Forgiveness is the Route to "Being the Change"

When we live and perhaps have existed for a very long time with a gripe, a victimhood, a wrong having been done to us; when we possess a worldview that clashes with another person’s worldview, forgiveness can be a tough pill to swallow. 

In fact, many people who profess to be forgiving types often don’t even notice how clenched their fists are around an unforgiving attitude. 

Because when it comes to forgiveness, we have to, albeit grudgingly at times, admit a couple of things:

1. Either we were wrong, and we must ask for forgiveness, which may entail forgiving someone else for their lesser offense in the exchange.

2. Or, we must forgive someone else for being or having been wrong, at least in our perspective of things, whether that means forgiving them actually or just within our own mindset, and between us and God.

3. It could mean we forgive a nation for voting for a public figure with whom we vehemently disagree or for whom we hold a strong personal dislike. Forgiveness here means we allow ourselves to set aside our personal self-righteousness in order to try to understand where other people are coming from. We allow that not everybody thinks or sees things the way we do, and that if and when justice is called for we will stand firm, but in value systems of personal moral choice, we agree to peacefully disagree.

People will ask about injustice. How do we forgive that?

We begin by breaking down the stereotypes in our own mindset, the stereotypes we have set in stone in our heads that say “once a failure, always a failure;” “once wronged by so and so, always wronged by so and so.” 

We open our eyes to the progress already achieved, and launch from there to progress hoped for, believing it, too, can come to pass. 

We especially remove the blinders to our own faults and point the finger more at ourselves and less at others. 

If we espouse social justice as a high priority, we nix the complaining and do more than just cast a vote to effect change. 

We physically move to places where we feel we can have a positive impact. 

We mentor. 

We spend time and energy working alongside the disenfranchised, the marginalized—anyone for whom we feel “the system” or politicians are not doing enough. 

We walk the walk of grievances we love to interject into conversations, family dinners, and holiday parties. We become as passionate about regular, consistent showing-up in often mundane, non-publicly observable ways as we do about placing banners and signs in our yard. 

I believe that actually doing something (as opposed to saying or even voting something) means we stop manufacturing a spirit of un-forgiveness through our constant harping about how everyone else isn’t working hard enough or in the right way. 

If we feel that strongly and are so convinced we have all of the answers, then we get out there and do it ourselves. 

Perhaps, after spending some time on the front lines of effecting change, we’ll be a bit more contrite in our estimations of others when we finally see first-hand how very difficult change can be, corporately and individually. 

Perhaps then real forgiveness will dawn on us.

Forgiveness, in a nutshell, begins with humility: that even if we cannot acknowledge our own phases of dysfunction—phases that ultimately lead to growth and maturity—that even if we cannot own our own mis-steps and social faux pas, we can, in the oft-bantered about “let there be peace on earth” forgive others theirs, taking note of the next words of that famous lyric, “and let it begin with me.”

When people wax poetic and earnestly wear,

 “Be the change you want to see in the world” 

on their sleeve, do they see that this is exactly where forgiveness begins?

Copyright Barb Harwood