And Yet

There are so many reasons not to forgive others, despite the benefits to the practice.

Forgiveness relieves our spirits, helps us regain our joy in life, frees us of the burden of old hurts. Forgiveness is healing to the spirit as well as the soul, and some evidence suggests that it can even have a healing effect on the body.

The bottom line, though, is that all the reasons we can devise or discover are actually immaterial. There is one overriding reason to forgive: Christ tells us to to do so.

Why? The answer is right there in the prayer Christ taught: we will be forgiven as generously as we forgive. 'Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us."

If you can get out of that one, then take a look at Mt. 18. Peter, the Everyman of Christ's followers, asks how many times must we forgive someone. Christ tells him not seven times but seventy times seven times and then illustrates why with the parable of the unmerciful servant. Having had his own debt forgiven by the master, the servant went off and refused to forgive a much smaller debt against him. Hearing about this, the master threw the servant into jail to be tortured until his debt was paid.

Ouch. That's pretty clear, isn't it!

As we forgive others, so are we forgiven. All the rest of it - freedom, joy, healing - that's just lagniappe, a bonus. The bottom line is that we must forgive if we want to receive forgiveness.

I know, people have hurt us more than we have hurt others, right? Their transgressions are so much worse than anything we have done.

We never know that. I once had to file a police report against a teacher who didn't like the way I said 'thank you' to him. Seriously, this was his rationale: it sounded insincere, like 'have a nice day' or something. What seems small to us, like an automatic thank you, has implications we cannot know to another. In ways we don't intend and cannot expect, we hurt others and send them over the edge, as I unwittingly did.

Note: we're not responsible for the ways they choose to handle their hurt or anger. We are all responsible for our actions. But we are indeed responsible for our actions.

Sometimes those actions have larger consequences than we realize. An offhand comment or joke about another person's shortcomings - just being honest, right? - can have lasting repercussions.

If we recognize that to Christ, the worst sins are those against Love, then taking a look at our own lives can be an eye-opening experience. We're so locked into our own interests that we miss so much...

When I did my student teaching prior to my graduation from university, I was assigned a class of high-school seniors and a supervising teacher who observed exactly two of my classes. Having such freedom, I departed from the text and assigned The Little Prince by Antoine Saint-Exupery to my students.

In that book, there is a scene in which the Little Prince wishes to speak to the narrator, who is busily trying to repair his plane, about the safety of the Flower on his home planet. The narrator is entirely focused on the work at hand and pays little attention to the Prince, explaining that he wasn't paying much attention, saying "I am very busy with matters of consequence!" The Little Prince is horrified, and finally collapses in tears, to the narrator's chagrin.

My class responded with unanimous condemnation of the narrator for his failing to pay attention to the Little Prince, who was only worried about his beloved Flower, after all. Playing devil's advocate, I nodded and asked how many of my students had pesky younger brothers or sisters. Nearly every hand went up. I smiled at them and waited.

It took a few seconds for them to connect the dots, but they got the point. Almost immediately, though, I watched in horror as my girls began crying, their shoulders shaking over their heads on their desks. A few of my boys had suspiciously red eyes, as well, and I imagine I was fairly close to tears myself. I was extremely grateful that day that my supervising teacher was enjoying her coffee in the lounge instead of witnessing the consequences of my teaching!

But the point was valid then, as it is now: we get so immersed in our own interests that we lose sight of the impact of our words and actions on others. We hurt them, intentionally or not. When we hurt others, we need forgiveness. Whatsoever we do to the least of these, eh?

Bottom line: if we take our faith seriously, we cannot refuse to forgive those who hurt us.