forgive me

I recently found myself in a conversation regarding forgiveness. The person with whom I was speaking had reprimanded her sister for continuing to be angry with a lousy boyfriend who had called to apologize for acting like a jerk earlier that day. Let me note here, an act of contrition from him is quite remarkable, but currently she is going way beyond the extra mile for him, and I suspect that his apology is a veiled attempt at trapping her more tightly to himself through the confusion of Christian counsel. The given rebuke was, "You must forgive anyone who asks forgiveness." Now this is a tricky situation, and the imperative to forgive becomes a confusing statement as she is also being told she should leave the bad boyfriend. I simply pointed out the confusion created by these contradictory instructions, but that is not what I want to blahg about.

The concept I will address is what I see as a much larger problem with the admonition as a statement, a fundamental misunderstanding of forgiveness (though I left it unstated as this is a tricky situation filled with years of emotional and dogmatic baggage - a "God helps those who help themselves" sort of pioneer concept). It is my understanding that forgiveness is not dependent upon a change of heart by the offender. It is the act of the offended's releasing the transgressor from the perceived debt owed as a result of the affront. Forgiveness has everything to do with the offended's attitude but not the offender's. On the flip side, if we find ourselves in the position of the offender we must not ask forgiveness; we should only express our guilt and sorrow over the offense, deal with/ remark on/ claim only our own actions. To ask forgiveness is to place the responsibility and guilt of our offense on the shoulders of the one whom we have already hurt. It is an attempt to release ourselves from the responsibility of dealing with our crimes. How many times have we said or heard, "I said I was sorry!" or, "It is not my fault if (s)he can't get over it!" As the offender, we then pick up a righteous banner and wage a new war, turning the offended into an offender. By this reversal how much do we add to our offensiveness. We increase our victim's burden by placing our guilt on them to deal with. We cannot insist on forgiveness. It is not ours to claim. It is not our right. Yes, we can expect it in prayer, it has already been promised. We can rest comfortably in the promise given through the blood of Christ, but we mustn't expect the ones we wound here to respond as Christ. They did not volunteer to carry our burden of sin, we forced it on them.

(Let me clarify to anyone who thinks I am creating an argument for holding grudges, I believe that we are to forgive even if no apology is made, but I also believe it is far harder to forgive than it is to sin against another person. My position is that forgiveness has almost nothing to do with its recipient. It is a matter between the one offended and God. We are told to forgive because we have been forgiven. We pray that God will forgive us as we forgive others. Also, once forgiven, the transgressor's job then becomes refraining from wallowing in personal guilt and condemnation and beyond that, forgiving others- a sort of pay it forward, hehe. I will also make note here that the difficulty of forgiveness lies in the fact that though God forgives once and for all, we do not forget. The pain of inflicted wounds always smarts. Forgiveness has to happen over and over again. Just like we are "being saved"- we are not saved at any given point in time until we are released from time; so too forgiveness is a process.)

So anyway, all that to say, "When you cause an affront, just say, 'I am sorry!' "