What Forgiveness Is … and Is Not
When I was
in graduate school, before I had ever even met my lovely wife, mind you…when I
was in graduate school, I dated for a brief but kind of intense period of time
an undergraduate woman named Cindy. And
we got to the place where by Thanksgiving of that year, I visited her family
for the holiday, and we were making some plans where she would come to
But before that happened, she decided that she would break
off that relationship. No particular
reasons were given, she just decided that she would end that relationship. And when I got back to school from the
Christmas break, I heard through the grapevine, not from her you need to
understand, I heard through the grapevine that she had got engaged to an old
boyfriend over the Christmas break — somebody that she had looked in me the
face and promised me that she was completely over. Well, let’s just say, I had some strong
feelings about that, shall we? And I
kind of wanted to forgive her, I really did.
And I tried to forgive her, but it felt to me like I hadn’t forgiven
her.
After several months of wrestling with this, I went to talk
to my pastor; and he asked me series of important questions. First of all, he asked me, “Do you want to
hurt her?” I said, “Define hurt.” No, no.
“Not so much anymore,” I said.
“Do you hate her?”
“Well, no, not really. I don’t
think she set out to hurt me and if she did, then there’s something wrong with
her. I don’t hate her.”
And he said, “Do you spend all of your time worrying about
the wrong that she did to you?” “Well,
not all of my time. And it gets to be
less of my time every month.”
He said, “Well, here’s what I think you ought to do. I think you ought to call it forgiveness and
move on. And I said, “But-but-but I
don’t trust her yet.”
And he said, “Well, why would you?” And I said, “But-but-but I don’t want to talk
to her, I don’t want to have a relationship with her.”
“Well, you don’t have to.”
It was for me a sort of Forgiveness 101. And I have been learning and learning about
forgiveness ever since. See, I think I
took into that moment an understanding of forgiveness that went something like
this: To forgive somebody, everything
goes back to the way it used to be.
Well, I think it might be a more realistic to think that when you
forgive somebody, you find a way to move on.
You need a different understanding of forgiveness.
So, one of the reasons – it’s only one of the reasons – but
one of the reasons I think why people have so much trouble forgiving others is
that they carry around with them some misunderstandings of what forgiveness
is. If you have a wrong understanding of
what forgiveness is, well, it’s pretty hard to truly forgive somebody.
I’ve listed on your sheet, several of what I take to be the
most common misunderstandings of what forgiveness is. The first one, well, people say, “You just
need to forgive and forget,” right? What
a bunch of hooey! It’s just not
possible. Our brains don’t work that
way; and even if we could forget, it wouldn’t be advisable, would it? If you actually forgot when other people hurt
you, what would do? Well, you’d just
keep putting yourself back in the same positions and let the hurt you
again. Forgive, yes; forget, not a good
idea.
Some people think that to forgive somebody is really just
condoning what they have done. I don’t
believe that. And I want you do a little
exercise to show you the difference between condoning and forgiveness. You need to find a partner for this – one
other person that you can have a conversation with. Find that person now, quickly. The faster you do that, the more quickly we
get through this sermon, huh?
Person A and Person B – Person A has done something wrong to
Person B. Person A is going to say, “I’m
sorry.” And Person B is going to respond
in two different ways. Now, first,
Person B, say this, “Oh, think nothing of it.”
Now this time, Person A, say, “I’m sorry.” This time Person B say, “I forgive you.”
Do you feel the difference?
Do you feel the difference?
Usually, we say, “Oh, that’s all right.
Don’t worry about it.” That’s
condoning. Forgiveness acknowledges that
harm has been done, that a wrong has been committed. Oh, it’s saying we’re going to go on, we’re
going to find a way to live and love together, but forgiveness acknowledges,
starts with the recognition that a wrong has been done. It doesn’t condone. Forgiveness starts with the recognition that
wrong has been done.
The next two kind of go together. Forgiveness does not depend upon an apology
and forgiveness is not the same thing as reconciliation. Sometimes you’ll hear people say something
like, “Ah, I can’t forgive her. She
hasn’t said I’m sorry yet.” Well, if you
come with that attitude, the other person is in control of your behavior.
Um. And that’s not the way it should
be. See, the other person should be in
control of whether they say they’re sorry or not, right? And you should be in control of whether you
choose to forgive or not. And you can do
that no matter what the other person does.
They’re in charge of their behavior, you’re in charge of your behavior,
and you don’t have to wait for an apology to forgive them.
Forgiveness and reconciliation are obviously related to one
another; and it’s sort of our hope, most of the time, that when you forgive
somebody that it leads to reconciliation, that you can kiss and make up. That you can continue to live and work with
one another.
But not always. For
example, what if the person you need to forgive has died? What if a long time they moved away and you
don’t know where they are? What if, for
example, the person who has harmed him, what if it would not be healthy, what
if it wouldn’t even be safe for you to have a relationship with them?
