The Renovating Reverend

Last month, completely unexpected, out of the blue, someone sent me a laundry list of grievances for which I was deemed either forgivable or unforgivable. I was called names that I’ve never been called before, which, for a military veteran in middle age, is saying something! Seriously, though, after re-reading the message, and after a long period of reflection, I realized that this correspondence told me quite a bit about the sender’s life, and about the motivations for writing to me. It set me to thinking about regret, pain, anger, and the nature of forgiveness.

Forgiveness is one of those topics that can be oh-so-difficult to get our heads around. I think that just about everyone, whatever their ethical, spiritual, or religious persuasion, agrees that forgiveness is a good thing, even though we don’t all view forgiveness exactly the same way. However, the questions commonly arise, “How do I forgive?” and “If I forgive someone, doesn’t that make what they did OK?” The best answers that I’ve ever heard to these questions have come from four very different sources.

I don’t remember the name of the speaker I heard back in the early 1990s, or which member of his immediate family was killed by an erratic driver, but I do remember the core message he gave about forgiveness. He was an intense speaker, and his pain and anger were very apparent—he wore them on his sleeve. He said that he viewed forgiveness as a multi-stage process, and that each person would have to determine the stages himself. In his own experience, the first stage was to decide not seek revenge, to not go looking for the man who had been driving the car. Another stage was to leave the man alone if he happened to see him while going about his business, instead of attacking him on sight. As he became comfortable with a stage, he would determine what the next stage would be. He worked through the stages with the understanding that his forgiveness did not let the driver off the hook, but did release himself from pain and anger. If he held onto his pain and rage, he felt that he was actually allowing the driver to steal even more from his life than the driver already had. Forgiveness was about the forgiver letting go, so that he could go on with a life that’s not warped by transgressions, that’s not full of negativity.

The Forgiveness Institute has a great description of what forgiveness is (and isn’t) on their website. For example, they view forgiveness as something that is freely given, even when the other person does not deserve it, and that it is not about excusing the other person, or being superior to the other person. They also make the distinction between forgiveness and reconciliation. http://www.forgiveness-institute.org/html/about_forgiveness.htm

I’ve come to view forgiveness through the lenses of a quote from “The Road Less Traveled,” by M. Scott Peck, and a quote from the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous. Peck said that life is a difficult thing, and that, once we’d come to understand that, life would be a much better experience. The Big Book says that acceptance is the right answer for everything. I see the wisdom of these two statements, because, until we come to accept life as it happens, we’ll be operating from a warped life view, rather than from a realistic view of things. We’ll be so tied up in how we think things should be, that we won’t be able to see them as they really are. Besides, there is nothing I can do to reverse what just happened. I can choose how I will respond to what happened, and I can try to influence what happens afterward, but I can’t reverse the event itself. Why not accept what happened, and move forward with a positive response that’s rooted in my core beliefs? After all, God’s forgiveness, as it was taught to me, really boils down to acceptance, acceptance of me as I am. The old Christian hymn “Just As I Am” was frequently sung in the churches that I grew up in. Whether or not I personally deserve it is not even in God’s forgiveness equation. Knowing everything about me, and accepting me as I am, is God’s radical forgiveness.

So, this leads me to the question, in light of God’s acceptance of me and the self-destructive nature of judgment and resentment, why would I not forgive? Why would I hang onto pain and anger that eat away at my heart and mind? Is the negative energy of resentment really worth what it costs me in my health and relationships with others? If the Creator has forgiven/accepted me, then how in the world could I withhold forgiveness from others? How would I even have the right to withhold forgiveness from myself?

This week, as I continue the never ending process of refinishing woodwork in the house, I’ll be taking a fresh personal inventory, looking for any unforgiven resentments that I hold against myself or others, and asking myself why in the world I’m still holding onto them.