Forgiven and Forgiving

L. William Countryman

• Publisher: Morehouse Publishing
• Year: 1998
• Print ISBN: 9780819217349
• eBook ISBN: 9780819224934
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

"Only the strong can forgive. God, who is strongest, forgives best, " writes Dr. L. William Countryman in this fresh look at forgiveness. Unlike most books on the subject, Forgiven and Forgiving is not about a step-by-step process. Rather, it is about conversion. Once we truly understand the depths of God's love for us and know deep-down that we are forgiven, we begin to see the world anew through God's eyes. Only when we are able to accept God's forgiveness for ourselves can we offer forgiveness to others. Biblically based with sound academic research, yet written in a conversational style, Forgiven and Forgiving offers valuable insights for clergy, laity, and church study groups.

Some Practical Problems

Up to this point, I've been treating forgiveness in fairly general terms, but there are also some particular circumstances and situations that can make it particularly difficult for us to forgive. I want to examine a few of those and offer some reflections on why they're difficult and what steps we can take to meet them. I am thinking, in this chapter, particularly of problems that arise from the behavior of other people—often from the specific character of wrongs done to us. There are no simple, direct, infallible solutions to these problems; yet we are not helpless before them, either.

The difficulties in question here arise out of the nature of the wrong done to us, or out of the attitude adopted by the one who committed the wrong, or out of the ongoing relationship we have with that person. These are circumstances largely outside our control, and they may make forgiveness particularly difficult for us to give because it doesn't seem to lead to any healthy result. At times, indeed, forgiveness may seem almost to acquiesce in the wrong or to give it approval—things we rightly shrink from doing. Yet, we still have the need, in these situations, to turn old wrongs loose, if only for our own peace and freedom.

Apologies—and Their Absence

We all know that when we have done someone harm, we have the power to help heal the hurt by offering an apology and, where appropriate, making restitution. Jesus tells us not only to forgive those who have wronged us but also to ask for forgiveness when we have wronged another: “If you are offering your gift at the altar and there you remember that your brother or sister has anything against you, leave your gift there before the altar and go, first be reconciled to your sister or brother and then come and offer your gift” (Matt. 5:23–24).

This is partly just good practical sense. As the author of Proverbs reminds us, “A soft answer turneth away wrath” (Prov. 15:1 AV). But it's more than just good policy. By offering an expression of sorrow and regret, we can make it simpler for those we have wronged to move beyond the hurtful past. We simplify their process of dealing with the harm. How? By confirming their understanding of what happened and by acknowledging that they have power to help heal the relationship. The apology turns out to be a kind of gift to the one we have offended and, in the limited way possible for us when we're in the wrong, a contribution to the shared process of forgiveness and reconciliation.

A good apology, one that will actually contribute to this process, requires tact and respect. It must be a gift. I can offer it, but I cannot insist that it be accepted. As the wrongdoer, I have no right to demand forgiveness; that would only be imposing yet another burden on the person I have wronged. In any case, forgiveness comes as a gift or not at all. The apology does not compel forgiveness or earn it or purchase it; it only seeks to smooth the way and make it easier for the offended party to give the gift of forgiveness in return.

To this end, an apology should usually be a plain and simple admission of fault without a catalog of extenuating circumstances or self-defense. We are asking the offended party not to feel sorry for us or to excuse us but to forgive us for something we are sorry we have done. We are sorry both that we have harmed another and that we have broken a relationship thereby.

This rules out clever casuistries—for example, the kind of apology that begins, “I'm sorry that what I did upset you,” implying that there was nothing really wrong about it and that your reaction was probably excessive. Such verbal sleights try to create the appearance of an apology without actually apologizing. They are of no value spiritually. For the wronged party, they only add insult to injury. For the wrongdoer, they are spiritually dangerous, because they are really a form of hypocrisy.

The spiritual value of an apology is, first, that it is an occasion to evaluate ourselves accurately, with “neither fear nor favor.” Spiritual guides have always advocated self-examination as a means to self-knowledge. And self-knowledge is necessary if we are to become intimate with God. How can we participate in any intimate relationship without having some initial notion (hopefully, a growing notion) of who we are? The point of self-examination, then, and of the confession to which it leads, is not to grovel but to know oneself and to present oneself fairly and accurately, including the things we may be ashamed of.

