Forgiveness – Part 1

If you’ve grown up in a church environment, you have been taught a thing or two about forgiveness. Forgiveness is one of the very central points in Christianity. It’s in the Lord’s prayer, it’s one of the reasons Jesus came to earth, it’s preached in the letters of the New Testament. It is also one of the most misunderstood concepts out there. And if we misunderstand it, we will miss out on one of the greatest, most liberating, powerful tools to find healing and transformation for ourselves. If we don’t understand forgives properly, we will also have an unclear understanding of who God is. Misunderstood forgiveness is clearly going to harm us, but so is unforgiveness. Unforgiveness is like a filter that keeps love out. Love is not something we can live without if we expect to thrive. Any time we don’t forgive, we open ourselves up to torment. It is the number one thing that blocks people from moving forward. It can cripple us physically as well as emotionally, and worse yet, is the driving force behind us repeating one way or another the very things we don’t want to forgive. If we have unforgiveness we are tied to the very thing that hurt us. Abi likened it to us holding on to the offender with a choke hold and they go everywhere we go. We can never get away from them. Given how much unforgiveness hurts us and how even misunderstood forgiveness can harm us, this session is about demystifying this topic and bringing accurate understanding and clarity to it.

There are many reasons someone might hold on to unforgiveness. I am not sure if this is an exhaustive list, but it is important that we are aware of why we ourselves hold on to unforgiveness.

The first reason is the belief that unforgiveness is a way to hurt the offender. It is motivated by a sense of needing justice brought to the situation. It can be a form of vengeance or punishment also. Something along the line, “you hurt me, and I am going to hurt you back. I don’t have to forgive you, and I’m going to hurt you back”.

Another reason to withhold forgiveness is because we want the perpetrator to be in pain, so they can know how much pain they caused us and finally understand us. This form of unforgiveness comes from a place of needing validation. There is nothing wrong with wanting validation. You will remember from a previous post that validation is a fundamental human need. However, this is an unhealthy way to get validation.

Self-protection is a third reason we don’t forgive. It comes from the belief that if we don’t forgive, then they won’t be able to come close enough to us to hurt us again. It is natural to want to avoid pain. Wanting to keep away from those who have hurt us is understandable. The belief that we have to hold unforgiveness against them in order to achieve this protection, comes from misunderstanding forgiveness. Forgiveness is not the same as reconciliation. We can forgive someone and still have healthy boundaries, if we know the person we forgave is not safe. Sometimes the reason we hold on to unforgiveness for the purpose of setting boundaries is because there is something inside of us that needs a reason to justify boundaries. If we hold on to unforgiveness we have a reason not to allow that person close. But we can set boundaries to perpetrators and forgive them. We don’t need hatred to justify boundaries. Reconciliation is not something that can be demanded of you or by you. Both parties need to be willing to work on reconciliation. But forgiveness is a gift you give. It has no strings attached, and it frees you to heal even if the other person does not want to reconcile.

Lastly, unforgiveness can be a learned behavior we do out of habit. We might be taught to hold unforgiveness toward a certain group of people from a person in the family. If one of my parents had unforgiveness towards one of their parents, we may learn to not like them and hold things against them too.

Do you recognize any of these reasons in yourself? I can relate to wanting validation and boundaries.

Another whole separate area where we can hold unforgiveness is toward ourselves. This may be an area where we are not even really aware of what is going on, and how we are hating ourselves.

One reason we may cultivate self-hatred and unforgiveness towards ourselves may be because we have formed a belief that if I don’t hate the bad stuff about myself, I won’t improve, or in other words, if I hate myself enough, I may do something to actually become better. For instance, I may really hate myself for losing my patience with my kids and I decide that if I hate myself for this lack of patience, I’ll become more patient. But if you remember from above, unforgiveness ties us to the thing that hurts us, in this case I tie myself to impatience and will end up cycling through it again and again.

Another reason we choose to not forgive ourselves is because we think it somehow shows or proves that we are repentant. It’s really similar to wanting to become better. It’s the idea that if I hate my judgmental nature enough, I’ll remember to not be judgmental next time. When I step away from that one, when has that kind of thinking ever brought any desirable change? But somehow we think it’s a behavior modification that will bring results. I wonder if it ever works. I am thinking of how we can behavior modify kids to do just about anything. But they don’t usually do it because of a changed heart, but because of fear of the consequences. I wonder, if in terms of unforgiveness towards self, if it ever appears to work, it’s only in this sense and not because the heart has changed.

Science agrees that our bodies are wired for nurture, love and kindness. When we actively embrace something counter to love, such as self-hatred and unforgiveness, we are, in effect, choosing destructive and life-robbing avenues for ourselves. Unforgiveness comes from the enemy. He wants us to hold unforgiveness towards ourselves because his goal is to steal, kill and destroy. We may think we deserve to punish ourselves with unforgiveness, but in so doing, we are partnering with the enemy and his goals, instead of with God and what he came to bring. We choose death instead of life. Easily agreed with on a cognitive level. What drives us to do it anyway? This is worth thinking about and exploring to gain self-awareness of what is driving us. It obviously isn’t any life-giving catalyst. We can’t be driven by counter kingdom of God concepts and expect to reap life from it. The enemy will never produce life.

