Day 44 of 100: Quotes on Forgiveness
(by M. K. Doc Downing, PhD, LMFT)
I do not believe in forgiving, for to forgive you means I first must have judged you.
"You no-good low life; you hurt me. I’ll never forgive you for what you did to me."
In our churches, as well as in the psychological community, we hear a lot about the importance of forgiving. We are told that we need to forgive because the Bible says we should and besides, if we don’t, bad mental health things will happen to us.
Have you ever noticed that the people whom we need to forgive are the ones we have judged as having wronged us, harmed us, and destroyed our trust? They are the ones who often show no remorse for the pain they have caused us. Even therapists have this problem:
“I felt wronged, forever harmed, not just by the loss of our marriage but by his betrayal of our family life. Yet I kept a vision of the family I still wanted to share, a relationship that had enough love and trust to carry us through children’s weddings and grandchildren. So I knew that I wanted to forgive. But how would I do it, how could I move on, detecting in him no regret for the pain he had caused?” Molly Layton from Family Therapy Network (Nov./Dec. 1998)
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Those who accept the Bible as their authority may have trouble with these next two quotes: “Judge not, lest you are judged” and “Forgive one another as Christ has forgiven you.” This creates a couple of problems because forgiving someone means you first must have judged them as having done something bad or wrong. Therein lies the conflict since the same authority, the Bible, states in at least two places that we are not to judge.
Now, you have two apparently contradictory statements creating a double-bind situation. To forgive implies that I must have judged the person and yet, I am not to judge others. How can I resolve this dilemma? One way is not to judge what the person did or said to you. If you can do this then your feelings will not be hurt and there is nothing to forgive, but that is easier said than done.
Here is a second problem. The Bible says that forgiveness should be done “. . . as Christ has forgiven you.” What does that look like? When God forgives, He removes our transgressions (sins) “as far as the East is from the West. . ..” Is there a difference in how Christ forgives and God’s forgiveness?
For many people, forgiveness comes with strings attached. “I forgive you, but I won’t forget.” When I hear someone say that, I have a hard time believing any kind of forgiveness has occurred.
So, what about this forgiveness thing? It seems clear that you cannot forgive someone unless you have already judged them as having done something they shouldn’t have done against you or someone else. As a result, I hear people say, “I forgive you for having hurt me.” (Doesn’t that sound condescending to you?) The hurt done to you may be mundane or it may be horrendous, such as the Columbine High School shootings. In all cases, you have to have judged someone’s behavior as bad or wrong to be able to forgive them.
“But,” you say, “Someone really hurt me”. Seventy percent of the times you feel someone has hurt your feelings, if you had checked it out that person, you will discover you took what they said the wrong way. When someone says to me, “I forgive you,” I’ve always been tempted to say, “Thank you, and I forgive you for judging me.”
How is it possible to reconcile not judging someone with the need to judge that person so that you can forgive them?
First, let’s see what forgiveness looks like? Forgiveness is an abstract word. There is no correlation or parallel for it in the solid world of things you can touch and feel. So, when someone tells you that you should forgive your neighbor, what do you do? I don’t know about you, but I know I can not live up to the standard of forgiveness that God has set, “as far as the East is from the West to be remembered no more. . . .”
So, when I am told to forgive someone, what exactly am I to do? I don’t have a button that I can push and all is forgiven. I could ask God “to work a miracle in my life,” but what am I asking God to do? What will this miracle look like? Will I suddenly experience a wave of forgiveness coursing through my body?
May I suggest that forgiving someone starts with taking your judgments off their behaviors. In a similar manner, to forgive yourself requires that you stop judging yourself. This brings up the second kind of forgiveness, “as Christ has forgiven us.”
When Jesus was confronted with the woman caught in adultery, He responded, “Let him that is without sin cast the first stone.” When He looked up and they were all gone, He asked the woman, “Where are your accusers?” Then He said, “I don’t accuse [judge] you either. Go and sin no more.” He did much the same thing with the Samaritan woman at the well. Once she was honest, then He dropped the issue of her living arrangements and started talking about what was really important, “Living Water.”
Someone has said that man shouldn’t try to do what God does and God won’t do what man needs to do. While I cannot forgive as God the Father does, I can forgive as Christ forgives.
There is an alternative to judging yourself and others. True forgiveness is a process for humans. True forgiveness starts with taking judgments off offending behaviors. It is a matter of accepting, without judgment, another’s or my own behaviors. (Acceptance does not mean approval. Acceptance is taking the responsibility for what you did and not blaming something or someone else.)
The following phrase is something that helps substitute acceptance for judgments: “Isn’t it interesting….” “Isn’t it interesting that Dad (mother, sister, brother, friend) acted that way.” Then add, “I wonder what pain (anger, fear) he must be experiencing that would cause him to act that way?”
Forgiving yourself works in a similar way. However, it requires one additional piece, repentance. The original meaning of repentance is to turn around and go the other way. To forgive oneself might sound something like, “Isn’t it interesting that I behaved that way. I will not do that again, instead I will do. . .”
Many people don’t forgive themselves because they don’t trust themselves to not behave that way again. They have a fear that if they accept themselves, then they won’t change. As a result, they beat up on themselves, “See how dumb I am; I’m so stupid.” This type of self-manipulation does not work and only serves to lower feelings of self-worth. I believe God does not make junk and you can trust what God has created.
The problem is that sometimes you may not want to take the judgments off of someone like a molester, a murderer, or a rapist. If that is your choice, then separate your judgments from your need to punish. Let God do what God does best (eternal forgiveness and punishment) and you do what you can do. Stop judging and stop punishing.
To forgive means, literally, to give up—judging yourself and judging others.
Taking the judgments off frees you.
Frees you to forgive.
Frees you to get on with your life.
