(note: this series, and today’s post, look at the general attitude and act of forgiveness in normal, daily life. I do not speak for situations of physical and sexual abuse, or other heinous crimes and behaviors. I speak for my own history and experience in the living out of a life that has at times harbored un-forgiveness, and the freedom I found in it’s opposite: forgiveness)
A couple of friends have commented in recent days, after reading this series on forgiveness, that they, or a friend of theirs, is finding it difficult to forgive.
I get it.
How else could I write about forgiveness if I hadn’t struggled, and still do at times, with it myself?
I responded to one friend that it has taken me more than twenty years to forgive a particular person.
But I got there—I arrived at forgiveness with that person, which was like opening the floodgates to all forgiveness because it felt so good.
And it felt so good because of the groundwork, all of the sweat equity, I invested in making sure that this was a forgiveness—not that I had to give, but that I wanted, finally, to give.
And that leap was made possible only by willingly engaging with God in His taking the lead.
Whether it is a person, leader, entity, organization, club, church, neighborhood, Bible study, school we attended, ideology we bought into, family we came from, how we were raised, etc., we can attain an attitude of forgiveness toward whatever or whoever it is.
And we can, as my last post explored, forgive those who have not forgiven us.
Why is it so important to forgive? What is the benefit?
Certainly my impetus came from Scripture after finding faith at age thirty-eight.
When we take to heart, and are convicted by the huge, life-changing fact that God forgave and forgives us, who then are we to hold it back?
Again, for me it was going from a disdain for forgiveness as an unbeliever, and then to an obligation out of obedience to God to forgive (which never lasted, but it was good practice!) to genuine heart forgiveness, which I desired to give.
Note that, even as a Christian, I was initially haughty towards forgiving others.
Why?
1. Because it was new to me. To forgive felt really awkward and interpersonally threatening, not to mention I simply did not know how to go about it!
Forgiveness was never modeled to me—the silent treatment was my way of “interacting.”
The pattern I learned and operated within was that of retreat, let time to go by and then nonchalantly return to the fold, acting like nothing had happened (but something had happened, and not dealing with it was always simmering on the back burner).
2. Because I had to save face. My lack of self-confidence and identity precluded me from an ability to separate myself from a mistake.
If I failed, I was the failure. If someone found fault with what I did, my take-away was that they found fault with me as a person. I couldn’t deal with that (i.e. “forgive” their criticism). It hurt too much.
So in essence, un-forgiveness becomes a form of self-protection. We don’t forgive them because they are a threat, or unfair in their estimation of us, when in reality, we are the cause of our own low estimation by not being able to make distinctions between constructive criticism and an outright insult.
This same lack of confidence takes things personally to a fault—comments or “looks” not even meant for us cause easy offense, merely because we are so insecure.
3. To forgive would mean going back to being a doormat. The problem is, we never take the steps to stop being the doormat, so the only recourse we have is to retreat and no longer deal with the person who is using us as a doormat. Then we tell ourselves we are the victim of their behavior, and our resentment towards them only grows, to where everything they do or say then annoys us.
For example: I couldn’t confront a gossip, so I retreated from them, and yet grew increasingly perturbed at their continuing gossip. In another instance, a person in my life had trouble respecting boundaries. Instead of asking them out for coffee to discuss, I retreated, harboring ill will and enlisting myself in another state of victimhood.
4. If we forgive, they win. This comes down to who was right and who was wrong, with nothing in between to help with reconciliation. Usually it is never any one person’s fault as to why a conflict or offense occurred. But if it clearly is someone’s fault, and not our fault, then to forgive them means they come out on top and now we lose twice: once in the original offense, and now our forgiving them for it.
The only way I’ve found to get past this roadblock is to remember the times—numerous times—I have offended, be it unknowingly, purposefully or thoughtlessly. Would I want that held against me for the rest of my life, whether I apologized or not? (and I may not even be aware of the offense because the other person never came forward to address it!!).
Keeping score is kindergarten politics.
If someone continues to offend, then forgive them and move on from them. I guarantee, though, that moving on from them, no matter what we do physically, will not take place without forgiving them, because we will continue to re-visit this wrong for years to come, burdening our lives, not theirs.
5. Certain people (let’s face it I used to be one of them) do not like honest heart-to-hearts.
Some people, when we come to talk to them about an issue in the relationship, show their discomfort by acting like nothing is wrong, or that we are imagining things, or “taking things too literal.” This makes things worse because now we feel dismissed (and heck if we are going to forgive them for that!).
Another roadblock to working out a problem is a defensive reaction. Just because a difference of opinion is being expressed, or we are attempting to share something with another person that bothers us about our relationship with them, they instantly react as if being criticized. That then brings out my defensiveness, ending in utter exasperation, which leaves the issue unresolved and myself feeling—no surprise—yet again a victim! I would then feel that in no way is any forgiveness due them.
The four patterns illustrated above, God revealed to me, are soothingly self-affirming ways to live because in them we receive self-justification, which feeds our need to be superior.
Since I was not confident, I did not know how to be calmly and rationally assertive. Since I had no self-identity other than the one of having been unfairly treated, un-forgiveness was one of the few things in life that gave me what I ultimately longed for: affirmation.
Even if it came only from myself, I got the affirmation I craved. This affirmation, in my mind, put me in the secure position of having the upper hand, being holier than thou (even in a secular, moral way), and being the better person.
In short, through un-forgiveness I obtained an easy identity of self-righteousness.
Who needs self-improvement books when bearing a grudge accomplishes all of this?!
Alas, we are so often the last to know that this is not the assertive life. This is not proactive living.
This is, in fact, living off of the assertiveness and identities of others through our giving them permission to make us who we are today (un-forgiving, hard-hearted, non-assertive in communication and insecure). They gain all this hold over us through our very own un-forgiveness!
This is how I lived for so long (tomorrow I will post the conclusion).
Copyright Barb Harwood
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