Forgiveness?

When we pray the prayer that Jesus taught us we pray "Forgive us our sins, as we forgive those who sin against us" or "Forgive us our trespasses...." Whatever version we are praying we are asking God to forgive promising that we will forgive others. Yet forgiveness is often something that is very difficult to do, we may even say the words but in our heart struggle to actually forgive. I believe this  is because we may misunderstand forgiveness.

We subconsciously think of forgiveness as:

- Releasing others from accepting the responsibility of their actions;

- Saying that what was done to us wasn't important;

- Having to forget everything as if it never happened;

- Restoring our relationship to what it formerly was;

- Something that is all about the other person.

A couple of years ago I took part in an ecumenical trip to the battlefields and graveyards of the First World War, it was entitled "Peace and Reconciliation Tour." One of the things I learnt from that tour is that forgiveness doesn't mean we must forget the transgression. It is only God who can put away our transgression completely "as far as the east is from the west" (Psalm 103), even to the point of forgetting them “I, even I, am he who blots out your transgressions, for my own sake, and remembers your sins no more." (Isaiah 43:25). For us it is different, we must not expect ourselves to forget otherwise we will never be able to forgive. I also learnt that forgiveness neither exonerates the guilty, nor restores a relationship to what it once was; out of forgiveness a different relationship needs to be allowed to grow. I don't normally like it when people say "you need to move on" but with forgiveness this is appropriate; moving on into a different relationship between the wronged and the wrong-doer.

In my own recent experiences I have learnt a lot about forgiveness, firstly I have learnt of the importance of forgiveness in the healing process; hurt can cause all types of wounds, wounds that although emotional make us experience physical pain. Yet unless we forgive we will never heal, in fact the wound may get worse. It is like when we fall over as a child and get dirt in the wound, we slap a plaster over the top and carry on, yet that dirt can cause the wound to become infected. If the wound is serious then that infection can effect our entire wellbeing. So we need to clean the metaphorical wound out first and the way we do that is with forgiveness.  Secondly, I have also learnt that forgiveness may seem as something we do to someone else but it is actually something we do to ourselves. We must think of forgiveness in terms of our own emotional and spiritual wellbeing, after all when there is unforgiveness in a relationship then aren't both parties affected by it?  Matthew 18:23-35 tells us that if we do not forgive people, we get turned over to the torturers. Forgiveness is about freeing ourselves as well as the other party! Finally, we don't need to go to the other person and say "I forgive you" because that may be  taken wrongly, indeed it is entirely unnecessary and unhelpful unless you are asked by someone to forgive them. We need to go to God.

So returning to the wisdom of the Lord's Prayer, when we forgive we need to think about our forgiveness in terms of our relationship with God and our own wellbeing. We need to see forgiveness as not forgetting, not wiping the slate clean, but of setting ourselves free, of healing our emotions and our spirit, and of creating an environment were a new, but different relationship may start to grow with the other person. Forgiveness isn't easy, but we owe it to ourselves and to God to make it happen.