The faith of the gospel makes it possible to do this with a steadier vision, because we know that God's love for us is not dependent on our being perfect. If we imagine that our standing with God is dependent on our doing everything right, we are deeply tempted to cover up our faults. We become masters of disguise. We create a facade of exceptional virtue in one part of our lives to compensate for the vices of another. We may even make a show of confessing one set of faults to keep ourselves from looking at another set that disturbs us more. A favorite technique of religious charlatans is to focus on sexual faults, which most people in our culture feel anxious about, to distract their followers from noticing more grievous sins such as greed, hypocrisy, and hostility toward other people. An honest apology is a fine spiritual discipline for cutting through such nonsense.

Second, the making of an apology is a way of participating in God's gracious and generous project of redeeming the world through the spread of forgiveness. Our apology puts us “in the way” of forgiveness. It is the one contribution we can make when we have wronged another. I do not mean that our repentance earns forgiveness, either from God or from the injured party. As I have already said, true forgiveness is possible only as gift, never as payment.

In relation to God, there is no need to earn forgiveness, because, as Paul said, God extended the offer of forgiveness long before we were ready to take advantage of it. What repentance does is accept the gift and make use of it. In the case of those whom we have wronged, our apology makes their path to forgiveness easier and prepares us to receive the gift if it is given. By acknowledging our failure, we affirm that the offended party has power either to forgive or to deny forgiveness; we confess that person's power in our relationship, admitting that we are now dependent on him or her for restoration.

When no apology or acknowledgment of wrongdoing is forthcoming, it can make the work of the forgiver more difficult—but not impossible. What are you to do when you are the offended party and the offender walks away as though nothing has happened or as if the actions were perfectly justified? This is a serious dilemma. People may feel paralyzed in the process of forgiveness and therefore trapped by the old wrong, unable to leave it behind and move on without the cooperation of the other person.

It may even seem like a mistake to forgive the unrepentant. Won't such forgiveness just encourage the same behavior again? Isn't it an absurd act of acquiescence in our own suffering? It's all well and good to say that God forgives us before we repent, but we human beings, unlike God, are not infinite—in life, in love, in patience, in riches. We can indeed imitate God's love, but there is no piety in pretending that we, too, have infinite resources. Isn't it better to admit that we have to place some limits on forgiveness? Isn't it better to leave the unrepentant entirely to God's forgiveness?

The answer is “no,” but it has more to do with our own spiritual lives and our own relationship with God than with the wrongdoer who refuses to apologize. Forgiveness, as I have been saying, is primarily not about the past but about the future. There is a strange sense in which forgiveness isn't primarily about the wrong being forgiven or about the person who did it—despite the fact that they are both grammatical objects of the verb forgive! Forgiveness is about the forgiver.

Forgiveness is about who we—the people forgiving—are and who we are becoming. It's about turning loose of the past so that we can live fully in the present while we build a new and surprising future with God and with one another. Although the other person's apology would help us in concluding the old chapter and moving on, we can do that anyway, with God's help, through the discovery of new riches in our own lives. We are, after all, falling ever more deeply into love with God—the love that God is sharing with all the world. As we forgive, we discover our new wealth. As we discover our new wealth, we find it easier to share by forgiving.

In the process, we wind up incidentally keeping a door open for future reconciliation and rebuilding. Think about the Joseph story again. Joseph certainly didn't get an apology from his brothers. Yet he somehow turned loose of his (perfectly justified) anger and resentment toward them. Of course, he was caught up in new struggles and opportunities. Before he knew it, he was enduring slavery in Egypt. Then he was trying to fend off, in a politic way, the dangerous overtures of Potiphar's wife. Then he was suffering through another undeserved spell in prison. Then, after all these struggles, he suddenly had the daunting responsibility of seeing Egypt through a major natural disaster.

