My question is, is it really necessary to rebuild that trust? Can you ever hang out like buddies again?

Should you?

When a monetary debt is forgiven, the payment is written off. But the record of the unpaid debt remains. Only when it is removed from that credit report is it officially forgotten. But even so the credit score will still be in the tank until the debtor can prove they can responsibly handle a new debt. But that is on the shoulders of the debtor, and it is their burden to convince someone to give them a new debt with which to prove themselves.

We, as the people whose forgiveness is sought after, are like the credit reporting agencies. If we forget the debt, we take it off their 'report'.

We don't remind them of it.

We don't throw it up in their face every time we see them.

We don't gripe to other people about it, or make suggestive hints to others about their past mistakes.

There is an obvious exception to that last, if the person is a real, predatory threat to those who don't know them, where failing to warn another person away would put them at risk. But in most circumstances, if one of our friends asks why we don't associate with the offender any more, and keeping the situation quiet would do our friend no harm, there is really no reason to air old dirty laundry.

The offender's credit with us may not be very good, and it may take a long time for them – for them – to change that, if they ever do, but we are no longer keeping score on what they've done.

But there is nothing that says you have to make them a new loan, that you have to put yourself in that position again.

Unfortunately our culture has distorted the truth of this very important principle. Well-meaning folks toss off the phrase to 'forgive and forget', and don't give you any context or practical advice, which leaves you feeling somehow inadequate when you can't do that. Now don't get me wrong, it's good if you can actually forgive, and forget, and be buds again. But sometimes that isn't achievable. Sometimes the wounds are too deep.

Now I am not here to let you off the hook for trying to reconcile. That is always the goal. It would be a truly wonderful world if we really could put all our past hurts behind us. But human lives are messy, and sometimes people exercise their own agency to the severe harm of others.

In order to put your own soul at peace, what you need to do in a nutshell, is, first, stop seeking the other person's suffering, and second, stop talking it up.

If that's all you can manage, start with that. Then see how far you can get from there.

In any case do not, under any circumstances, think there is something wrong with you because you can't bring yourself to take a seat on the park bench next to that person who abused you. Even if it is all you can do, to accomplish these two things I mentioned, then you can hold your head up.