Finding Forgiveness

Rev. John Millspaugh
October 27, 2002

I checked out a large number of books in preparation for this sermon. There is a lot written on forgiveness, and most of the religious authors I read seemed to believe that forgiveness is the very heart and foundation of the religious life. Obviously, from the readings I just shared with you, I believe this to a degree.

But honestly, I don’t buy into the traditional model of forgiveness. You see I used to work in a hospital, as a chaplain, and I’d meet with battered women who would talk the importance of learning how to love their husband and forgive him when he hit her. For some of these women, it was their second or third time in the hospital. In their churches, they were hearing language like “Forgive and forget” and “Turn the other cheek.”

In that way, their churches betrayed them. That model of forgiveness was helping their abusers, not them. That model of forgiveness is wrong. It’s wrong in that it is incorrect: its understanding of what forgiveness is and what forgiveness involves is incorrect. And it is wrong in that that model of forgiveness is morally wrong: it’s pernicious, it is destructive of life. That’s not what the religious life is about, and that is not what forgiveness should be about.

But the religious life does involve forgiveness, if not that model. Let’s try today to understand what forgiveness is not, and what forgiveness is. For in our heart of hearts, we know that there is a sort of forgiveness that is liberating. Forgiveness is not the same as putting ourselves in danger again and again—it is in fact a way of moving out of danger. True forgiveness frees us from the captivity of the past, and helps us move into a more promising future. In fact, Archbishop Desmond Tutu said, “Without forgiveness, there is no future.”

All of us know people, and we know ways in which we ourselves, remain knotted to the past. All of us have been hurt, we have been wronged. Some of us in small ways, some of us in large ways. After we have been hurt, even long after we are beyond the moments that hurt us, those moments can still wield power over us. Clinging on to those moments draws our vital energy. In fact, “The word "clinging" comes from the Anglo-Saxon word "clingan" which means "shrink". When we can’t loosen the past’s grip on us, “instead of being wounded once, we re-experience that wound day after day.” “We throw up wall after wall to guard ourselves, to wall off the pain, and we accomplish numbness. We become cynical.”

Forgiveness is one way of remembering the past while loosening its clutches on our souls. It is one way of shaking off that which binds us, letting the chains drop to the floor, and feeling what it is like to stretch our muscles that were beginning to numb or atrophy.

Forgiveness becomes relevant in our lives when one person unjustifiably causes another person, or themselves, to suffer. That suffering creates a pain or a separation that makes it impossible to go on the way that things were. In the case of two people, whatever they used to be to each other—friends, relatives, parishioners, fellow citizens, can’t go on the same way as it had, because something has been violated. “Damage done by strangers undermines one’s sense of justice; betrayal destroys faith in love, trust, and honor.”[1] Things aren’t the same anymore.

This is where forgiveness comes in, but forgiveness, improperly understood, only does more damage. Let’s clear out the closet and get rid of some of these wrongheaded notions of forgiveness.

Let me begin clearing out process by bringing to your attention a recent television series. This is a real show, called “Forgive and Forget.” This fine example of quality daytime TV presents guests who smooth over enormous and complex grievances in an hour. The show provides the guests bouquets of flowers to bestow on the newly forgiven.” [2] The show presents forgiveness as if it is easy and relatively cheap, and it is neither. Nor is it usually something you can choose to do, instantly and consciously. That’s why I rejected the reading I was considering today, Responsive Reading #637 A Litany of Atonement. Listen to this, from our hymnal. Now realize that this was written for parishioners who have probably given no forethought to what they are about to read, who are just flipping open the hymnal and reading.

{The passage is shared}

Now, you can say anything you want to yourself or to other people. But saying doesn't make it so.

True forgiveness requires mourning and insight.[3] Forgiveness may be free, but it isn’t cheap. One way to misconstrue forgiveness is to promote a cheap and easy version of it.

Those who don’t cheapen forgiveness often confuse it with something else.

Forgiveness is not the same as forgetting. Past experiences and even the pain they cause have a great deal to teach us, so that we can try to avoid those patterns in the future if at all possible. For forgiveness to function in a life enhancing way, it more often requires remembering than forgetting.

Forgiveness is not approving or condoning. Forgiving someone often involves making some effort to understand them, but even if we come to fully understand them, we do not thereby conclude that their actions were acceptable. True understanding cannot occur when I in any way deny, minimize, justify, or condone the actions that harmed me.

Forgiveness usually does not seek justice or compensation. Forgiveness is not a quid pro quo deal--it doesn't demand compensation first.

So let’s clear out the closet. Forgiveness is not about self-sacrifice. Forgiveness is not cheap, it’s not easy. Forgiveness is not the same as forgetting, or condoning, and it is not a form of self-sacrifice.

As we move into considering what forgiveness actually is, I’d like to invite you to get in touch with a situation or a wound that still has a hold on you from the past, that diminishes you. I am not going to ask you to do any forgiveness today, I just want to move this sermon out of the abstract and into the practical. I’ll give you a moment.

Some of you may have chosen yourself as a focus. We all need our own forgiveness, for things we have done. And counter-intuitively, we need to forgive ourselves about the situations in which WE have been hurt. We need to forgive ourselves for not having been able to stop whatever happened. For having limits to our control. For not having more information or making different choices. In the aftermath, for our own feelings of vengeance and so on. This requires bountiful compassion for oneself, even as we hold ourselves accountable for our past actions.

