Forgiveness – messy and raw
It is hard to forgive from the heart, that is for sure. Today we unpack:
Forgiving yourself
First, forgiving yourself for indiscretions done unwittingly and the forgiveness required when you have done something knowingly with, sometimes, reckless abandon.
Secondly and oddly, we sometimes are so mad at God, we find ourselves at odds with Him and strangely feeling like we need to forgive God. Right off the bat I can tell you what Psalm 51:4 has to say on that issue, I quote:
Against you, you only, have I sinned
and done what is evil in your sight;
so you are right in your verdict
and justified when you judge.
In other words, we are the ones who sin against God and sin is the reason forgiveness is essential, it is why Jesus had to come. There was a massive sin problem that had to be dealt with and his life was the ransom. We have no right to feel as though God wronged us, but you know what, all of us are going to spend time on that block one time or another, feeling that God disappointed us or did us wrong. I share more later on.
Forgiving others
Lastly, there is forgiving others who have trampled our trust or broken our hearts. And then we need forgiveness from others – all very challenging, isn’t it?
Anyone who has ever been betrayed by the people held most dear, know a thing or two about struggling with forgiveness. The ever-so-rude, cutting comment or slight is normally not what gets people full of ire, it is the stuff that hurts deep, deep inside while pain and anger are the inevitable results of that wrongdoing.
Consequences of not forgiving
Think of someone who is innocently condemned for a crime; or a bystander seriously injured because someone’s political stance has led them to lay a landmine or plant a bomb; or the person who was pushed in front of an oncoming train, experiencing life-altering injuries.
The stuff of nightmares really and all because of someone else’s wrong choices or their reckless mistakes: when someone other than the perpetrator has had to reap the consequences. Why should you forgive in the first place? Think about it … If you were in that hapless victim’s shoes, how would you respond?
What would your automatic response be? Would you be in the mood to hear somebody utter “I am sorry,” even if they were genuinely sorry for what would mean immense suffering, perhaps, for the rest of that person’s life?
In the victim’s shoes?
Consider, perhaps, if you were in that hapless victim’s shoes, how would you respond? What would your automatic response be? Would you be in the mood to hear somebody utter “I am sorry,” even if they were genuinely sorry for what would mean immense suffering, perhaps, for the rest of that person’s life?
You see, it is only when we are faced with real consequences of a violation does forgiveness kick in: scenarios where there are battle scars, and wounds that are sometimes so deep, or situations where severe trauma or immense shock have been experienced. Yet, the Bible calls us to forgive.
Choosing not to forgive also has consequences. Read Matthew 6:14-15.
14 For if you forgive other people when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. 15 But if you do not forgive others their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins.
Choose to forgive
Your own forgiveness from God is on the line. The very thing that somebody has done to harm you could, in fact, harm you even further if you choose to cherish it in your heart. It may even lead you to a lifetime without God, so will bitterness contort your heart as it leads to idolatry, which Revelation 21:8 condemns and clearly reveals as a sin that leads to the second death. Nobody is worth so hefty a price. Choose to forgive, I implore you.
I have heard that lack of forgiveness can lead to all kinds of consequences for the body including depression, heart disease, diabetes and others. So not only does lack of forgiveness poison your soul, it can slowly eat away at your body too. Once again, the price to pay for lack of forgiveness is quite simply too high. So why do people still decide to pursue this painful and destructive avenue?
Hard to let go and forgive
Personally, I don’t think that they understand the consequences fully, but I know one thing, it is infinitely harder to let go and forgive someone. It can actually feel good to hold on and be held captive. We may even receive pity, but is it worth it in the long run? My answer is “No”.
I do sympathise though and I realise that it is a process. But as I said in our chat last week, the initial decision to forgive needs to be made and then the process of dealing with pain will start. Like peeling an onion, there will be many tears and many layers that need to be worked through until the day when the peace I spoke about comes and the past has no hold any longer.
Requiring forgiveness
But what if you are the offending party? What is the greatest thing you seek when you have offended someone? I am going to assume that forgiveness ranks high up there even in a society where we are so hardened and our consciences are seemingly no longer as sensitive, I still believe, we require forgiveness from others.
