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Tuesday, June 14, 2005
Don't forgive, and your anger will become your burden.
Don't forgive, and bit by bit all the joy will be choked out of you.
Don't forgive, and you will be unable to trust anybody, ever again.
Don't forgive, and the bitterness will crowd the compassion out of your heart slowly, utterly, forever.
Don't forgive, and that little grudge you nurse will grow larger, and stronger.
Although you may think you can hide it from everyone you know, in time it will become a moster of hostility, and one day it will kill you.
All that will be left of what was once a person is bitterness and hate.
And that bitterness will spread.
True forgiveness is never cheap. Hurt is deep; hurt is unfair. You want the offenders to know the pain they have inflicted on you. You want them to get paid back. In fact, only one thing I know costs more than forgiving someone. Know what it is? Not forgiving them. Non-forgiveness costs your heart.
Some things forgiveness is not
Forgiveness is not the same thing as excusing. Excusing is what we do when we consider extenuating circumstances for our behaviour. We excuse eight-year-olds boys for making bodily noises because they are eight-year-olds. Forgiveness does not mean tolerating bad behavior or pretending that what someone did was not so bad. When an action is excusable, it does not require forgiveness.
Forgiveness is not forgetting. All that forgetting requires is a really bad memory. I forget where I parked my car or put my keys. This does not mean I have an advanced soul, just some badly misfiring neurons. Sometimes, if a hurt is severe enough, it can be buried away out of fear or truma. It is in some sense forgotten, but it hasn't been forgiven. Scripture writers sometimes use the language of "forgetting" to describe how God deals with our sin, but this doesn't mean that God has a memory retrieval problem. I means that our past sins become irrelevant to his dealings with us. Forgiving is what's required precisely when we can't forget.
Forgiving is not the same thing as reconciling. People sometimes think that forgiving someone means we must reunite with them no matter what-- that a wife must move back in with a brute that beats her, or a businessman must take back a dishonest parner as many times requested. Forgiveness takes place within the heart of one human being. It can be granted even if the other person does not ask or deserve it. Reconciliation requires that the offender still be alive and be sincerely repentant for the wrong he/she committed.
What forgiveness is
When I forgive you, I set you free from the little prison I have placed in my mind for holding you captive. I seek to stop entertaining fantasies of vengeance in which you are tortured or suddenly gain fifty pounds.
Forgiveness begins when you give up the quest to get even. Of course, letting go of vengeance doesn't mean letting go of justice. Justice must still be honoured. A kidnapper may be forgiven by his victim, but he still needs to pay his debt to society. Justice involves the pursuit of fairness. Vengeace is the desire for retribution.
The next stage of forgiveness involves a new way of seeing and feeling. One thing that happens when we get deeply hurt is that as we look at the one who hurt us, we don't see a person--only the hurt. When we hold fast to unforgiveness toward another person, we tend to believe only bad things about them. We want to think of them only in terms of the hurt they have caused us. We want to forget their humanity.
When we forgive each other, we begin to see more clearly. We do not ignore the hurts, but we see beyond them. We rediscover the humanity of the one who hurt us. He is no longer an uncollected debt of pain. He is the product of fallible mother and father-- just as I am.
The third stage of forgiving, the one that shows you have begun to make some real progress, is when you find yourself wishing the other person well. You no longer hope the only calls they get will be from the IRS. You find that your prayers no longer drift into anger fantasies in which your enemy finally realizes he's treated you horribly but it's too late to make amends and he will spend eternity wallowing in unrelieved guilt.
You hope good things for them. you can hear someone say a kind word about them without inwardly screaming for rebuttal time. You genuinely hope that things are well between them and God, that their life is happy.
Of course, this does not happen all at once. And it ususally doesn't happen once-for-all; you will have some backsliding, some moments when you would like to hear they've gotten bald or fat or have been turned down by a dating service. But the trajectory of the heart is headed in the right direction. When you want good things for someone who hurt you badly, you can pretty much know that the Great Forgiver has been at work in your heart.
"When you have experienced forgiveness-- you know you are in deep trouble, and the person decides to let it go, you will know how it feels like when someone else is in deep trouble and needs forgiveness. You will be more likely to forgive. " Sam
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Eveline pops at |12:15 AM|
Captivate my heart, dear Jesus
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Don't forgive, and your anger will become your burden.
