Proximate Forgiveness

          Flywheel Assignment #3: Honesty
I would consider myself a pretty forgiving and gracious person.  But recently I have been bombarded with the idea of forgiveness.  In a class at church, in a book I’ve been reading, in a conference I attended…forgiveness keeps coming up.  In the book, it asked you to make of list of those who have hurt and offended you, how they did so and whether you have forgiven them.  I easily made my list but as I was going through asking myself if I had forgiven them I couldn’t honestly say that I had.  Maybe I had let go in some small degree but overall I still felt hurt, disappointed and even angry at the memory of what happened or at the person who had hurt me.

Recently, I was in a situation where someone close had hurt me and I am sure they had been hurt by me as well.  In the conversation they said, “I know I need to make apologies and there will eventually be a time and a place for them.”  It was all I could do to say, “Oh let me get you started!”  I had a list a mile long! In situations where I am hurt I really want a complete apology.  I want that person to address what they did, how it affected me and how utterly sorry they are. But in reality this doesn’t always happen…so what do I do with that?  What do I do with those things that are left unsaid, unaddressed, forgotten or overlooked?

I wish I could say that I love those around me unconditionally and live in a place of grace. But I am in process of this and a lot of the time I harbor my bitterness, my resentment, my disappointment.  I hold on to it; I stroke it by thinking about these things over and over; I nurse it rather than let it go.  AND I don’t want to let it go until I get a proper complete apology.  In one of the classes I attended recently, he talked about looking at the log in your own eye.  I meditated on this and told my husband Brian a few days later that when I think of certain situations of when I’ve been wronged I can’t really think of a log in my own eye.  He chuckled.  And said very sweetly “Would you mind if I pointed one out to you?”  We kind of laughed but I still couldn’t imagine what he would tell me.  He went on to say that I really want to write them off.   It’s so true.  When I am really wallowing in the hurt or the disappointment of the past or present…I really don’t want to take their calls. I don’t want to face them and want to avoid them when we are together.

A few things that have really helped me through this forgiveness journey are Steve Garber and his teaching on “proximate justice.”  He writes, “Proximate justice realizes that something is better than nothing. It allows us to make peace with some justice, some mercy, all the while realizing that it will only be in the new heaven and new earth that we find all our longings finally fulfilled, that we will see all of God’s demands finally met.” 

I sometimes only want to accept all or nothing.  I want a full recognition of what happened and a good emotional “I’m so sorry.” I want a complete change when there is that possibility that things may stay the same or even get worse…that there may be more experiences of hurt and disappointment.   I am tempted in my relationships to walk away not looking more deeply at my own heart of sinfulness and writing them off.  I lose hope for something better and I become disappointed and discouraged.

It seems funny to make such an obvious statement but Jesus was the best example of forgiveness. When he was agonizing in the garden he asked his disciples, “My soul is very sorrowful, even to death; remain here and watch with me.” Only to return to see that they had fallen asleep and not just once but again they fell asleep after his begging them to stay awake and pray with him.  If it would’ve been me I would have written them off and said “you guys are worthless! Did you hear me say I was sorrowful to the point of DEATH?!” and yet you still sleep?!  Forget it! I’m done!”  But Jesus in his mercy said, “Rise and let US go.”  He didn’t send them away, he didn’t write them off…he took them with him.  And even in his agony on the cross he yelled out “Father forgive them!”

What a hard example to follow in the moment and the moments that follow when we are injured…when things don’t turn out like we hoped.  Another quote from Steve “It is the work of repairing the ruins...hoping for the renewal of all things, even as I know that at my best I am a pilgrim in the ruins.”  I am learning to walk and live in forgiveness…being willing to see and take the plank out of my own eye…to get my hands dirty in the mess of “repairing the ruins” and forgive those around me.   

Steve goes on to say, “If that can be true of me, of you, then we will have made peace with the doing of proximate justice.  And this is not a small thing for people who yearn for the whole cosmos to be made right, and who know that someday it will be.”