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The first of a series of posts about forgiveness

Saturday, 11 March, 2006

I want to explore the topic of forgiveness. I don't think I understand it enough. I don't think it's something that people in general understand enough. And yet it is an important part of our relationships with each other and, most of all, our relationship with God.

I think I need to understand it more because I think it will help me with some of the issues I need to work through—the same issues which are putting me into counselling. It's not that I am completely confused about it, it's just that I think that some people speak about it way too flippantly. Like in cases where a Christian has been abused as a child and she is told that she must forgive her molester because it's the godly thing to do. But what about the things that were done to her? What about all the suffering she went through during the times when she was abused and during the years after, as she continued to feel the effects of her molester's actions? Doesn't this need to be acknowledged? Is she just being unforgiving, resentful and vengeful? Is she a bad Christian if she finds it hard to forgive? After all, doesn't the Bible say,

For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you, but if you do not forgive others their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.

(Matthew 6:14-15)

She should forgive her molester or else she is not assured of forgiveness herself.

But I don't think it's as simple as that. In fact, I think that sort of thinking is wrong and even harmful.

In 2004, my church (which was St. Michael's Wollongong back then) did a sermon series on forgiveness in the latter half of the year. Steve Pym led the series and, week by week for the course of a month and a half, he went through the different aspects of how we should be thinking about forgiveness from the Bible and how it applies to our relationship with God and our relationships with others. I found it a very helpful sermon series (though I think I must have missed a week or two because I could only find four of the outlines when I checked our files) but, at the time, I didn't stop and think about the issues involved too much. I want to use Steve's framework (and the summary outline he so helpfully provided at the end of the series) to do so now.

Well, at least over a couple more blog posts.

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