Don't forgive, and bit by bit all the joy will be choked out of you.
Don't forgive, and you will be unable to trust anybody, ever again.
Don't forgive, and the bitterness will crowd the compassion out of your heart slowly, utterly, forever.
Don't forgive, and that little grudge you nurse will grow larger, and stronger.
Although you may think you can hide it from everyone you know, in time it will become a moster of hostility, and one day it will kill you.
All that will be left of what was once a person is bitterness and hate.
And that bitterness will spread.
True forgiveness is never cheap. Hurt is deep; hurt is unfair. You want the offenders to know the pain they have inflicted on you. You want them to get paid back. In fact, only one thing I know costs more than forgiving someone. Know what it is? Not forgiving them. Non-forgiveness costs your heart.
Some things forgiveness is not
Forgiveness is not the same thing as excusing. Excusing is what we do when we consider extenuating circumstances for our behaviour. We excuse eight-year-olds boys for making bodily noises because they are eight-year-olds. Forgiveness does not mean tolerating bad behavior or pretending that what someone did was not so bad. When an action is excusable, it does not require forgiveness.
Forgiveness is not forgetting. All that forgetting requires is a really bad memory. I forget where I parked my car or put my keys. This does not mean I have an advanced soul, just some badly misfiring neurons. Sometimes, if a hurt is severe enough, it can be buried away out of fear or truma. It is in some sense forgotten, but it hasn't been forgiven. Scripture writers sometimes use the language of "forgetting" to describe how God deals with our sin, but this doesn't mean that God has a memory retrieval problem. I means that our past sins become irrelevant to his dealings with us. Forgiving is what's required precisely when we can't forget.
Forgiving is not the same thing as reconciling. People sometimes think that forgiving someone means we must reunite with them no matter what-- that a wife must move back in with a brute that beats her, or a businessman must take back a dishonest parner as many times requested. Forgiveness takes place within the heart of one human being. It can be granted even if the other person does not ask or deserve it. Reconciliation requires that the offender still be alive and be sincerely repentant for the wrong he/she committed.
What forgiveness is
When I forgive you, I set you free from the little prison I have placed in my mind for holding you captive. I seek to stop entertaining fantasies of vengeance in which you are tortured or suddenly gain fifty pounds.
Forgiveness begins when you give up the quest to get even. Of course, letting go of vengeance doesn't mean letting go of justice. Justice must still be honoured. A kidnapper may be forgiven by his victim, but he still needs to pay his debt to society. Justice involves the pursuit of fairness. Vengeace is the desire for retribution.
The next stage of forgiveness involves a new way of seeing and feeling. One thing that happens when we get deeply hurt is that as we look at the one who hurt us, we don't see a person--only the hurt. When we hold fast to unforgiveness toward another person, we tend to believe only bad things about them. We want to think of them only in terms of the hurt they have caused us. We want to forget their humanity.
When we forgive each other, we begin to see more clearly. We do not ignore the hurts, but we see beyond them. We rediscover the humanity of the one who hurt us. He is no longer an uncollected debt of pain. He is the product of fallible mother and father-- just as I am.
The third stage of forgiving, the one that shows you have begun to make some real progress, is when you find yourself wishing the other person well. You no longer hope the only calls they get will be from the IRS. You find that your prayers no longer drift into anger fantasies in which your enemy finally realizes he's treated you horribly but it's too late to make amends and he will spend eternity wallowing in unrelieved guilt.
You hope good things for them. you can hear someone say a kind word about them without inwardly screaming for rebuttal time. You genuinely hope that things are well between them and God, that their life is happy.
Of course, this does not happen all at once. And it ususally doesn't happen once-for-all; you will have some backsliding, some moments when you would like to hear they've gotten bald or fat or have been turned down by a dating service. But the trajectory of the heart is headed in the right direction. When you want good things for someone who hurt you badly, you can pretty much know that the Great Forgiver has been at work in your heart.
"When you have experienced forgiveness-- you know you are in deep trouble, and the person decides to let it go, you will know how it feels like when someone else is in deep trouble and needs forgiveness. You will be more likely to forgive. " Sam
- Everybody's normal till you get to know them
Eveline pops at |12:15 AM|