The First Big Step...

The best way to kick this off is, I feel, to start with forgiveness.  Really and truly its where we should all start because it’s one of the hardest things that we, as humans, have had to do.  For some reason we like to hold onto old hurts, to re-open old wounds.  We think we’re validated by pain and regret so we hold onto when others inflict pain on us and when we inflict pain on others and ourselves.  For some reason it’s our thing and really if you are going to move forward with life then you need to let all of that go and forgive.

So, how do we forgive?  Getting down to the basics there are three forms of forgiveness.  You have your conditional forgiveness.  That’s where you say “You wronged me, and I will forgive you, but you have to perform a certain task or make a specific commitment first.”  The second is transactional forgiveness, which is close to conditional but much looser.  It states “I will forgive them, but they have to ask for forgiveness first.”  This can be problematic towards reconciliation because the other party may not realize that they have wronged you in the first place.  Reconciliation is the act of bringing two parties together to hash out what went wrong and find a mutual starting point to heal their relationship.  If your forgiveness is dependent on them coming to you and asking for it, and they don’t know they did something wrong, well then reconciliation is going to be hard to come by.

Then there is unilateral forgiveness, and this is what Christ calls us to.  He really does, he calls us to it quite directly.  One major instance of this is when Peter asks him about the nature of forgiveness in Matthew 18: 21-22.  Peter asks how many times he should forgive his brother.  “Seven times?” Peter asks.  Jesus tells him not seven times but seventy times seven.

Let’s break that down because it’s not as convoluted as it seems.  Peter did not pull a random number out of the air.  Peter was born and raised Jewish, so he was quite familiar with the structure of the faith, and he knows that seven is a sacred number, it symbolizes completeness.  This goes back to the story of creation where God created existence in 6 days and rested on the 7^th because his work was “completed”.  You don’t stop working on a project until you’ve completed it.  At least you shouldn’t.  The point is Peter is asking Jesus “Is the number for completeness sufficient for our tradition?”

Jesus’ response is not a math equation.  Okay, it is, but that’s not what he’s saying.  Jesus doesn’t say “You should forgive your brother 490 times.  But on when he hits 491...he's done.”  He’s saying you need to forgive beyond completeness.  You need to wash away the sins, clear the debt, move past the wrong doing.

The second time he addresses this is on the cross, in Luke 23:34.  He says “Father forgive them, for they know not what they do.”

Now out of our three forgiveness options, which one does that sound like?  He didn’t say “Forgive them if they ask for it.”  He didn’t say “Forgive them if they are willing to put in 200 hours of community service and wash your car.” He said called for forgiveness even when the offending party was not aware what they were doing was a sin.  He literally asked for our forgiveness while he was being brutally murdered for public spectacle.  I can’t speak for everyone, but I know I haven’t been wronged THAT badly.

So we know that Christ calls us to unilateral forgiveness, but what if the offending party is you?  What if the one person you can’t forgive is you?  Same thing applies.  Christ is calling you to forgive that person in the mirror because as far as Christ is concerned, you are not beyond redemption.  Who are we to put limits on God?