Joseph was busy dealing with a full life. And that is at least partly the point, isn't it? He lived in the present, working with what he had been given, building a worthwhile future. He hung onto his sense of God's love—his sense that God had some goodwill, even some plan, for him. He remembered his brothers' treachery, but it didn't dominate his existence. Eventually, he was able to say to his brothers, “It was God who did this, not you”—God did it for the sake of the blessing that Joseph would eventually bring about through his improbable history. Joseph wasn't making nice with his brothers when he said this, or sparing their feelings. He was telling them what his life had come to mean to him. It was dominated not by past wrongs but by a sense of the richness of life lived in friendship with God.

When the offender doesn't repent and apologize, then, what do we do? Perhaps at first we are caught in a tangle of emotions. We are hurt, angry, resentful—and stymied in our efforts to escape these unpleasant feelings. We would like to have the one who harmed us acknowledge the truth of the past with an apology. We would like to see signs of repentance that might make some new and life-giving relationship possible. All this is reasonable. It would be helpful. But it isn't necessary.

God's forgiveness flows out of the richness of God's own life and seeks to share that richness with others. It isn't an end in itself but a means to draw us all toward a similar richness of life. Forgiveness releases us from bondage to the past precisely so that we can live in and by the riches of God's love. We can participate in this same generous life as God's friends. We can get on with building and enjoying this life. The more we share in it and take delight in it, the more readily we can forgive.

There's an analogy with something Paul says about marriage. This was a subject on which Paul was quite definite and even rather rule-bound (despite his general suspicion of legally based goodness), yet he was prepared to acknowledge that some circumstances cannot be mended. In the case of the believer who is rejected by a non believing spouse, he says, “Let the person go. The brother or sister is not enslaved in such situations. But God has called you in peace” (1 Cor. 7:15).

When the wrongdoer will not cooperate in a process of reconciliation, let the person go. Let others find the path, with God's help, that will lead them to new life. Your own path is peace. You are not enslaved to the past; God has called you in peace. God has called you to life. Look about you for the signs and opportunities of that life—and live it.

If, like Joseph, we seek the good that is possible in our present situation, we need not be enslaved by the pain of past wrongs or held back by the wrongdoer's refusal to repent or to apologize. Forgiveness is a gift that turns out to benefit the giver even more than the receiver, since it frees us of having to be slaves to the past. It is a direct expression of the increasing richness of our lives with God.

And so we forgive people anyway. We forgive even without help from the offender. We do it for our own sake, so that we can get on with our God-given lives. And if, at some point, things change and the offender does want to go through the door we've kept open, we can follow Joseph's lead. If we haven't been living with bated breath, waiting for that moment, we won't refuse it, either.

The Absent Offender

Sometimes the person who has wronged us doesn't just fail to apologize but disappears completely. Perhaps the wrong was some random act of violence or theft, and we never knew who perpetrated it. Or it may be that a family member or friend or associate at work harms us and then moves away and breaks all contact. Perhaps the person who wronged us is even dead and, it would seem, conclusively out of reach.

This situation may be particularly difficult for those who were wronged as children and have carried the consequences with them ever since. Often we wake up only much later in our lives to the extent and meaning of what was done to us as children. Even after we have recognized it as wrong, it may be a long time before we feel sufficiently secure in our adult identity to challenge the offender. By that time, it may be too late to deal with that person directly. That leaves us with a strong sense of unfinished business, which can be very painful to us. Having spent years wrestling with this long-buried wrong and preparing to handle it consciously and responsibly as an adult, how is a person to deal with the fact that there is no possibility of “closure” with the person or persons responsible?

Here we need to distinguish between two things that are often intertwined in our daily lives: forgiveness and reconciliation. They are related. Ideally, we like them to go together. But they are not the same thing. Reconciliation takes at least two people, but forgiveness can happen unilaterally—indeed, that is its normal form. By forgiveness, I let the offense and the offender go. I allow that reality to recede into the past while I get on with my own life.

In the process, the past loses its power to keep me from living here and now. I don't mean that we are ever entirely free of the past. In fact, we are always shaped by it. But that shaping can take many different forms—some harmful, some helpful. Just as Joseph took a past that was full of disasters and came to see it as a means by which God had shaped him for blessing, we, too, can find even the evils of our past turning into building materials for the present and the future. We do this when we claim the divine grace, freely given, to recognize the past harm and to let it go (without in any way denying its reality or its seriousness), and so to continue growing in love.

