Signs of Spiritual Maturity Part 5: Forgiveness

"Epaphras, who is one of you, a servant of Christ Jesus, sends you greetings. He is always wrestling for you in his prayers, so that you can stand mature and fully assured in everything God wills."

-- Colossians 4:12

Forgiveness

This week we continue our Maturity Series with Father Ron Rolheiser's fifth sign of maturity or Christlikeness:

"Forgive - those who hurt you, your own sins, the unfairness of your life, and God for not rescuing you."

DEGREE OF DIFFICULTY

Our family is enjoying watching the Paris Olympic highlights each night. One aspect of the diving and gymnastics competition scores is the degree of difficulty (DD). The higher the DD the harder the act. In the Olympics this means more accomplished athletes and potentially higher scores. I mention this because among our ten signs in this series, forgiveness may have the highest degree of difficulty. This is the case for many reasons including bad teaching from childhood, the other party not helping the process, our own pride, the pain we feel, the loss we endure, the sense of injustice, and on and on. Thus, once again, Rolheiser has hit the nail on the head in terms of giving us a mark of maturity.

PRAYER & RELATIONSHIP

Given this difficulty I want to highlight something Paul points out about maturity in Colossians 4:12, "Epaphras, who is one of you, a servant of Christ Jesus, sends you greetings. He is always wrestling for you in his prayers, so that you can stand mature and fully assured in everything God wills."

The maturing process is a work of God and will only come about by His grace. This highlights the necessity of prayer. Epaphras, a Colossian, is traveling with Paul and clearly loves and misses his fellow believers back home. He "wrestles in prayer" for them that they may "stand mature...". May we each have people wrestling in prayer for us both individually and, according to the passage, corporately. Epaphras is praying for the body of believers. This forces me to ask myself and you, who are we praying for in this way? Prayer is powerful and effective. May we never discount its importance in seeing God's people grow to maturity.

Before moving on let me give one more note on this. I want to be careful not to give the impression that prayer is like coins in God's slot machine. Epaphras experienced God's love and loved his people and wanted good for them and was thus moved to wrestle before God for them like Jacob in the wilderness. We can't remove the relational aspect and pray as if it is some dutiful process to accomplish some goal. No, the first step is to sit with God, to experience His love, to be filled with His Spirit, and to be moved according to the love we feel for our brothers and sisters. If we don't feel it, the first wrestling is there until God blesses us with a burden of prayer. In the end, we want God. He is the blessing. Remember it is relational, always relational.

GOD SHOWED THE WAY

With that in hand, let's look at forgiveness. We start as always wherever we are. Somebody takes something from us either literally or figuratively. They owe us something. Forgiveness means we do not require them to pay anymore. The debt is covered.

This is what God did for us. We are in sin; sin is first and foremost against God; thus, we owe God; Jesus paid the debt which means we are forgiven.

We see this in the Lord's prayer:

"And forgive us our sins,

for we ourselves also forgive everyone in debt to us."

- Luke 11:4a

We see it again in Jesus at his death.

"Jesus said, 'Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.'"

- Luke 23:34

And in Stephen at his death,

"He knelt down and cried out with a loud voice, 'Lord, do not hold this sin against them!' And after saying this, he fell asleep."

- Acts 7:60

THE STRUGGLE

Those are beautiful examples, but I hesitate to point to them because of the temptation we feel to look like we meet the standard instead of being where we are and facing the need to go through the process of becoming forgiving people. This is why I said above we must start where we are.

When someone sins against me and the call is to forgive, I must first recognize what is going on inside of me. I need to allow myself to feel the loss. Is that easy or hard for you? It is hard for me. To truly forgive the debt that is owed I must recognize it. If this isn't difficult, it means I'm either super mature, the loss isn't that big, or I'm not really feeling it as I need to.

Let's assume I feel it, really feel it, and I'm going through a host of emotions. I'm angry and hurt and want revenge and wishing evil on the person and no recognizable part of me desires to forgive him or her. Are you with me? What do I do?