I imagine that some of you chose another person or set of people who hurt you. We are in great need of interpersonal forgiveness.
And I imagine some of you chose God, or the world, or the universe. Many of us have anger at the larger structure of things because of unfair personal losses we have experienced. I know that it was this sort of forgiveness that was most on my mind as I wrote this sermon. Last year I lost my goddaughter, she unexpectedly died, and I raged, and I raged, and I raged at the world, at God, at life, at everything. It was almost unbearable, and I was so angry. Eventually, I learned that I had to learn to forgive. I had to, once again, let go of the way I thought things were supposed to be, how things ought to work. I had to come back into relationship with Life itself. So some of us may haven chosen the universe itself as what we want to forgive.

Forgiveness a turning to the good in the face of a wrongdoing or injustice. It is a merciful restraint from dwelling destructively in resentment or thoughts of vengeance. Not that resentment or thoughts of vengeance are always bad . . . “Anger need not vanish for forgiveness to be real; it need only cease to prevail.”[4] Forgiveness involves the overcoming of injustice with good. We come to wish ourselves, or others, or the universe well. In spite of everything, we wish betterment and flourishing of the subject of forgiveness. As we give the gift of forgiveness, we ourselves move toward healing.

Forgiveness is not something that can be accomplished on a daytime television show or by reading a litany. It is a process. In fact, the Institute for Forgiveness Studies in Madison, Wisconsin, has determined that forgiveness is four-phase process with twenty steps![5] I won’t go over the twenty steps, but their four phases are actually quite helpful.

The first of the four is the “Uncovering Phase.” In this phase, the individual truly encounters the pain that has resulted from a deep injury. Feelings of anger or even hatred may be present. Confronting these emotions and honestly understanding the injury is emotionally distressing, but it is the beginning of healing.

So when we are experiencing the pain of an injury, we are often more helped by a friend who helps us engage the pain and understand the injury than by not one who initially encourages us to forgive.

The second phase is called the decision phase, and when I think of this phase, I think of an old story I believe to be Native American. A young man came upon an old man who was just sitting and staring, and seemed almost to be meditating. The young man asked the old man what he was doing. The elder replied, “I am considering the wolves who are fighting within me. There are two wolves in the depths of my spirit. One is anger and vengeance and hatred and destruction, and he is very hungry. The other is love and creativity and compassion and forgiveness and he is also very hungry. They are attacking one another, trying to eat one another, and over time, one is sure to win.” The young man asked, the old man which wolf would win, and the elder replied, “It depends which one I feed.”

In the Decision Phase, after coming in touch with the pain and the anger, the individual realizes that to continue to focus on the injury and the injurer may cause more unnecessary suffering. The individual entertains the idea of forgiveness as a healing strategy. The individual, then, commits to forgiving the injurer who has caused him/her such pain. Complete forgiveness is not yet realized but the injured individual has decided to explore forgiveness and to take initial steps in the direction of full forgiveness. He starts feeding the wolf of vengeance only scraps, and starts actively nursing the health of the wolf of forgiveness.

In so doing, the individual enters the work phase. Feeding the urge toward forgiveness may involve forming new ways of thinking about the injurer. One woman who was abused by her mother as a child went from seeing her mother’s abuse as malevolent and powerful to seeing it as weak and pitiful.[6] She strove to understand her mother’s childhood and put the injurious event in context by understanding the pressure her mother was under. This new perspective did nothing to excuse her mother, but helped the daughter see her as a member of the human community. Some small amount of empathy and compassion was generated.

In this work phase, this woman also did the work of accepting the pain she bore as a result of her mother’s actions. She had no sense that she deserved the pain, but knew it had been unjustly given. Still, she decided to not pass the pain on to others, nor to pass it back to her mother. I don’t know whether this woman began to offer goodwill directly back to her mother, or whether there was any form of reconciliation. If so, I hope that the daughter took into consideration current issues of trust and safety in the relationship between herself and her injurer. But regardless of whether reconciliation happened, this woman moved toward growth and toward embracing life again.

The fourth phase is that of deepening. The individual realizes that they are gaining emotional relief from the process of forgiveness. They may be able to find some kind of meaning that has emerged through their bearing of pain. They may discover a renewed purpose in life and an active concern for others, which they did not fully realize was missing. “Thus, the forgiver discovers the paradox of forgiveness: as we give to others the gifts of mercy, generosity, and moral love, we ourselves are healed.”

So forgiveness is hard work and a long process. Forgiveness is free, but it is not cheap. I invite you to choose one area in the coming week or month in which you’d like to walk a little further on the path toward forgiveness.

A sage once prayed, “Forgive our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.”[7] Indeed, may our trespasses be forgiven, and may we do the difficult and glorious work of forgiveness. So may it be.

[1] Jeanne Safer, Ph.D. Forgiving and Not Forgiving: A New Approach to Resolving Intimate Betrayal. 1999, Avon Books, New York: 43   (Return to article)

[2] Safer 143.    (Return to article)

[3] Safer: pg 6.    (Return to article)

[4] Safer 96    (Return to article)

[5] International Forgiveness Institute: A Process Model Of Forgiving    (Return to article)

[6] Safer 64.    (Return to article)

[7] Luke Chapter 11, verse 4.    (Return to article)