We may simply have grown up with the belief that unforgiveness and removal of love is all we deserve. Again I think this is worthy of exploration. Where did I learn such a belief? What happened in my life to cause me to think this way? Has your family fostered an environment of unforgiveness towards self? I could easily imagine that someone raised in a Japanese home would never be able to say sorry, because sorry would be attached to self-hatred and unforgiveness for ever doing anything to bring shame or dishonor on the family. It doesn’t take a Japanese home, mind you. I don’t remember a single time when an apology was made in my own home. We learn this stuff from our family systems, from our own feelings of lack of worthiness, etc.

One more reason we may punish ourselves with unforgiveness is because we have a misunderstanding of forgiveness in that we think we only get to forgive ourselves if we can make right what we did wrong. This thought is obviously rooted in a lie, because Jesus came to bridge the gap. It is precisely because we can’t make things right that he came. This is not to say that we should not try to make amends whenever possible, but it will never be enough. If I can’t forgive myself because I can’t fix what I caused, I need to meditate on all the passages that speak of God’s forgiveness of us all. We all fall short. The whole reason we can heal and be made whole is because Jesus thought we were worthy of that sacrificial love. As Bill Johnson would say, “I can’t afford to have thoughts in my head about me that God doesn’t have in His”. God thinks we are worthy. He did everything to set us free from the bondage of unforgiveness. Why would we voluntarily shoulder it again?

Response invitation: spend some time with God and ask him to take you back to moments that you are still holding on to unforgiveness towards yourself. If you are having trouble, look for places in your history where you cringe, places you don’t want to share, places where you feel icky. Those are places where there is shame, and usually where there is shame, there is unforgiveness. Give God your debt. Visualize him gladly forgiving you and paying your debt, taking your burden. Try to picture yourself as your present-self hugging your past-self and saying “I forgive you”. Then finish it off by blessing yourself by speaking good things over yourself.

As we have already discovered, unforgiveness has a very damaging effect on us. Unforgiveness brings isolation. Justin was sharing his story of blocking all his hometown Facebook friends for not loving him. He created a wall that was pushing everyone away, where all were at a distance. Justin was led by God to unblock them all when he was on his healing journey, and it opened up a way for redemption. I have a similar story myself. I found out that my college class mates had speculated some nasty things about me and gossiped behind my back. It offended me so much that when I left Switzerland to get married in the US, I didn’t tell any of them about it and didn’t give them my change of address or anything. Some of my class mates eventually tracked me down, getting my contact info from my parents or siblings. Nothing redemptive happened in my case-yet, in fact, none of us maintained contact after that. The thing with unforgiveness is, it shuts the door to reconciliation. I look at what happened instead of at what can happen. God wants to redeem everything. He can’t do that if I don’t forgive. I’ll be sure to properly walk through forgiving them after this post.

As mentioned above, Justin actually got some reconciliation and redemption out of forgiving his home town by unblocking the friends on Facebook. I am very aware of the redemptive heart of God. I may not care about reconciliation and redemption in certain areas of my life, but I recognize it is important and valuable to God. I need to open my heart to that possibility in my life, where I was happy to just be isolated. Redemption may not come in all instances. I certainly can’t see a way of redemption for some relationships that have broken up and where we are isolated. I have forgiven but I haven’t seen redemption—yet. God is so creative and so much more in the know than me! Anything can happen!

Unforgiveness creates physical issues. Specifically, in the natural medicine world, high blood pressure has been linked to unforgiveness. Forgiving literally gives your heart a break. The liver is said to process the chemical effects of anger, bitterness and other feelings linked to unforgiveness. You need your liver in top form to protect you from enough toxins without adding preventable ones. In addition, the stress of living in unforgiveness can impact your GI tract, causing inflammation that impacts your digestion and nutrient absorption. And lastly, unforgiveness impacts your brain. Studies have shown that people who forgive are overall less nervous, anxious, restless, sad or depressed. Bitterness and unforgiveness have also often been linked to lower back issues.

Additionally, unforgiveness can cause fear, powerlessness, hopelessness, and a victim mentality. When people feel like there is nothing they can do (powerlessness, hopelessness, victim) it is imperative to examine if there is any unforgiveness hiding anywhere. If a person does not forgive, they likely replay the event repeatedly in their minds. Science has shown that the brain does not distinguish between visualizing an event and actual events. Replaying the emotional experience frequently is causing people to re-live the trauma many more times, way past the time when it actually happened. They are stuck in a cycle of re-living it and have no way out of the pain, perpetuating the event to keep running their life. It creates stereotypes and filters through which they view the world – the prover then keeps them trapped in the very situation they want to get away from. It keeps people stuck when all they want is to move forward. Like the saying out there, unforgiveness is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die. Unforgiveness hurts ourselves way more than it ever hurts the perpetrator. My artist daughter illustrated how when we hold unforgiveness to punish the other one, it has a way of stabbing us in the back, not impacting the perpetrator like we thought it would.