The Lonely Act of Forgiveness

Dear Forgiving Fellowship:

I’m musing this morning about a time in my life when I struggled to forgive. This comes at a time when there is so much hostility dividing families, communities, the nation...and perhaps because of this, I am thinking again about why Scripture commands us to forgive the sins of others when, sometimes, I don’t want to.

In my own life, the operative issue about forgiveness is how we think of it as reconciliation. While Scripture does command us to forgive, reconciliation is seen as a work in progress, because we are warned about reconciling with evil. We are commanded to forgive; we aspire to reconciliation.

In my own time of unforgiveness, I found I had become obsessed with individuals who had lied about me, attacking my character. In return, my unforgiving spirit allowed them to take residence in my brain; they occupied space which should be used for more productive and happier thoughts. Unforgiveness grew an internal hostility, like a virus attacks host cells, changing their DNA into something that becomes toxic to the organism. Unforgiveness was beginning to twist my own functioning, shadowing my every thought.

Letting go of my revenge fantasies and anxious preoccupation with winning was difficult. I kept thinking that forgiveness would require a negotiated settlement with evil, but negotiation is not necessary for forgiveness; it is the precursor for reconciliation. Reconciliation is something that happens between people; forgiveness is something that happens within us.

The supreme example is God's forgiveness of us. We are forgiven. God does not allow our sin to change God's love for us. God's attitude towards us and creation remains the same regardless of what we're doing. As human beings trusting God, we are invited to the same changeless strength. With the help of the Holy Spirit, we learn that hate compromises our mental and spiritual immune system, allowing the evil of another to become a justification for our own self-destructive response. We become like them, perhaps not stooping to their level of deceit, but certainly within our heads and hearts we degenerate, becoming preoccupied and dysfunctional.

Forgiveness is a stand-alone decision that happens within us. It is holding fast to the commitment, "I will not allow what someone else has done to me to become grounds to diminish my ‘self’, my values, my priorities." We can forgive even without interaction or change on the part of the other.

Reconciliation is another matter, about which I will write more next week. In the meantime, I’m considering the lonely but liberating work of forgiveness as I remain,

With Love,
Jonathan Krogh
Your Pastor