Before moving on to discuss how certain
spiritually abusive groups like the Shepherding Discipleship Churches
and organizations like Peacemaker Ministries can misuse Scripture to
bring harm to other Christians by demanding immediate forgiveness and
unqualified reconciliation, a review of the concepts is in order.
What is Forgiveness?
In the context of the culture and the
original language of the New Testament, the word forgiveness
was a term that was usually applied to money. If someone owes you
money and does not pay it to you, you have the right to go to them to
demand that amount from them. If you forgive them that debt, you
waive your rights to collect on the debt. The term aphiēmi
and the related derivatives of the word refer only to leaving the
matter alone, but the fact of the matter of the debt still exists.
It is not necessarily forgotten, but a person makes a conscious
choice to abandon or ignore the matter.
Jesus taught that we must forgive those who offend us, and we must possess an attitude of great willingness to forgive. Depending on how deeply we've been effected by the harm done to us, this may not be an immediate process, and though we should readily offer forgiveness the process may be a longer journey for us. Such situations call for discernment, and I tend to think of Joseph's response to his brothers who come to Egypt to buy food, many decades after they sold him into slavery because they were jealous of him. If you examine how the story unfolds (Genesis 39-46), he does not readily identify himself, and he tests his brothers to see if he can reveal himself to them without feeling threatened. He tries them to see if the are willing to receive them, anticipating how they may react to him. Their saga results in a grand reconciliation after many years, but Joseph does not offer forgiveness until he believes that it is prudent to do so and pursues reconciliation cautiously by exercising wisdom.
Forgiveness is Non-Optional
Learning
new patterns in relationships poses one of the more difficult
challenges in life, so we are called to keep forgiving readily, as
many times as seventy times seven times (with seven
representing the number of perfection, prompting Peter to choose this
figure as an measure), a passage also included in Matthew Chapter 18.
Then Peter came and said to Him, “Lord,
how often shall my brother sin against me and I forgive him? Up to
seven times?” 22 Jesus said to him, “I do not say to you, up to
seven times, but up to seventy times seven.” (vs 21-22).
Following these verses, Jesus goes on to offer a parable about a
slave that is forgiven a debt that he cannot pay, but then goes out
to hound the people who owe him a debt. Rather than offering the
person who owes the slave money the same measure of mercy and
forgiveness in a generous spirit, the slave demands payment of the
man. His master calls him wicked and hands him over for punishment.
Matthew
6 warns that our own sins and trespasses will not be forgiven if
we do not readily forgive others, as we will be measured as
scrupulously as we measure others.
Other verses in the synoptic gospels
note that forgiveness doesn't necessarily need to be offered to the
person if they do not repent of the wrong that they've done. Reading
nearly identically to the Matthew 18 passage, Luke adds the addition
of a required repentance, suggesting that justice should not be
ignored or forgone in order to offer forgiveness when it is not
warranted. It is possible for people to offer “lip service,”
just to go through the motions of repentance without it being
genuine. And if a sinner is automatically offered forgiveness
without requiring a change in behavior, this also does little good
for him and for the person that he sins against. The same attitude
of being favorable, ready, if not happy to forgive should be present,
but it offers the additional qualification of repentance.
He said to His disciples, “It is inevitable that stumbling blocks come, but woe to him through whom they come! 2 It would be better for him if a millstone were hung around his neck and he were thrown into the sea, than that he would cause one of these little ones to stumble. Be on your guard! If your brother sins, rebuke him; and if he repents, forgive him. And if he sins against you seven times a day, and returns to you seven times, saying, ‘I repent,’ forgive him.”
What Does Forgiveness Look Like?
Recall that the language used to define
forgiveness is the same language that is used to describe financial
matters, and that Matthew was a tax collector. Consider that you go
to market and pay $1 for a pound of meal. You get home, and you
realize that you’ve only been given half of a pound. It is your
right to go back to that vendor and demand that they either give you
half of your money back or demand that you be given an additional
half pound of meal. But what if you go back to the vendor, and he
refuses to give you what he owes to you? What if he accuses you of
trying to cheat him or states that if you didn't say something at the
time of the transaction, then he no longer feels obligated to make
good on the exchange? You have the option to harbor the right to
collect, to take the matter to another party to arbitrate, or you can
choose to overlook the matter, forgiving the debt.
