I see a rather significant flaw in this understanding now. Quite simply, when I am offended or wounded by another person, it is most certainly not “ok”; nor will it ever be “ok”. An offense is an offense; it is a wrong that was done, and a wrong can never be “alright”.
Forgiveness, then, came to mean something quantitative for me. If I had enough “it’s ok” in me to match the offense, I could forgive. But what about those times when the offense was so heavy, the wound so deep, that I couldn’t bring myself to think of it as being “alright”? It would take time to “get over” those wounds; the wounds needed to heal before I could say “I forgive”.
But is that right? If I were being honest, during those periods of time when I was waiting for a wound to heal before I could say “I forgive you”, I would have to recite my daily Our Father in this way: “And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us, except for so-and-so, because I’m still not over that one yet.”
Another problem presented itself as well: in those times when I could muster up enough strength to say “I forgive you”, even before the wound was healed, why would I still feel the sting of the offense? What happened to “forgive and forget?”
And what about those offenses for which the offending person had still not even asked forgiveness? My recitation of the Our Father would now have to look more like, “Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who have trespassed against us and been decent enough to repent.”
I have mentioned the Our Father a few times now, because it was precisely this prayer that finally helped me unlock the mystery of forgiveness. Actually, it was an alternate rendering of the prayer that contained the key: “And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.” As I meditated on that word “debts”, eventually I came to a different perspective on forgiveness.
When someone commits an offense against me, I believe that they become indebted to me. They have wronged me, the scales of justice have been thrown off balance, and now that person owes me something – restitution of some sort, perhaps, or at least an apology. They have become my debtor.
The act of forgiveness is not, in my understanding, the process of excusing the offense and saying, “it’s alright.” It isn’t alright. Rather, the act of forgiveness is, for me, a deliberate act of saying to God, “So-and-so has offended me, and they are now legitimately indebted to me; they owe me now; but I am handing that debt over to you, Father. They owe me nothing; they owe it to you now instead of me.”
And I consider that exchange, it strikes me as profoundly right. If someone has wronged me, they have wronged God first; the debt is owed to Him. And when that person turns to Him in repentance, He cancels the debt completely, which is precisely what I believe He has asked me to do.
Handing the debt over to God is not the same thing as saying “it’s ok”. It allows me to acknowledge that a wrong was indeed done, and that my wound is indeed real. I have a legitimate reason to feel hurt. But that does not stop me from handing the debt to God, where it belongs, and saying “this offense hurts, but the debt belongs to you, so I forgive the debt as it relates to me.”
I have come to believe that this act of genuine handing-over to God actually triggers a chain reaction in the spiritual realm. As long as I am holding on to the debt, I may actually be creating a spiritual block for the offender. When I release them from the debt, and give the “chains” of that debt into God’s hands, I step out of the way and leave Him room to work with that person.
I had an experience in this realm that confirmed for me the truth of this reality. A close friend of mine went through this process of releasing the debts of people in his life who had hurt him. It was early in the morning when he went through this prayer of forgiveness, and on that same morning, my sleep was interrupted early in the morning. I woke up out of a dead slumber, and the first thought that popped into my mind was my friend, and specifically, an event from several years earlier in which I had offended him. I had forgotten about that event during those intervening years, but it came back as clear as a bell as I was jolted out of sleep on that morning.
It was several days later that my friend told me of his experience of forgiving all the people in his life who had hurt him, and so I asked him: “Was I one of the people you had to forgive?” He confirmed that I was. That exchange gave me the opportunity to apologize for what had happened several years ago. In this case, his act of forgiveness preceded, and in some way made possible, my act of repentance. Something “clicked” in the spiritual realm, something strong enough that it woke me out of a deep sleep with an immediate and clear memory of something I had long ago forgotten.
This has taught me that forgiveness is not conditional on receiving an apology. It has taught me that forgiveness doesn’t mean waiting until my emotions have healed enough that I can say “it’s ok”. It means releasing the offender from their debt, from any obligation they might have to me. They owe me nothing; they owe God everything.
And I believe this is actually key to the process of healing the wounds themselves; for me, the hurt persists because I believe this person owes me something, and I am not receiving what I am owed. That hurts. And it continues to hurt, until I am given what I was owed. That is, unless I release the debt and release the person from owing me anything. Then my wound can finally begin to heal, and God can begin to work with the person I have released.
The key was there all along, in a simple prayer that I have prayed every day for years – it just took an alternate translation to make me look at it with new eyes. Forgiveness isn’t about being “ok” with getting hurt; it’s about releasing someone from their debt, in imitation of what the Father does for us on a daily basis.
And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors …
This meditation was very timely for me. I hope to consider it often in the coming days. Thank you.