Let me start with myself, years ago, I was responsible for something bad that happened in our family. Flashbacks still flash through my mind and wish that I had done things differently. I asked God for forgiveness and I believe he has granted it to me, yet often I have to tell myself that I am forgiven.
I know that the Devil uses it to get me down when I least expect it and I also know I am not alone – I am sure that at least some of you can relate to struggling to find forgiveness for something you have done, often it was unwittingly done, too, otherwise you would not have done it in the first place. If you knew the consequences, you would simply have acted differently: I agree, some lessons are so very hard.
Forgiving ourselves
After you have confessed and sought solace and forgiveness from God, there are also instances where we need to forgive ourselves for things we may have done without meaning to. As happened to me.
Or you may even feel like your life didn’t turn out like you had hoped. Big milestones that seem to come so easily to others you skipped out on completely. At the time, you had no idea that the chance would never come again. Are you now angry at yourself? At God?
Maybe you were lazy, lacked vision, lacked opportunity, but what you do know is that if you had to do it all again, knowing the things you did at the time, you would probably blunder into the same errors again. Not because you willing erred, but it was all you could do with the information you had at hand. That is why it is hard, we don’t know better sometimes.
I didn’t mean it
In my case, lack of experience meant that I was callous to a dying loved one. I was so intent on believing that she would overcome cancer that I refused to entertain anything to the contrary. I realised afterwards that I should have allowed my Mom to speak about her cancer journey freely and allow her to express her fears. All rookie mistakes and things that cause sleepless nights one way or another. None of knows just how to navigate life in and of ourselves; to compound this every day has its own troubles as the Bible teaches in Matthew 6:34.
34 Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.
Heartbreak
What about forgiving yourself when you are genuinely wrong, you meant to do the crime and you are feeling the consequences – I suppose it depends on what you have done. If you know anything about me and my driving, then it is that I call myself “Miss Daisy” after the movie, Driving Miss Daisy. I am stickler for sticking to the speed limit even though, sadly, I have been fined for the exact misdemeanour on more than one occasion.
The city where I live is known for its night-time drag-racing scene and I clearly remember the time I got caught up in one of the impromptu races.
Tragedy
As they screeched past me, I realised how easily such a race could wrong, with disastrous consequences for everyone involved, willingly or not. I had previously heard of a time when the speed of the impact had immediately caused a young man to lose his leg. I shuddered at the thought.
At the beginning of 2019, a race gone wrong tragically hit the headlines. My heart went out to all affected. The driver had been driving at an insane speed when calamity struck. He had been egged on by a friend, who had escaped virtually unscathed; it was the driver who bore the brunt of the accident. The father of two was pushing his car hard when he lost control at that speed, losing both his legs as a result.
My heart broke for him. In his mid-20s, he still had the best years of his life lying ahead of him. How would he process the trauma? His life would obviously change irrevocably – how would he cope financially as well as, now with limited resources, mounting medical bills, a wrecked car, to name just a few. Never would a day pass when a decision he made one fateful Sunday night would not come back to haunt him.
Why his story had such a profound impact on me, I can only guess. From the little I read in the media, he was a petrol-head. I envisioned him as someone who I assumed watched the Fast and Furious movies and dreamed of speed. As one who had been an ardent Formula One fan decades ago, when Ayrton Senna da Silva reigned supreme, and was my undoubted, absolute favourite, I know how intoxicating that can be.
Painful consequences
I also understood the folly of youth. How many of us have not made dumb mistakes at least once in our lives? I am not sure how long he had been racing, what I do know is that on that particular fateful night, there was arguably some recklessness involved. But didn’t you also do something once, where you thought afterwards, had that gone wrong, the consequences would have been grave or even the grave, but you were spared. Rightly or not, my heart resonated with it. Perhaps, it is the memory of wanting to be cool when I was young too. I never was, but with his speed and cool car, but I am sure he was.
