The Value of Forgiving Those Who Trespass Against Us

By: Wendy D. Vance

According to OpenBible.info, Yeshua (Jesus) discusses forgiveness at least 40 times during His ministry. In this same list. 81 instances of discussions about forgiveness (What Does the Bible Say about Forgiving One Person - How Many Times?, n.d.). Other sources stated that there were up to 109 times that the Bible discusses forgiveness. Whether it is 40, 100 (add comma) or 1000 times, forgiveness is a recurrent conversation in the pages of the Bible, indicating that forgiveness is a topic that is important, something to which we should pay careful attention.

Despite its oblivious (obvious, not oblivious) importance, forgiveness has found its way to the cutting room floor of the modern narrative. Instead of forgiveness, when we have been wronged in either word or deed, it is our instinct to strike back, to get revenge. It is what our television shows, movies, books, and music teach us. From our modern viewpoint, getting revenge is the strong thing to do, the macho thing, the expected reaction. It is as though you are some type of alien creature if you say that you are choosing to forgive someone who has wronged you. Forgiveness is perceived as weakness, to do so is thought to be allowing ourselves to be walked on or mistreated. When we practice forgiveness, we are sometimes asked “how can you let him/her get away with that?” or “why aren’t you taking them to court?” or “He/she would only do that to me once, because I would _________”. Just fill in the blank with whatever type of revenge you want, because that all too often feels like how we handle things in our current age.

The idea that we could forgive instead of taking revenge is deemed inappropriate, and you are thought to have something wrong with you or you are somehow responsible for being inappropriately treated because you did not “stand up for yourself.” To some degree you could say that extending forgiveness and/or being a forgiving person could result in you, the forgiver, getting labeled as part of the problem. For example, in the aftermath of the West Nickel Mines Amish school shooting, the Amish community extended immediate forgiveness to the shooter and his family, offering comfort to the shooter’s family, instructing their youth to not harbor hate in their hearts toward the shooter, and setting up a college fund for his children. While there were many that supported these actions, there were other individuals in the news media who criticized the Amish people for extending forgiveness. In his article, Undeserved Forgiveness, Jeff Jacoby, criticizes these acts of forgiveness because it was “undeserved.” He goes on to state that the world is not made a better place by forgiving people who commit terrible acts. He ends by telling his readers, “The murder of the Amish girls was a deeply hateful evil. There is nothing godly about pretending it wasn't” (Jacoby, n.d.). Mr. Jacoby is right that this act was unfathomable and hateful and, sadly, speaks volumes about the sorry state of our mental healthcare system.

However, what Mr. Jacoby and others that wrote or spoke similar criticism or who criticize other acts of forgiveness as weak or promoting future misdeeds have a clear misunderstanding of forgiveness. Forgiveness is not about pretending that what someone did wasn’t wrong, unjustifiable, life-altering, hateful, or fully unfathomable; it is really not even about the person who is being forgiven. It is about the person doing the forgiving, about the forgiving person saying that I refuse to carry around this stone of hatred, this constant need to get back at you so that you can feel the pain you inflicted on me; I refuse to allow you to continue to victimize me.

When we carry around unforgiveness, it is not the person that we refuse to forgive who suffers, in most cases, it is us, the unforgiving who remain in pain, darkness, and mental torture. Unforgiveness becomes a blackness in our soul that eats at us, constantly reminding us that we were hurt. No matter how well we have wrapped up and packed away that hurt, pain, and unforgiveness in the recesses of our minds, thinking that it cannot impact us buried in this dark hole, we cannot escape the ravages of unforgiveness. It is a cancer that grows inside of the little places in our mind where we placed it.

That blackness of unforgiveness can metastasize into a myriad of both physical and mental health concerns. According to experts at Johns Hopkins and the Mayo Clinic, the presence of unforgiveness has been found to increase anxiety, depression, stress, chronic pain, blood pressure, cholesterol, lower our immune system function, and anger management issues (Mayo Clinic Staff, 2017 & Johns Hopkins Medicine, 2019). It can also lead to a decrease in our quality and quantity of sleep, lower our self-esteem and negatively impact our interpersonal relationships, not just with the person that hurt us but also with those we hurt when we unintentionally lash out from the prison of our pain. According to the Johns Hopkins article, these physical manifestations of unforgiveness are a result of the stress of chronic anger which puts our bodies into a constant state of fight or flight. Our bodies were not designed to maintain a constant state of fight or flight, so much like a car that you drive hard and fast all the time, the parts begin to wear out much more quickly.