The temptation in so many circles is to know I'm not supposed to feel that way which moves me to feel shame and suppress all those strong emotions. I then either move on like nothing happened or say I forgive him or her while inwardly allowing the root of bitterness to grow and acting like it will have no impact on my soul. Or maybe I come from a different background where I learned it was okay to lash out unleashing my anger on whoever did me wrong. None of these are helpful responses, but they are much easier and feel better initially than the path of forgiveness God invites us to walk. Also, as mentioned, the robe of shame is draped over us in these responses, and we end up sinking into a hole of hiding, pretending, and/or suppressing as a way of life. This leads to us becoming angry, bitter people who spend all our energy managing our image. We all know people in this place, and some of us fit the bill. Usually, we are great at hiding it except for those who know us best. They make comments on our anger, and we respond with dumbfounded expressions not understanding we are only fooling ourselves. The good news of Jesus is that we don't have to stay here.

ALTERNATIVE & A PERSONAL STORY

Instead, the invitation is to feel it all, to allow the emotions but not necessarily to express them publicly. This can be quite scary, especially if we were never held, literally held, when we were in pain. If that is your story, get the healing you need because God's invitation is for us to fully feel what we feel - a healthy person experiences a full range of emotions - be held by God and our community in those feelings, and to move towards wholeness which will allow us to forgive.

Let me give a personal example. Laurie and I decided to re-sod our yard a few years ago. We found a guy to do it who was recommended by a friend, so we trusted him. We paid him a lot of money to put new grass in our yard. Within a few weeks of installing the grass, most of it died. He had guaranteed the grass, so we asked him to redo it. He strung us along for over a year saying he would do it, but in the end he never did, the yard looked horrible, and we never got any of the money back. He had ruined our yard, took our money, and lied to us repeatedly. We were hurt and angry and felt betrayed and violated and felt shame for not doing more research on the guy, and every time we walked outside we were reminded of our loss, both literally and figuratively. He was not a friend, but we had developed a relationship when his team was working on the yard, so we felt it personally. How did forgiveness happen in this situation?

It took a long time. In fact, it took over a year. Laurie and I each had our own road to get there since it affected us differently. We wanted to get to a place where we could see the guy and sincerely wish him good while not sugarcoating nor denying what he had done, regardless of his response. We also wanted to hold him accountable. In short, we wanted to love God and love him and let God lead us through a process of forgiveness. It was a bumpy road to say the least.

Laurie and I shared deep frustrations with each other and talked about the situation with friends. We went through seasons of wanting him to feel our pain and get the justice he deserved. Some days the idea of mercy for him felt 100% wrong. Other days we gave the whole thing to God and at least wanted to trust God for the outcome. Other days we just cried out to God with our pain. Consistency was the last way to describe our process. We were up and down and all around.

Little by little God brought each of us to the place at which the anger dissipated, and we could see this guy as a person, not just as someone who did us wrong. It took a long time, but we forgave him. In the end we decided to sue him in small claims court. We had no sense of vengeance or wishing evil on him; we just wanted our money back, and we wanted to protect others from getting hurt by him. We won the case, but he never paid, and we are okay. God is taking care of us, and if we saw this guy on street, we are at the place where we wouldn't have a problem being real with him with no anger but rather with a longing for his good. We don't expect or want to be friends with him; if anything, we feel pity on him. He is not flourishing.

Of course, I'm describing something after the fact, and it is impossible to fully capture what the experience was like or where we are now. We aren't perfect. I'm sure if we actually saw the guy, we would feel a host of emotions. He has never apologized and has played the victim of circumstances character throughout, but we don't hold a grudge against him, and we consider the debt paid. If he had a change of heart and wanted to give us the money, we would take it, but we don't expect it and have confidence God will take care of us. The yard is still not restored, but it will be eventually. This shows me that we have a long way to go on the road to maturity, but God is faithful to walk with us.

This is one example of a multitude I could give. Some are still in process, others are fully forgiven and even restored. With some people I am deeply struggling to forgive but trust I will eventually get there. How about with you? This is hard work, but the cost of not forgiving is too high. May each of us say yes to God’s invitation.

