Returning to our metaphor

We mentioned, several days back, that one of the primary biblical metaphors for understanding forgiveness is one of money lending. In order for forgiveness to take place in a money lending scenario, the lender must refuse to demand repayment from the borrower and refuse to retaliate towards the borrower.

My way of processing this metaphor tells me that forgiveness is either an action (actively refusing repayment is an action) or a lack of action (refusing to retaliate is restraining ourselves from taking action). So, to apply the metaphor to relationships, forgiveness is either 1. treating the wrongdoer as if no offense has occurred (hang with me on this- I’m only recommending this under a very specific set of circumstances) or 2. refusing to demand repayment from the wrongdoer.

Be patient with me, if you can. I’ll unpack both of these in the days to come but, rest assured, in neither option do we ignore the damage that has been done.

How can forgiveness be an action?

What if forgiveness is an action? What if forgiveness is about something as simple as not demanding compensation for wrongdoing (similar to God’s instructions about forgiving debts)? It’s not obvious that forgiveness would be an action, I understand. So, what kind of action am I talking about? I’m going to go through this slowly for the sake of clarity. Please bear with.

Over the next few days I’m going to explore a new “theory” of forgiveness that I am working on. It will be different. Some people will love it, some people will hate it. But, we’ll all be better off if we engage in the process of working through these ideas together. Comment on the posts. Let me know what the strong points are and what the weak points are. I don’t promise to agree (though I will agree at times, naturally)- but I do promise to engage. We all are better off when we engage with each other. Here goes:

What is Forgiveness about?

Forgiveness is about what we do or don’t do in response to an offense. Notice what I did not include here: I did not include feelings or emotions language. I’m not suggesting feelings are unimportant when it comes to forgiveness, I am merely suggesting they are of secondary importance to our actions. We have been trained to think of forgiveness only in emotional terms but, it’s my theory, based on the dynamics of biblical metaphors (go back a few days to see our readings of Deut. 15 and Matt. 18 on this), that forgiveness is primarily the action we take towards (or against) our wrongdoers. I’ll unpack this tomorrow.

Why is this important?

It frees us from worrying over that which is beyond our control: our feelings. And, it forces us to focus on what we can control: our actions towards our offenders.

We work at the action of Forgiveness

Two days ago I gave two reasons I’m unsatisfied with the idea that God is the only person involved in human forgiveness.

2. If we simply say, “God has to do it,” then we are not wrestling deeply enough with the question of how we encourage people to practice forgiveness. God needs to be active for forgiveness to take place, but we must also be active. If we do not need to act, then why does God encourage us to be forgiving? It’s a trick question, of course. God instructs us to forgive, as Jesus does his disciples, because he believes there is an action we can take in order to bring forgiveness about.

Let me take a step back for a second.

People in Jesus’ day and age were very different from us. They were not “in touch” with emotions. They did not have any concept of an “internal world.” They didn’t know anything about subconscious processes or motivations. They didn’t even know that a person could have an “identity” (other than the identity of whatever group they were a part of). For this reason, I’m not speculating to say that Jesus did not have emotions in mind when he told his disciples to forgive. It’s a fact that can be proven (it would bore all of us- but it can be done). Hearing this for the first time is likely going to be confusing or upsetting. If that’s the case, get in touch and let’s talk it through. This is actually quite good news if you’re willing to hang in there with me.

If Jesus doesn’t have feelings in mind, then what does it mean when Jesus says to forgive from your heart? Well, they didn’t think about the heart as the center of our emotions, the way we do. They thought about the heart as the center of all human activity- the way we use the word “brain.” In other words, a more accurate translation into our vernacular would be, “Forgive others from your brain.” Sounds very different, doesn’t it? It's a little less romantic, but it's not less important.

All this to say, for Jesus, forgiveness would have been an action, not a feeling. And he encourages action from us. The question is, what kind of action?

Collaborative Forgiveness

Yesterday I gave two reasons I’m unsatisfied with the idea that God is the only person involved in human forgiveness.

1. Some people have been harmed too greatly to get past their negative emotions.

I would think this should be obvious, but it isn’t. In fact, in Christianity anyway, it has become so common to speak of forgiveness as if it’s the Nike slogan: Just do it. Or, like we said yesterday: God will just do it.

That mentality creates this mentality: if a person still has negative feelings towards a wrongdoer then that means they either need to forgive and haven’t really tried, or they are bad at forgiveness and are immoral.

A third option is this: some harms are so great that emotions never get completely transformed. And, in my opinion, there is nothing wrong with that. There is only something wrong with that if we start with the assumption that forgiveness is just about emotions and that our emotions are the most important aspect of spirituality.

I think emotions are important. But I do not think they are the most important aspect of spirituality. And I don’t think forgiveness is primarily about how we feel. We’ll come back to that in a couple days.

Forgiveness and "bad" feelings

25 Because the servant didn’t have enough to pay it back, the master ordered that he should be sold, along with his wife and children and everything he had, and that the proceeds should be used as payment. 26 But the servant fell down, kneeled before him, and said, ‘Please, be patient with me, and I’ll pay you back.’ 27 The master had compassion on that servant, released him, and forgave the loan. Matthew 18:25-27, CEB

We have gotten accustomed, in our culture, to perceiving forgiveness in terms of our emotions only. The most common definition, I would guess, goes something like this: Forgiveness is what happens when all my negative feelings about my wrongdoer are gone. It’s such a common definition, in fact, I suspect many might be thinking, “Of course that’s forgiveness. What else is there?”

Yesterday we talked about forgiveness in money-lending as refusing to demand repayment (or refusing to take action in the form of punishment). We see that again in this parable. We see no indication of how the master may have felt, other than compassion, which does not mean he didn't have other, more complicated feelings as well. In a few days time, we're going to examine in detail how we could apply this mentality (refusing to demand repayment) to our own forgiveness situations. But first, this:

I’ve spent the past few weeks reading about and lamenting the sexual abuse scandal that continues to plague Christianity. I’m not a naturally empathetic person but my heart breaks for those victims, their families, their congregations, their communities. I can't help but be dissatisfied in our culture's definition of forgiveness and its focus on feelings. How will a sexually abused child ever get rid of all of their negative feelings towards their abuser?

We could answer this in one of two ways. When we’re locked into a definition of forgiveness that is about emotions we’re stuck with this answer: God has to do it. There’s an element of truth to that of course. There is no forgiveness without God and God is actively involved in all acts of forgiveness. All the same, this strikes me as a somewhat unsatisfying answer on the whole. And I have two reasons for this.

1. Some people have been harmed too greatly to get past their negative emotions.

2. If we simply say, “God has to do it,” then we are not wrestling deeply enough with the question of how we encourage people to practice forgiveness. God needs to be active for forgiveness to take place, but we must also be active. If we do not need to act, then why does God encourage us to be forgiving?

More to come.