Forgiveness

I have a person in my church who was abused as a kid by a neighbor and they will say, "I am not consumed by hate for that person and I don't wish them harm, but I could never forgive them." I completely understand that and I can only imagine the pain and hurt that was done. I'm actually very impressed that they can make that statement. But I have had a difficult time squaring the "never forgive" part with scripture. This morning it struck me that maybe our understanding of forgiveness is the problem.

I think it is fair to say that forgiveness is releasing another person from a debt that they owe us. Our usual narrative is that if someone does something to hurt us we want them to make amends for that somehow. At that point we will forgive them. However, if they make amends there is really nothing to forgive because they have repaid the debt. Forgiveness would be to release them (whether they are aware of my decision or not) from their debt without them having to pay anything back.

Maybe that is what this person in my congregation has done. Maybe they have forgiven their neighbor because they don't want or expect that person to repay them for the harm they have done. However, when they say they will never forgive them maybe they are really saying they won't forget because they know they need to keep a boundary there so that they will not be abused again.

The problem then is what to do about forgetting. The book of Hebrews twice quotes Jeremiah, "I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more" which is where we get the idea of "forgive and forget." My first thought is that forgiving and forgetting are two separate things so when we are called to forgive we are not necessarily called to forget. I am not even close to being competent in Greek but Strongs gives one definition for the word "remember no more" as "to bear in mind, that is, recollect, by implication to reward or punish." So maybe the forgetting is a promise not to bring that debt up again for repayment once it has been forgiven.

I got to thinking that maybe we bundle too much into forgiveness and make it a lot harder to wrestle with emotionally than we should. First, we need to understand that forgiveness is releasing a person of a debt they owe to us. Forgiveness is NOT making up with someone after they have repaid a debt they owe to us. And forgetting their debt means that we will not change our minds and ask them to repay it at some later date. Forgetting is NOT wiping it completely from our minds so that we relate to that person exactly as we did before with no boundaries in place.

Heavy Lifting

About 25 years ago I was a student in a 7 month program at Auburn University in Alabama. Kim and I lived in a nice apartment about a block from campus and next to a large traditional church. We tried a few other churches in the area but ended up attending our next door neighbor. I call it a traditional church but what do I know. As a Yankee I found it interesting that very few people attended that weren't dressed up in what appeared to be their best. Males wore suits and ties and females wore dresses and fancy hats. We did the same thing every week with hymns, prayers, and a 15 - 20 minute sermon.

The pastor had two passions in life; Jesus and weightlifting. And I don't think a Sunday went by that we didn't hear about both. If he was talking about setting goals you can be sure he would talk about a weightlifting goal he had set, along with the struggle to achieve it. If he wanted to stress support for one another he would put on his weightlifting belt and show us how it helped him lift weights. His sermons never got very deep but he always talked about how wonderful Jesus was and he backed it up with an illustration from weightlifting.

I liked him. I know all of us pastors probably overuse illustrations from our lives but somehow it made this guy seem genuine. He never tried to be someone he wasn't. He stuck with what he knew and that was Jesus and weightlifting. Even though I am sure there were others like me who were timing his sermons to see how long it would be before he mentioned weightlifting, I think it also gave us a sense of reliability and permanence. That's kind of good to know in a chaotic world.

I think most pastors realize, after they have been preaching for a while, that there is a long term effect we have on the people who listen to us. It is not just the message we preach week to week but also the message we deliver over the long haul. I noticed this when I started hearing words and phrases that I use regularly become part of the vocabulary of people in my church. Pastors need to pay attention to the overall message they are delivering over the long haul.