THE OTHER THREE

But Rolheiser doesn't stop with forgiving others, he includes self, life, and God in his mark of maturity. This is such a powerful marker: If a person can't forgive, they are not yet mature. He writes, "In the end, [forgiving others] is our greatest psychological, moral, and religious struggle." (p. 257) And he continues,

"The major task, psychological and spiritual, for the second half of life is to forgive: we need to forgive those who have hurt us, forgive ourselves for our own failings, forgive life for not being fully fair, and forgive God for seemingly being so indifferent to our wounds. We need to do that before we die because ultimately there is only one moral imperative: not to die an angry, bitter person, but to die with a warm heart." (p. 259)

Wow! I both appreciate and am challenged by this call, but this is already long so let's hit each of these quickly and close out this sign.

SELF

Forgiving ourselves can be cliche, but in the context Rolheiser mentions it, each of us will have to take that step eventually. At some point, early or late, you and I will look back at our lives and see the many ways we fell short. We made bad decisions and hurt people and missed opportunities and ruined chances, and we know we could have been so much more. We will need to give an honest appraisal and feel the loss and receive God's grace and let it go. Whether it is quick or takes years, we need to let the truth that God is bigger than our sin and failures sink in and permeate our being. We each need to let God show us that we are his precious children, loved and adored, delighted in, and we are enough in Him regardless of all the failings. As with all of these, this is easy to write, but difficult to live out. May we each have the grace to look in the mirror, see the full truth, and swim in the sea of God’s love.

LIFE

I'm not sure how this fits theologically, but I know it is how some of us think. We are victims of the machine. The world is conspiring against us. All the people who did us wrong and held us back are to blame for our misery. If that coach or teacher or parent or friend or boss had not done what they did or had done what they didn't do, then I would be happy. The system is against me, crushing me, keeping me down. Life is a struggle full of suffering and then we die. That's a dark view, but many of us fall into it at times. If we stay there, we will end up bitter with a victim mentality (our sod guy falls into this category, and he said he was a Christian).

Paul speaks of something like this in Ephesians 4:14-15, "Then we will no longer be little children, tossed by the waves and blown around by every wind of teaching, by human cunning with cleverness in the techniques of deceit. But speaking the truth in love, let us grow in every way into him who is the head—Christ." He is speaking of false teaching, but the concept is the same. We can get lost in the swirling ocean of life and lose heart. At root, this is about God which we will address in the next paragraph, but if we choose to blame life to avoid dealing with God, we will continue to suffer until we forgive and step into grace. The process is the same as described above.

GOD

Lastly, we get to the beginning of everything. We are creatures; God is the creator. This means that everything comes back to him. Specifically, in the context Rolheiser describes so honestly, most of us come to the place of wanting God to act or intervene or be something He chooses not to be for us in that moment. We want healing for ourselves or others and don't get it. We are suffering at the hands some cruel person, and it doesn't stop. We can't get ahead and feel stressed and anxious and there is no help in sight. Why won't God do something?!

Often, in my experience, we see God's reasons and actions over time, but not always. Regardless, standing before God in full vulnerability and making peace and forgiving him is vital for the health and wholeness of our souls. If you have not entered the practice of Lament, I recommend it. The psalmists many times cry out to God with everything they are feeling. (Check Psalms 3, 4, 6, 10, and many more for examples.) If we can't cry out in full throated lament, we are not able to grow to maturity. The only way to get to the place of peace or contentment is through an honest and vulnerable process in which we lay everything on the table. God is strong, loving, and understanding enough to handle everything we throw His way. As we do that and sit with Him and let Him hold us, we will come to the place of forgiveness, understanding, and freedom.

May each of us walk the path of forgiveness regarding others, ourselves, life, and God and grow to full maturity.

RESOURCES

If you are struggling to forgive someone in your Christian community, a great resource for making peace is:

​The Peace Pursuit Handbook: Biblical, practical, and accessible tools for resolving interpersonal conflicts by John Shindeldecker

​Peace Pursuit Website - Quickstart Guide - This practical guide will give you an easy to follow structure for working through conflict whether you are the offended or the offender.

“To forgive is to set a prisoner free and discover that the prisoner was you.”

– Lewis B. Smedes