Refusing to Forgive
Psalm 50: 1 – 6, 16 - 23
Last week, I saw the interview with the mom whose
15-year-old son had just been shot. She stood there, every fiber
of her body radiating the numbness of overwhelming pain and loss, and
said, “I forgive the man who shot my son.” I am going to go out
on a limb here—but I’ll bet that she will find it very hard to go very
long feeling that way.
Like most of us within the Christian faith, we’ve
been raised with an on-going litany of sayings about
forgiveness—“forgive and forget” we are urged over and over.
We’re often warned that if we don’t forgive, we will suffer emotional
harm ourselves. We read that Jesus told his followers to forgive
seventy times seven, and remember that he shared the story of the
Prodigal Son being welcomed back home with forgiveness—a party instead
of consequences for his foolishness. The New Testament speaks
often of God’s forgiveness and grace. We are a forgiven people;
aren’t we Christians SUPPOSED to do what this grieving mother did—to
forgive those who hurt us?
The answer is, of course, more complicated than a simple “yes” or “no.”
Let’s look first at how we actually practice
forgiveness. Our capacity to remember injustices, real or
imagined, our ability to dredge up slights and reopen old wounds is
almost limitless. I was thinking back to my own childhood—and
have to confess that I remember well the time my mom used a switch on
me—the one and ONLY time she lost her temper with me. But I don’t
remember nearly as clearly all those multitude of times when she told
me she loved me and gave me a hug. I vividly remember still the
pain of betrayal when I discovered my first husband was having an
affair; the hot feeling of embarrassment when some kid delivering a
package ridiculed the way I was singing as a child; and the fear I felt
when someone tried to break into my house while I was home when I was
living in East Bakersfield. It is much easier to remember
the wrongs done to us—“forgive and forget” just doesn’t seem to
work.
Things that hurt us just don’t roll off our backs
like a duck because we invoke this old saying. I think the reason
is because “forgive and forget” implies a disengagement, a removal of
self from the pain that is not only unrealistic but also
counterproductive. True forgiveness requires that we do something
unusual—that we become deeply and personally involved with the
offending party and situation. It’s much easier to suffer in
silence and just let it go--at least that’s what we try to convince
ourselves--because really achieving forgiveness is hard work.
Walter Wangerin suggested forgiveness is a six-step
process. It begins by preparing ourselves deep within.
First, we must be realistic. Being realistic begins by truthfully
and clearly answering three questions:
first, define just what it is that requires forgiveness. what was the sin? and
against whom was it committed?
secondly, what exactly are the consequences of the sin? It’s easy to gather up
a multitude of hurts and layer all those remembered errors into an ever larger
sense of injury
third, we must focus upon the specific event or problem and define it precisely.
No fair making the accusation so vague that there is no way to address it.
The second step also is an inner preparation.
Wangerin points out that “the sins we see easiest in others we learned
first in ourselves; we know their behavior and their signs from
the inside.” We must become aware of the need all of us share for
the gift of God’s grace and forgiveness—as the old communion recitation
goes, “We acknowledge and bewail our manifold sins and wickedness,
which we from time to time most grievously have committed, by thought,
word, and deed, against they divine majesty. We do earnestly
repent, and are heartily sorry for these our misdoings; the
remembrance of them is grievous unto us.” We are all sinners in
need of forgiveness.
The third step of the forgiveness process is perhaps
the most difficult—that of giving away our rights to justice.
Justice requires “a tooth for a tooth,” a death for a death, an
equivalent pain for the pain caused. We can see the ravages
“getting even” have caused in families torn apart by conflict—they can
be identified as easily as the consequences of “getting even” between
the Israelis and the Palestinians, the Serbians and the Croats, the
Sunnis and the Shiites. True forgiveness does not keep score, or
demand a reckoning.
The fourth step is almost as difficult. This
is the point where we move from our interior work to actually engaging
in compassionate, confrontational communication between the one to be
forgiven and the forgiver. The specifics identified in that first
step must now be communicated. And such communication requires
courage, for it brings out into the open the hurt that has been
experienced, and exposes the weakness and wound you feel. It is
hard to admit that someone else has successfully inflicted pain on you,
that you are miserable or suffering because of the actions of another,
that you are vulnerable.
The next step requires you to follow words with
actions—identifying a wrong and voicing forgiveness is empty is your
behavior continues to punish the offender for what they did. In a
marriage, this is the “kiss and make up and mean it” stage. But
you’re not quite done. The final step is to establish a covenant
between the two parties, one that defines the kind of behavior that
will be expected from each other in the future. We all need
guidelines, limits, known expectations in order to adjust our behavior
accordingly. A newly healed relationship can be built upon such a
covenant between two people.
So that is the “yes” half of forgiveness. But
are there ever times when one does NOT forgive? Jeanne Safer
argued in an article in Psychology Today that there are times when “the
most moral of stances is to refuse to pardon.” She wrote about
the case of Sandy Katz, a woman who grew up with a violent bully of an
older brother.
As a child, he abused her with a screwdriver, and
even set her on fire. Throughout all this violence, her parents
looked the other way and never acknowledged what he did to her.
“He continued to behave this way and they continued to insist that I
submit,” recalled Sandy; “my mother would say, ‘He’s just trying
to get close to you because he doesn’t know how to be friends.”
Because some parents believe family harmony requires
the sacrifice of one child to another’s viciousness, they will end up
urging the victim to “rise above it.” It took until the age of 35
for Sandy to refuse to acquiesce any longer to her parents’ “let’s just
get along” pleadings. At that point, she wrote her brother
outlining the injury he had done to her, and demanded he acknowledge it
before she would speak to him again. Her parents, as well as her
brother, became furious with Sandy, and excused the brother’s behavior
by saying, “All children fight” and “why can’t you let bygones be
bygones?” Sandy can’t let bygones be bygones any more—she has
become what is called a “moral unforgiver,” refusing to forgive her
brother until he takes some responsibility for his actions. She
does not believe in cheap grace, or easy forgiveness; truth, justice
and reconciliation require more than just mouthing the words, “I
forgive you.”
God speaks through the psalmist: “You give your
mouth free rein for evil, and your tongue frames deceit. You sit
and speak against your kin; you slander your own mother’s
child. These things you have done and I have been silent;
you thought that I was one just like yourself. But now I rebuke
you, and lay the charge before you. Mark this, then, you who
forget God, or I will tear you apart, and there will be no one to
deliver……”
Jesus once said, “Do not judge, so that you may not
be judged,” but he was warning us about judging others while absolving
ourselves. He went right on urge us to apply the same high standards to
ourselves as we do to others: “for with the judgment you make you will
be judged and the measure you give will be the measure you get.”
Jesus NEVER suggested that we should be morally and emotionally blind
to injustice, either for ourselves or for others.
We Christians are to be truth-tellers, clear-eyed
about evil and unwilling to dispense cheap grace. We must hold
ourselves to the same set of expectations that we have for others so
that we can all stand on equal footing before God. God will
judge—and judge us all.
Forgiveness is not about forgetting—it is all about
restoring relationships—totally honest, grace-filled, mercy-blessed,
forgiven relationships, with each other and with God.
That’s something worth working a lifetime for. Amen.
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