Going beyond the academics of unforgiveness, think about the people that you know who are unforgiving, hold grudges, and are angry most, if not all the time - do you enjoy being around them? The chances are that the answer to this question is no. Often, individuals like this cause you to walk on eggshells because you never know what is going to elicit a sarcastic, hurtful, or angry response. Or they can be unpleasant because they are always complaining about something that was done to them or some health complaint, comparing you to the person that did whatever hurtful thing, trying to control every situation; it just seems that they are never joyful and nothing can ever be positive. These individuals can be so draining, not only costing themselves the joy of the present moment but also robbing others around them of joy because their sour mood is infecting the entire atmosphere. Sadly, while individuals in this state think that they are gathering support, they are actually pushing people away. This results in more hurt and unforgiveness because the person with all the hurt now feels betrayed by those that were supposed to be their supporters. Thus, they create for themselves a self-fulfilling prophecy of hurt, loneliness, isolation, and pain.

Yeshua warned us in the Word that unforgiveness leads to negative consequences, not only in the afterlife, as he warns us that we cannot be forgiven if we do not forgive (Matthew 6:14 -15), but in our current life. In Matthew 18:23-35, Yeshua tells a parable of a man who was forgiven a large debt but refused to forgive a smaller debt that was owed to him. “Therefore, the kingdom of heaven is like a king who wanted to settle accounts with his servants. As he began the settlement, a man who owed him ten thousand bags of gold was brought to him. Since he was not able to pay, the master ordered that he and his wife and his children and all that he had be sold to repay the debt. At this the servant fell on his knees before him. ‘Be patient with me,’ he begged, ‘and I will pay back everything.’ The servant’s master took pity on him, canceled the debt and let him go. But when that servant went out, he found one of his fellow servants who owed him a hundred silver coins. He grabbed him and began to choke him. ‘Pay back what you owe me!’ he demanded. His fellow servant fell to his knees and begged him, ‘Be patient with me, and I will pay it back.’ But he refused. Instead, he went off and had the man thrown into prison until he could pay the debt. When the other servants saw what had happened, they were outraged and went and told their master everything that had happened. Then the master called the servant in. ‘You wicked servant,’ he said, ‘I canceled all that debt of yours because you begged me to. Shouldn’t you have had mercy on your fellow servant just as I had on you?’ In anger his master handed him over to the jailers to be tortured, until he should pay back all he owed.” (Matthew 18:23-34, (NIV).

God does not necessarily throw us into a conventional prison with bars, fences and guards, but our very bodies and minds become our prison. We cannot escape the darkness that consumes us from the inside out, that tortures us, not until we forgive. Until then it is as if we have the memory of what happened on replay somewhere in the back of our minds coloring how we see ourselves and others, polluting how we interact with the world around us, putting us behind impenetrable walls of our own creation in the futile attempt to insulate ourselves from future pain. From behind our walls, we hear the laughter and joy, from the little window slit we see life and relationships pass us by as we sit isolated and alone in our fortress of one.

So today, I am encouraging you to look within yourself and ask, are you harboring unforgiveness? Is it impacting your health? Your relationships? Do you feel angry all the time? Do you feel on the edge, like you just want to strike out at the next slight? Are you tired of hurting others around you because you are hurting inside? Does it feel like your mind is consumed by the hurt? Are you losing sleep because your thoughts will not let you rest? If the answer to any or all of these is yes, let me ask you - is that grudge worth it, has that unforgiveness been of any benefit to you?

Perhaps it is time to let go of the hurt and the pain, to forgive those that hurt you, whether they “deserve” it or not, whether they are remorseful or not. You see, you are not responsible for making them sorry or remorseful, you are not responsible for their punishment, that is solely between that person and God. And certainly meting out punishment to those around you through your anger, sarcasm, belittling or even physical aggression does not make the pain disappear, it does not make your life better, it only serves to isolate you. Give this pain to God, fall on your face before Him and pour out your hurt; pray for those who have hurt you and you will find a balm for your soul. When we pray for those who have hurt us, an amazing thing happens, the anger and the pain disappear, peace descends, and we see the world with different eyes. We begin to understand that the people who hurt us are flawed and hurting souls, who, like us, need God’s love too. We may never forget, but the memory no longer feels like you are daily tearing off a scab and opening the wound anew. This is what is missed by those who dismiss forgiveness as weakness, who promote revenge as the answer to hurt. They cannot see that unforgiveness and rage are the road that leads to captivity, but forgiveness is the road to freedom.

References

What Does the Bible Say About Forgiving One Person - How Many Times? (n.d.). Www.openbible.info. Retrieved June 14, 2022, from https://www.openbible.info/topics/forgiving_one_person_-_how_many_times

‌

Jacoby, J. (n.d.). Undeserved forgiveness. Jeff Jacoby. Retrieved June 13, 2022, from https://www.jeffjacoby.com/5858/undeserved-forgiveness

‌

Mayo Clinic Staff. (2017). Why is it so easy to hold a grudge? Mayo Clinic. https://www.mayoclinic.org/healthy-lifestyle/adult-health/in-depth/forgiveness/art-20047692

‌