Forgiveness

As I wrote last week, I’ve been reading about forgiveness and talking to people about it and praying about it and obsessing over it basically since the day my husband came home and told me he was walking out on me and our 18-year marriage for a woman he had known for three weeks. So, roughly two and a half years. And I now have even less of an idea what forgiveness is or how to achieve it than I did when I started.

Part of the reason for my confusion is that forgiveness is an ideograph, something that we all think we understand and understand in the same way as the next person until we examine it closely—and then it sort of collapses like a puffball mushroom, or vanishes like a star we see on the edges of our vision but can’t when we look straight at it. Is forgiving forgetting? Is it turning the other cheek and walking an extra mile in your abuser’s shoes? Something in between?

Another reason forgiveness is so hard to pin down is that everyone has an opinion about it: the range of definitions runs roughly from “not actively seeking to harm the person who’s harmed you” (let’s call that Weak Forgiveness) to “actively seeking the flourishing of the person who has harmed you” (Strong Forgiveness) with “not caring about the person who’s harmed you” (what the redoubtable Chump Lady calls “the state of ‘meh’”) marking the middle of the continuum. Even within the Christian tradition, theologians can’t agree on what Christ meant for His followers to do, with some advocating from their reading of Scripture for forgiveness only as a response to sincere repentance and others advocating Strong Forgiveness even when there is no repentance.

A third reason forgiveness is hard to define is because it works very differently in ongoing relationships than it does in relationships that are functionally ended for whatever reason (death, abandonment, crime, etc.), but many writers insist there’s no distinction. I don’t think that makes logical sense: the original offense was entirely dependent on the nature of the relationship; why wouldn’t the forgiveness of the offense be?

So, I still don’t know what forgiveness really is. But I do know what it’s not, at least for my situation:

• It is not leaving a door open to future reconciliation. This would be exceptionally dangerous and stupid as my ex-husband is abusive. Honestly, I don’t even think Tim Keller and other proponents of Strong Forgiveness would counsel me in my situation to seek out my ex-husband, explain to him in love why he wronged me, and give him the chance to repent.
• It is not pretending the abuse I endured was somehow OK or canceled out because after all I, too, am a sinner, and let she without sin cast the first stone, etc…. Now, I do agree with the Strong Forgiveness folks that it’s important to recognize the ways in which I myself have sinned in my marriage and other relationships. But the purpose of this exercise is not to shift the moral balance between me and my ex-husband; it’s to strengthen my relationship with Christ, as I acknowledge my unpayable debt and His immeasurable mercy in loving and saving me through His death on the cross.
• It is not feeling, or expecting ever to feel, compassionate and loving toward my ex. In everything I have read on Christian forgiveness, it is ultimately a commitment and a decision, not a feeling. That’s a good thing because I will never feel anything but aversion for that man for the rest of my life. Why wouldn’t I? Even a dog runs when it sees someone who has thrown rocks at it in the past.

To be clear: I do want to forgive my ex, for me and for him. Everything I have read agrees it’s ultimately the healthiest option for me. And I don’t want to end up like many divorced women I know, still bitter and angry at their exes years later. Spiritually speaking, that would make me like the guy in Luke who was forgiven a debt of a million dollars and went out and shook down the guy who owed him ten bucks—not a good look. Even worse, deeply disrespectful of Christ’s sacrifice. Am I really going to look Him in the eye and tell Him thanks but no thanks; I can earn my own salvation by virtue of being a better person than my ex? And am I really? The Bible says no, and I believe it. Ultimately, I want everyone I know (including my ex) to come to experience God’s amazing love the way I do, and I don’t want my resentment and bitterness to get in the way. So, while I don’t get what forgiveness is right now, much less feel it, I do want to get it someday, for both our sakes.

But what about me, then? What about my betrayal and devastation? Shouldn’t my ex still have to answer for that? Don’t I deserve justice even if I’m not perfect? Sure. But here’s another thing I’ve figured out: I don’t actually know what justice looks like in this situation. Based on my track record to date, I’m pretty confident that if God gave me a magic wand and said, “Go ahead, do to your ex whatever you think is just,” it would be a disaster, and I would be more miserable afterward, not less. It would be like letting a three-year-old drive a car: sure, he might be able to get the thing rolling, but he would inevitably crash it into something and hurt himself and other people because he doesn’t have the whole picture of what a car is or does. Justice works the same way. Say I wave that magic wand and make my ex’s affair partner cheat on him and leave him, and make him bald and bankrupt and impotent, and make him lose the two flying-monkey friends he has left, and injure his back so he can’t do all his precious Extreme Sports that were so VERY much more important to him than his marriage…. (Wait: that all sounds awesome…where’s my wand?) MY POINT IS—would any of that make him sorry? No, because he’s a narcissist. And so at exactly no point during his own personal Ten Plagues of Egypt would he suddenly be like, Wow, I see now that I have all of this coming for what I did to my wife. I feel terrible. I must immediately throw myself at her feet and apologize and dedicate the rest of my life to making it up to her, even though I know I never can. Instead, he’d be just like Pharaoh, cursing God and the Israelites as he cradled the corpse of his firstborn son and his country burned down to the sand around him.

No, Biblical Revenge isn’t going to get me what I want. If what I ultimately want is for my ex to feel sorry for what he did, then the Bible is pretty clear on what might get him to that point: “It is God’s kindness that leads to repentance.” In other words, the same thing that got me into the Kingdom: grace, not justice. (Got it. Excellent point, Lord. Can I still see the magic justice wand for a second? I just want to hold it; I promise I won’t wave it at anything. No? Fine….)

So, to sum up, here’s what I know about forgiveness to date. My ability to forgive my ex (or not) is ultimately not going to come from focusing on him and what he did to me but on Jesus and what He did for me. It’s always Opposite Day in the Kingdom: I want to worry less? I need to pray more. I want to love and care for others? I need to focus on self-care and self-love. I want to forgive my ex? I need to stop looking at him and start looking at Jesus. It’s like the “wind and the waves” story in Matthew: the more Peter looked at the thing he was afraid of, the more he sank into it; but when he looked at Jesus, he got mastery over his situation.

To the degree that I sink into God’s forgiveness for me, let it buoy and comfort and strengthen me, to that degree will I have a chance of forgiving my ex–whatever that ends up looking like.