The absence of the wrongdoer, then, complicates forgiveness, but it doesn't make forgiveness impossible. But what about reconciliation? In cases such as these, it may seem pointless to speak of building any kind of future with a person who is at best absent and at worst may be totally unknown to us. Does forgiveness mean simply writing these people off?

In the immediate moment, that may in fact be the case: “The brother or sister is not enslaved in such situations. But God has called you in peace.” That, in itself, is a gain. You are free to pursue peace, with the help of God, unhindered by the absence of the offender. But the gospel is not just about the inner peace of individuals. God loves every individual—and all the world. Christian faith, when it is working, tends to lead us toward a big picture of the world and God's activity in it.

As we cultivate the power of forgiving and even the habit of forgiving, we are in fact creating a new world around us, one that is slowly beginning to reflect more and more of the life of the age to come. As we do so, we are creating a world in which love, forgiveness, and reconciliation triumph, in which we are united with one another in the assurance of God's goodwill toward us. As we absorb more and more of God's generous love into our lives, we give the world around us a reason and an opportunity to change.

I'm not suggesting magical solutions. The world as we know it is very resistant to love. It isn't going to surrender easily. For that matter, even those of us who have been touched by God's love and brought to faith and new life by it seldom surrender easily! But love is the only power that can heal and renew and bring about reconciliation. Through our forgiveness of one another, even of the absent offender, love makes its way through the world.

When I am teaching, I often feel that I am repaying a debt in an odd sort of way. What I owe to my own teachers I repay by giving to my students. In this process the world is enriched in ways that direct exchanges between two parties could never achieve alone. I think that if we cultivate the gift of forgiveness, even where it cannot affect the relationship between us and those who have actually wronged us, its effects will still spill over onto the world at large. If reconciliation cannot reunite me with the one who wronged me, it can still work at reuniting the broken communities where we live here and now.

Moreover, we Christians are people of the resurrection. The good news that has brought us new life here and now, we believe, will reach its consummation in the life of the age to come. God has many surprises up God's sleeve yet. It would be a mistake to assume dogmatically that reconciliation with those who have wronged us and then run away out of our lives is eternally impossible.

In the age to come, there is nothing to fear. No one will be free to be abusive there. But it is not a static world. If it's truly a world for human beings, it will continue to be a place of growth and learning and change. We are, even now, only in the early stages of this, our true life. God forces no one to enter the life of that age, but all are welcome. If we do choose to enter, it is because we have caught some glimmer of its great beauty and delight. We are drawn to it by a deep desire, even though we know that to take part in it, we shall have to become, in some degree and in unforeseen ways, new people.

Perhaps those who have wronged us will choose not to enter that world. When we wrong one another, it is often out of a desire to exert control over our lives, to make things be exactly as we want them. Perhaps the age to come, with its risk of becoming new, will be too terrifying for that reason. Perhaps we shall never again meet those who have wronged us. Yet I have at least a hope that it won't be so, a hope that no human being is capable of eternally rejecting the beauty and wonder of our true life. I think we are at least capable of being converted by it. We can still hope—as God, too, hopes—that all will be part of the great multitude that repents (in William Temple's sense of the word) and takes up the work of forgiveness and enters into the joy of God's family, at last reassembled in our true home.

Whether such future reconciliation happens for us or not, I believe that our forgiving of those who have harmed us is a gift to ourselves and to the rest of the world. By putting aside our obsession with the past, our imprisonment in its wrongs, we become free people again, no longer enslaved, ready to participate in the present and the future. Our past can become part of our future in the form of a blessing instead of a curse. The richer life that we then enjoy spills over onto those around us as we become agents of the reconciliation of all things. Forgiveness of the absent is not easy, but it turns out to be both a good t...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication Page
• Contents
• Why Forgiveness?
• Forgiveness—Not Quite what you Thought
• Forgiving Oneself
• Forgiving One Another—Opportunity or Demand?
• Forgiveness Builds the Future
• Some Practical Problems
• The Forgiving Spirit
• Forgiveness and the Life of Faith
• Conclusion
• Acknowledgments