Anyway, I wondered how he would deal with it, with the flashbacks and coming to terms with his new life. The silver lining was that nobody else was involved. Although, people were calling for criminal charges to be brought against him. Again, I thought that the young man had endured more than enough. I have not been privy to more details of his life after the accident, but one thing I do know is that the long process to rebuild his life would have started along with the painful process of forgiveness. None of it sounds remotely easy in the slightest and I continue to pray for him.
Forgiving God?
After relating scenarios where one finds oneself in a position where one needs to forgive oneself for a heart-breaking consequence as a result of a misstep that one had taken, what about forgiving God?
I just mentioned it earlier, why bring it up again? You see, sometimes, we blame God for things and feel resentment towards him and refuse to obey. In my own life, I said God, “Why did you allow this to happen?” Or “If you loved me then …” It seems that when hurt, anger and disappointment fester, we tend to hurl vitriol at God or refuse to talk to Him altogether.
Deep in our hearts we start thinking, “If he was so loving and All-knowing, surely …”
Rebellious streak?
And that dear friends is a greater recipe for disaster than anything else. If you, like me, have a rebellious streak in you and you go out deliberately to upset God, the only one who is likely to suffer in the end is you, yourself. And though God needs no defence, I will ask you something? Are you so obedient to God yourself? Often people who blame God don’t even know Him properly. But the converse is also true, the terribly religious feel as though God owes them something for their obedience. Why did he allow this, I am then so … ?
The kind of religious soul who constantly goes off on God for not giving him/her what they want. For questioning God’s goodness when, as we say it, bad things happen to good people. I am glad Jesus put it nicely when he said, no one is good except God, and He should know. The rich young ruler came to Jesus calling him Good Teacher, but he was quick to refute that statement. The young man though, thought of himself good, religious and pious – he ended up leaving sad because Jesus asked him to give up all he had as a good person and to do the good and right thing. Yes, Jesus was clear, nobody can serve two masters, and this guy chose the money he was unwilling to give up.
Removing the layers of the onion
I remember going through a hard time – the church I had been attending was periodically referred to as a cult, despite that I had defended the church at all times. However, when I realised that, in order to be true to all I believed I saw in the Bible, for my own conscience sake and also to stem a deep depression, the time had come to leave. I asked God over and over, why had he allowed these things to happen to me. He kindly showed me that He had meant it for the good.
Without going into it completely, looking back, I can say that I am glad that I went through hardships as it has obviously shaped me into the person I am today. The lessons, though tough, have helped me to have deep roots in the faith and I am grateful for the people who helped me through rocky patches.
In vain?
And there were rough patches aplenty, many times when I wondered about all the people who had said that they loved me and were now nowhere to be found. Those who said that they cared, who did not even bother to find out how I was after all the tears. I thought of all the years I had given up things in order to serve the church. Then I read 1 Corinthians 15:58 again and saw that no labour in the Lord is in vain. I have clung onto that.
58 Therefore, my dear brothers and sisters, stand firm. Let nothing move you. Always give yourselves fully to the work of the Lord, because you know that your labour in the Lord is not in vain.
We had been asked to give up almost all of our available time to do church work and deny ourselves – I did and I always joke that I nearly died. Only to feel discarded in the end. And it stung – I felt like I had wasted my life and the place I found myself was well behind my peers. The church was not to blame though, there were various factors at play. Even though I had done what I had been asked to do from the pulpit and leaders’ meetings – they were just merrily, breezily going on with their lives.
All that matters
The process of forgiving and the unexplained anger I felt lasted two whole years. I wish I could have let go sooner. As soon as I did, life took a different direction, I experienced phenomenal change for the better, but like I said about the onion, there were many layers and it takes as long as it takes.
In the end, all that matters is that we forgive. That is the antidote to the poison that threatens to eat away at our bodies and souls if we choose not to take it. Like a person who has received an antidote after experiencing a near-lethal dose of poison, the chance of having life will never be taken for granted again, especially the kind of life that Jesus came to bring us. John 10:10 reiterates that:
10 The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I [Jesus] have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.
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