At another church, there was a member of the congregation who thought it was his job to cause conflict in the church. That’s not just my opinion, it’s what he said. He thought that causing disorder was good for the church and would cause it to grow. Now growth often does cause some disorder to happen, because of the changes that come with growth, but I’ve never seen disorder leading to growth. After several tries to get him to behave in healthy ways, the situation began to escalate, and he ended up making what many people considered a death threat against me. After spending a morning arranging for an armed security guard to be present at the church, and talking with our attorney about the possibility of a restraining order, and working with the police, you could say that I wasn’t having a very good day. But in the midst of it, as I was praying for the turmoil I was feeling, I knew that the other person was also in turmoil and so I stopped praying for myself and I started praying for the other person. I prayed that God would give him peace and calm, the same thing that I was praying for. I didn’t ask for God to show him the errors of his way, simply that God would be with him. and you know what happened? A peace came over me and my anxiety dissipated, and I can say that I’m still working on the whole forgiveness thing the stone is much smaller than it was before.
And so, we continue looking at forgiveness we now get down into the nitty gritty. we began by looking at what forgiveness isn’t, so we could get passed some of the myths of what forgiveness, and then last week we talked about why we need to forgive and also started with the choice to begin the process of forgiveness by dropping one of the stones that we carry. And before we move into the steps of forgiveness, let me give you one more reason why we need to forgive. We need to forgive someone is because we have been hurt. But what do hurt people do? Hurt people, hurt people. Often the reason someone else has hurt us is because they too are hurt. Hurt people hurt people. Brokenness leads to more brokenness. When we talked about the fruit of the Spirit, one of them was peace, the Hebrew word for which was shalom, which you may remember has a connotation of healing and wholeness. And so, if we want that peace in our lives, if we want healing in our lives, then forgiveness is one of the paths towards that, because often if we refuse to forgive we get filled with anger, amongst other emotions, for what happened to us and how it continues to haunt us. And rather than directing our anger at the person to whom it comes from, we instead direct it others who had nothing to do with it, because that anger will seep out in other areas of our lives. And our hurts then hurt others, others begin to carry around rocks with our names on them. Or as Richard Rohr says, and I’ve quoted before, “pain that is not transformed is transmitted.” Forgiveness is the process by which we begin that transformation, that process to healing and wholeness, peace and shalom.
A very simple, basic definition of forgiveness is “the act
of setting someone free from an obligation to you that is a result of a wrong
done against you.” From a scriptural standpoint this is often set up using
economic language of a debt that someone owes to us, and that we choose not to
collect on. That we wipe the debt clean. Or we might say that we don’t seek the
other eye or the other tooth from Leviticus’ an eye for an eye and a tooth for
a tooth, which was not actually a call to revenge, as it’s often seen, but
actually setting limits and scaling back what revenge could be taken. Turning
the other cheek and seeking forgiveness is just the next step in that scaling
back. And so, forgiveness says that at the very least we are not going to seek
retribution for the wrongs that are done to us, but I think that’s only the
first step of forgiveness. And I think that because simply saying that we are
not going to retaliate does not say that we going to begin seeking healing and
wholeness for ourselves, or seeking to remove the pain and hurt we have
suffered, or dropping that rock that we are carrying around that came as a
result of the original violation.
And so, I have proposed instead a definition of forgiveness
that was given by Dr. Joanna North, who said, “When unjustly hurt by another,
we forgive when we overcome the resentment toward the offender, not by denying
our right to the resentment, but instead by trying to offer the wrongdoer
compassion, benevolence and love.” That
takes forgiveness a step beyond merely saying that it’s not just about revenge
but something more. It’s also about our
attitude towards the person who hurt us and matches much of what Jesus tells
us: “But I say to you that listen, Love your enemies, do good to those who hate
you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you.” It sounds
so easy right?