See, you can still forgive them. You may never tell them. They may never know. They don’t need to know. But you can still do it because sometimes we
forgive not for the sake of the other person, we forgive for our sake. Because if we don’t, the anger and the
bitterness and the hatred will eat us up inside and turn us into a person we
don’t really want to be.
Some people think forgiveness is cut and dried, it’s easy
and quick. Yesterday you hurt me and
today I forgive me and let’s move on.
Well, I started seminary with a woman. She was in my supervision group, and she was
just – I mean, she was just out of this long-term abusive relationship with a
man that she had lived with. And we all
wondered how in the world she was going to able to handle the demands of
seminary and ministry with all of these fresh wounds in her heart. And she said, “Well, that’s easy, I have
forgiven him. That was then,” she said,
“and this is now.” Well, um, it was just
a few months later and she dropped out of seminary and had to have inpatient
treatment for depression. Um, it’s not
quick and it’s not easy.
See, I think forgiveness is not so much a destination that
you arrive at, it’s more a process that you engage in. It might be wrong, finally, to ask somebody,
have you forgiven that person. It might
be better to ask: Are you in the process
of forgiving that person?
This year, do you feel like you’re closer to forgiving them
than you were last year? Forgiveness
isn’t quick and it isn’t easy. And let’s
not fool ourselves.
Finally, there are some people who object to
forgiveness. They don’t want anything to
do with forgiveness because they think forgiveness is weak and naïve. They say, “Well, if you forgive people, it’s
just like letting them walk all over you and it doesn’t take seriously that
some people are just bad and you shouldn’t forgive them.”
Well, I disagree. I
think that to forgive somebody takes the most strength and the most courage of
anything that a human being can do. And
here’s a way you can forgive somebody, you can stand and say, “I forgive you
and I will never let you treat me like that again.”
See, there is nothing weak, there is nothing naïve about
forgiveness. It’s the strongest that a
human being can be.
So if those are things that forgiveness is not, well,
Pastor, what is forgiveness anyway?
Well, like almost everything spiritual, forgiveness finally
is a process of letting go. It’s a
process, isn’t it, Claudia, of letting go.
Claudia and I have had this conversation a lot of times.
First of all, forgiveness is the process of letting go of
vengeance, of wanting to get back at people.
Now, this does not mean that there is no accountability and there are no
consequences for our actions. I can
forgive you but if you have broken the law, you’re still going to have to pay
your fine, you may still have to go to jail.
There are consequences.
For example, if a pastor crosses a sexual boundary, I
believe that pastor should be forgiven but one of the consequences might be
that that person can never again exercise the authority of clergy. This is not punishment; it’s just
consequences.
That forgiveness means letting to of vengeance is true in
several ways:
Theologically:
Rom 12 Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord (quoting from
Deut). You see, if anyone needs to be
paid back for their wrongs, there is someone in charge of that. And it’s not you and it’s not me, God will
take care of it. We can let go of
that.
It is psychologically valid to let go of a
need to get back at people. Bishop
Desmond Tutu has written: “Anger,
resentment, lust for revenge are corrosive of the good.” He says that to forgive isn’t just
altruistic. It is the highest form of
self-interest. He says, “When I try to
dehumanize you, I always end up dehumanizing myself.”
Letting go of vengeance just makes practical, common sense.
Again, Bishop Tutu says in
The only way to interrupt the cycle is for somebody to dare
to forgiveness. It just makes common
sense.
And finally, forgiveness is a form of letting go of having
someone else be in control of your life.
Without forgiving somebody, they continue to control some of
your emotions. They get to pull the
strings in your heart. If you haven’t
forgiven someone, they get to decide how you feel. They get to decide how happy you’re going to
be. They get to decide how emotionally
well you are able to be. But you can let
go of that. You can let go of that
person and you can take back control of your own life.
Now, I know. I know,
there’s nothing easy about that. One of
the hardest things to do is to let go of people who have had that kind of
influence in your life, all of that time.
But finally, do you want to be in charge of your own life or do you want
that person who has injured you, maybe the person who has been the most
damaging in your life, do you want them to continue to control your emotions?
There is an old story, a dialogue, that is repeated of two
former prisoners of war, and one of them says to the other one, “Have you
forgiven your captors yet?”
The other says, “No, never!”
The first one says, “Well, then, they still have you in
prison, don’t they?”
Finally, forgiveness is spiritual practice of letting go. It
is letting go of vengeance and need to get back at people. It is the letting go our inner shame and pain
and hatred. It is the letting go of
having other people control our lives.
And so I end with this quotation from a Zen teacher about
letting go. It’s from Ajahn Chah, who
has said,
“If you let go a little
“you will have a little happiness.
“If you let go a lot
“you will have a lot of happiness.
“If you let go completely,
“you will be free.”
Amen.