Warren Counseling Services

We left off discussing the four types of forgiveness: cheap forgiveness, refusing to forgive, acceptance, and genuine forgiveness.

Now, we need to discuss what forgives is NOT. Go slow as you read this and digest it carefully. This will be going against all you may have believed about forgiveness. Forgiveness is not justifying, understanding, or explaining why the person acted toward you as he or she did. Forgiveness is not just forgetting about the offense and trusting time to take care of it. Forgiveness is not asking God to forgive the person who hurt you. Forgiveness is not asking God to forgive you for being angry our resentful against the person who offended you. Forgiveness is not denying that you were really hurt. Some people will say to themselves, “well, there are others who have suffered more than me”… This is not what forgives means.

Now, let’s begin to forgive. Understand that it is often unwise to forgive face to face. This tends to make the other person feel “put down” and make you look “holier-than-thou”. Select a time and place to be alone for a while. Pray. Bring to mind all the people you need to forgive and the events you need to forgive them for. Write a list of all these people and events. Pray again. Don’t rush this process.

Say out loud everything that person has done to hurt you. Do not hold back the tears or emotions that come with hearing, with your own ears, what has been done to you. Choose, by an act of your will, to forgive for all time. (More about this later) You may not feel like forgiving. Just do it and the feelings will follow. Do not doubt that what you have done is real and valid. Release the person from the debt you feel is owed. Say, “You are free and forgiven”. If the person is still part of your life, now is a good time to accept the individual without wanting to change them – (you will not be agreeing with them.) Pray for these individuals and give the ground, now freed, in your heart to God.

Remember I will address the paragraph above in much more detail later. For now, let’s talk about unforgiveness. Unforgiveness is hatred. Maybe you do not hate enough to murder but unforgiveness is the same as hate. Examine the feelings you experience towards the idea of forgiving someone in your life. What are the feelings experienced in recognizing you have an unforgiving heart?

Unforgiveness takes on one of two forms. You will either stuff it inside or keep it bottled up. This will add up to bitterness and resentment. Or you will actively retaliate against the person. Either way, you end up being the victim of your unforgiveness far more than the person who has wronged you.

Some reasons we don’t forgive may be our PRIDE. We don’t want to be looked down on. Or we enjoy the attention we get when we don’t forgive. CONTROL is when we want to choose the punishment for the other person. IGNORANCE is when we may not know how to respond to old hurts and painful situations. We may have never been taught how to forgive. If we are a non-believer we don’t forgive because we have never experienced forgiveness.

When you view the other person as a victim, not just as a perpetrator, you risk feeling empathy and compassion for that person. Seeing them in a one-dimensional term-as evil, as bad – makes it easier for you to keep your distance, feed your anger, and dismiss the other person. When you frame him/her in a more complex way, as a flawed human being struggling to survive his/her troubled past, you make it more difficult to condemn him/her. To feel compassion does not equal compromised. You may feel softer without feeling weak or foolish or being stepped on. You can know for certainty you were wronged yet be touched by their hardships.

Part three will take you through the painful actual process of forgiving. I briefly made mention,  in the 5^th paragraph above this one, how forgiving someone would look.  Part three will be the guts of forgiveness.