Now when I originally read Dr. North’s definition, I
rejected it. But the more I thought about it and studied forgiveness and begin
practicing, or at least dabbling in the things I am talking about, the more I
think she is right and came to claim this definition as my own. Because if you
have gone through the process of forgiveness and you still want bad things to
happen to the other person, then you’ve missed something along the way. And
more than likely because you want bad things to happen to them, you still hold
resentment, if not outright anger towards the person who hurt you. But, when we
go through the forgiveness process correctly, if it doesn’t change our feelings
of the other person then we are still holding back something. Now having
feelings of compassion, benevolence and love does not mean we are back in
relation with this person, because reconciliation and forgiveness do not have
to go together, and we’ll talk about that in two weeks. But if we are still
bitter it means that we have not been changed through the process, and more
than likely the hurt and pain of the wound are still there and so it needs more
work. Additionally, what it also means is that we have not freed the other
person to change, because what forgiveness also does is to open up the
possibility of redemption for the other person. That they are not stuck always
being the same person that hurt us, and when our attitudes about them change,
not only are they freed for us, but they are often freed to become something
different themselves.
And so, while we are commanded to forgive, including in the
passage we just heard, as I keep saying it’s a choice. No one, not even God can
make you forgive someone. And if you say that you cannot forgive someone, that
too is a choice. It’s not about your ability to do it, it’s about choosing not
to. And one other caveat is that we often thing, or sometimes we are told, “you
should forgive this person.” But the problem with should is that it often leads
to a path of guilt and misery. We end up shoulding all over ourselves, and then
on others. Instead, as a matter of semantics we might instead say, as I have
been encouraging “I choose to forgive,” or its opposite, or a little
differently as a start, “I would like to forgive,” or even “I aspire to
forgive.” That leaves some room for growth and for the inevitable mistakes and setbacks
that will happen along the way. And so, we start with the choice which leads
directly into the second step, or maybe step 1b, and that is prayer. As I said
the first week, I don’t think you can forgive, especially the big things,
without the help of God. Just like the Fruit of the Spirit, forgiveness is only
possible because of the work of the Spirit in our lives, opening us up to
forgiveness, even the possibility, and moving us through the steps to love. And
so, the whole process really needs to be bathed in love. And this doesn’t have
to be just your prayers but ask others to be in prayer for you as well.
Our prayers will take several forms, or steps. The first
part of the prayer is to ask for God for help in forgiving. It may start with just seeking the
willingness to forgive, the openness to be able to do it, then we move on to
asking for the help to forgive and being willing to let go. To ask for help in
every step, to ask for healing and for the ability to move beyond and even to
see the situation differently, and to be able to see the person who hurt us
differently, to see them as deserving of forgiveness, even if we don’t think
they are at the moment. To see them as a brother or sister, as God’s beloved
child. And that then leads into the next part which is to pray for them. This
is not us praying for justice, for them to recognize how they harmed us, or to
recognize how great we are and how bad they are. It’s not even to ask God for the person to
come see things our way. Instead it’s
simply to pray for them. To ask for
God’s blessings to be on them, even for good things to happen to them. At first it might be as simple as saying,
“God, I ask for your blessings to fall on them,” or maybe falling is not the
right word, but instead, “God, I ask for your blessings to flow over
them.” When you start you might have to
say it through clenched teeth, but that’s okay.
And it’s not enough to do it once, keep praying this prayer every single
day, or even multiple times a day, and I promise you that as you continue to do
that you will be transformed by God, because to continue to ask God’s blessings
for that person will change how you view them.
It will help us to begin to feel compassion, benevolence and love for
them. So, begin praying for them even
through clenched teeth.
After we begin to pray, the next step is to name exactly
what it is that we want to forgive and why. and we’ll start out with the fact
that “it wasn’t fair,” is not a reason.
But let’s say that someone broke into your house and stole from
you. You might think that that’s what
has you upset, but I’m willing to guess it’s much deeper than that. That what you are actually upset about is the
sense of safety and security that you had felt in your home, that you no longer
feel. But that is very different than
just having to forgive them from breaking in.
