I'm still a little ticked at Eve

I’ve been thinking a lot about forgiveness lately. My husband says that I have an uncanny ability to “let things go” and move on. I think that’s true about some situations in my life, but not all, so I’ve been mulling it over.

I heard forgiveness defined once as deciding to give up your right to be offended and trusting in God instead. Sounds simple enough, by why is it SO hard?

Part of the struggle, I think, is because we have swallowed some lies. I often think that what Eve swallowed in the Garden was not only an apple, but a lie. Once a lie is ingested, it gets into the system and begins to influence and affect the whole.

Some of the lies we have swallowed about forgiveness:

1. I don’t have to forgive. Sometimes I want to hold on to my anger, believing it cannot be dissipated until the offender feels my pain.
2. It’s too big an offense to forgive. “Do you know what he/she did to me? Forgiveness is impossible in this instance.”
3. It’s buried and gone, forgiveness is a moot point now. The situation may be over, but buried feelings are often the hardest to resolve.
4. My anger protects me from more hurt. This ingested lie turns into fear – we’re afraid of more hurt so we refuse the vulnerability that forgiveness demands.
5. I do not need to take responsibility if I’m the victim. We want the offender to take the initiative for what he/she has done. We believe that forgiveness should only be extended after being asked for.

Here’s the thing about these lies. Once we entertain them, they cloud what we know to be true. Fact is, the unforgiving person is often far more tortured than the offender. I have seen it over and over – in both big and small issues. To forgive, however, means to challenge the power that the offense and the lie have over us. And if God is for us, who can be against us? (Romans 8:31) We have a supernatural combatant.

One last lie… Saying “I forgive you” one time constitutes forgiveness. I think of Jesus answering Peter, after Peter asks him if he should forgive people seven times, “I tell you, not seven times, but seventy-seven times.” I know Jesus is helping us realize that being forgiving is part of being healed (and healing the world), but I often wonder if He didn’t also mean that forgiveness is an ongoing choice, a continuing activity. Waking up every day and forgiving someone who has hurt you is okay, I think. Good, even. As a matter of fact, I suspect it is a painfully honest expression of pardon because life is a process and relationships are not effortless.

‘Cause we're all what we eat.