When you forgive that debt, you agree
to not demand anything of that vendor. You just let it go and accept
that you didn't receive all that was due to you. You no longer seek
what is owed to you, but the history of the matter doesn't
dissolve. Wisdom and safety may call for the event to be
recalled in the future, for it might become a matter of trouble which
a
wise man anticipates and avoids. The problem may be a chronic
one, and it would not be prudent for a wise man to continue to use a
vendor with a history of short-changing him unless he is comfortable
with the idea that he will not always receive what is owed to him by
that vendor.
Note that the deprived party can choose
to automatically forgive the debt without ever consulting the vendor,
though it is his burden to really abandon the debt without “keeping
it” as cause to feel bitter. It may have been a simple error on
the part of the vendor and seen as an insignificant matter in light
of a long history of trust and good will between the parties.
Proverbs
19:11 says, A man's wisdom gives him
patience; it is to his glory to overlook an offense,
and in the context of a loving
relationship and as a matter of wise discernment, “love
can cover” the error.
**An upcoming post will deal with
what a person can do when the offending party who has sinned against
them will not repent, as well as the party who is believed to offer
repentance but does not qualify it with contrition, and effort to
stop repeating the behavior, and an effort to make restitution such
as we saw in the example of Zaccheus.**
What is Reconciliation, and How Does
it Differ from Forgiveness?
What does reconciliation look like
in the context of a financial debt? Considering the example of
the vendor who owes you a debt, when you go back to the vendor again,
what happens if they repeat this error and fail to take
responsibility for their error? You may again decide that you will
forgive the vendor, releasing your right to go back to demand
justice. But consider that when you need more meal, are you going to
go back to this same vendor to do business, or are you going to take
your business somewhere else?
If you were wronged and decided to
reconcile with this vendor (above and beyond forgiveness of debt),
that is a decision to forget that any wrong was ever done, and you
affirm them as a legitimate party who has done right by you by
repenting of the debt and making proper restitution to you, as much
as is possible for them. You're satisfied with their efforts and
believe that their intentions are good and honorable. You agree
contractually to go do business with them, behaving as though they’d
never cheated you before.
Gospel of Reconciliation
Paul did not declare the Gospel of
Forgiveness to us in 2 Corinthians 5. He declared the Gospel of
Reconciliation to us, a far more powerful act. 1
John 1:9 mentions both forgiveness (abandoning the debt we owe
because of sin) and reconciliation (cleansing us from all
unrighteousness) which is granted to us by God in response to our
repentance. I propose that John mentioned both concepts specifically
and separately because they were understood within the culture to be
two distinctly different but related concepts. We're not only
forgiven, but God reconciles the books so that no record of our debt
interferes with our relationship with him. We get a new record
because we follow a new standard – the standard of love, not the
letter of the law.
Tendency for Pastors and Ministers
to Merge the Two Concepts and for Psychologists to Separate Them
Long before I started reading any
Christian books on forgiveness, I went to the Bible to discern what
the Bible taught on the matter, and this perspective shaped my
thinking on the matter. I believe that my first book specifically
dealing with forgiveness was Christian psychologist Dr. David Stoop's
book, Forgiving
Our Parents, Forgiving Ourselves. I then sought out other
titles on the subject, particularly the many
books by Lewis Smedes. These books were wonderful, and I found
Stoop's book to be life-changing, but my basic understanding of
forgiveness came through my study of Scripture as I delved deep into
my old Vine's
Bible Dictionary.
In the course of my reading on this
subject, I found that a survey demonstrated that pastors and
ministers with theological training only tend to see forgiveness and
reconciliation as one and the same process, but trained psychologists
tend to view the processes as different ones. I suppose that as a
nurse, it's not all surprising to me that I find myself in agreement
with the Christian psychologists, but that doesn't explain how I
arrived at my understanding of things if I arrived at those
conclusions through Bible Study. Curious.
You can read the full research article
which can be a bit dry if it's not your style, but I found the
authors' findings and conclusions very noteworthy.
Among psychologists, forgiveness and reconciliation are typically viewed as separate constructs. This distinction is often adaptive, making it possible for a person to forgive a deceased offender or to forgive without entering back into a dangerous relationship. But to what extent does this privatized and secularized view of forgiveness conflict with the religious construct of forgiveness that many clients and their religious leaders may hold? Two survey studies are reported here. The first assessed the opinions of academic psychologists and Christian theologians regarding the distinction between forgiveness and reconciliation. The second survey assessed the opinions of expert psychologists and Christian theologians who have published books on the topic of forgiveness. Both quantitative and qualitative analyses revealed that psychologists are more inclined to distinguish between forgiveness and reconciliation than Christian theologians.
Continue reading the full research
article, particularly the implications section HERE.
More to come concerning many aspects of forgiveness.