Or perhaps they stole something from you that was an heirloom, or meant
a lot from you, that can never be replaced, and so they have stolen a memory
from you. Or perhaps someone cheated
you. Then it might be about the breaking
of trust, or the lies that were told, or maybe the embarrassment that you felt
if it became public, or if they made you seem like it was your fault or you
were imagining things. Name the actual
actions that need to be forgiven.
Next, be clear about what all the emotions you feel about
what happened. Maybe what you think all
you feel is anger, but in fact when you think more, you also experience sadness
or vulnerability, or lack of safety.
There are lots of things that go into what that happen to us, and so we
have to name all of them so that we can deal with all of them. Our hurts don’t have to bring hatred or
anger. If we get a sense of anxiety in
thinking about what happened, or becoming tense, or our stomach gets upset,
then those are feelings we need to recognize, because they are a part of our
fight or flight response, that our body is putting out so that we can deal with
what the nervous system thinks is an immediate threat, even though the event
may have happened a long time before.
What we also have to do as part of this is to remember that while the
event is in our past, what we are feeling is not in the past. Instead the feelings we have we are
experiencing in the present and they are controlling us in the present, which
also means that we have control of them in the present. We cannot control what happened in the past,
but we control what is happening to us now, including what we are feeling now.
Once you’ve begun this work, then you might consider asking one
of the people you’ve asked to be praying for you in this process to help you by
listening to your story. This does several things, and this is not just another
opportunity to rehash your grievance, this is the telling of your story in a
new and different way. Doing this gives
you a sounding board, someone who can ask you questions to see if you are
missing things, and to keep you honest with yourself about the true hurts, and
to be honest with you about what they observe.
The second thing it does is to help you realize that you are not alone
in what is going on. Often these hurts
leave us silent and feeling alone and isolated.
Telling someone else takes us out of that isolation so that we know we
are not alone. Third it allows others to
help carry our pain with us. Paul tells
us that we are to carry one another’s burdens, and this is one way we do
that. And finally, it also allows us to
begin to tell the story in a different way so that we stop being the victim of
what happened and instead we become the hero in the story we tell about our own
life because we are the ones controlling what we are feeling about it and what
we are doing about it. We are no longer
letting the person who hurt us control our thoughts and actions. And if this
hurt is something that may need to be reported to the authorities, if you have
not already done so, this is a good place to do that, remembering you can have
someone prosecuted and practice forgiveness.
Then we move onto the process of saying it to the person who
hurt us. We don’t actually have to do this actually to them, and we’ll get into
this more next week, because in many, or even in most cases, it’s probably
better if you don’t actually confront the person whom you are working on
forgiving. Sometimes that’s necessary, but often it can be done without them. But
telling them can take the form of writing them a letter, that you are never
going to send, or putting two chairs facing each other, and you sit in one, and
the other is empty but you visualize the other person being there and you tell
them your story and process as much as you can. This does not have to happen in
one sitting, and if it is a multitude of hurts it actually needs to be done as
separate events so that you can process all the stories and emotions at
separate times in order to get everything out.
And again, we’ll return to this, but then once again we
close in prayer, and this is sort of a cleansing prayer, which I have altered
from a prayer by Charles Stanley, and say something like this: “O God of
forgiveness, as I have been forgiven and given your free and unmerited grace,
now I offer forgiveness and grace to this person. I free them and myself from
the wrong that was done to me. I turn them over into your love and I wish them
no harm. Free me from any memories that may haunt me or discourage me from
continuing to forgive. Help me to walk in the freedom and strength that is only
possible through relationship with you. I turn all my negative feelings over to
you and seek to live in your love and to offer it to all, and I know I may do
this only through the power of the Holy Spirit. I pray this in the name of
Jesus, who showed forgiveness. Amen.”
The great James Baldwin said, “I imagine one of the reasons people cling to their hates so stubbornly is because they sense, once hate is gone, they will be forced to deal with pain.” Forgiveness is how we deal with this pain in order to transform our hates and hurts in order to learn to live in love and to be merciful as God is merciful, so that we may indeed “Love our enemies, do good to those who hate us, bless those who curse us and pray for those who abuse us.” I pray that it will be so my brothers and sisters. Amen.
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