A mature forgiveness puts one's self in the offender's shoes in order to discern facts and realities about the other person’s life that can at long last explain, or at least bring some sense to, their offense.
And even if, upon obtaining this improved perspective, we still can’t “get” why those facts or circumstances would have caused that person to act or react as they did (because c’mon, we would never have let those same facts or circumstances cause us to act that way!! Or, we might think, “that is still no reason for them to be the way they are or behave the way they acted back then”), we have at least arrived at context—theirs.
And that is the beginning of leaving the singular, one-way context of me.
Regardless of our original, or even continued, perspective—that how they spoke or behaved was wrong or mystifyingly hurtful—we can at least now see that it wasn’t so much about us as it was about the other person’s inability to live out a mature, socially intelligent relationship at the time.
And with that realization ought to come a heap of sheepishness for taking their actions so personally, and a newfound compassion grounded in the fact that that person, who once behaved so “normally” with us, suddenly no longer could or can—and we missed it because of our ingrained and unquestioning taking of everything so personally.
And if by chance the offense is a series of offenses committed by someone who has always committed these offenses, getting into their context will explain that too through the same process of stepping outside of our own self-centeredness into an investigation into what it is that causes them to be so toxic or annoying.
How this brings us to compassion instead of being offended, ideally, is that it assuages the hurt we are so sure we alone are manifesting (and perhaps have been for years) at the hands of the other person; a person we have grown to believe is completely uncaring about how they treated us (when in actuality, speaking from my own times of relational dysfunction, the other person is often exceedingly sad and frustrated at their lack of wisdom and emotional or mental fitness to “deal with” us).
Harboring a false assessment of another person’s having no conscience not only prevents the hoped-for consideration of context, but also compounds the offense.
It also, ironically, hardens the heart of me, the offended, through score-keeping and grudge bearing—a byproduct of which is often a feeling of superiority towards the offender—which we can’t, or won’t, let go of (a perfect instance of the turning of the tables in which it is now the offended’s operating out of a lack of emotional, mental or relational coping skills—the very behavior which caused the offense of the offender which we were offended by..and which we negatively judged them for!!)
Context.
It’s everything.
And if we can jump the hurdles of our very ingrained self-defensiveness and superiority, and remove the blinders to the abundant ways we, too, have offended out of a personal lack, we can get to it—we can and must, get to context in order to progress to a mature and lasting forgiveness.
copyright Barb Harwood
