Matthew 6:14-15
For if you forgive others when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive others their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins.



Forgiveness is at the heart of everything Jesus says and does.

Forgiveness is the hot molten core of everything his church is called to be.
What is forgiveness? Is it a single act of selflessness that we as free moral agents can choose at will? When we tell someone else that their “wrong” has been forgotten, even though we possess the moral authority to hold it over them? Is that all forgiveness is? Is that all Jesus is calling us to?

No, that is a tiny part of the whole. Jesus is inviting us into a way of life and of seeing the world that makes forgiving as natural as breathing. It’s nice if we can summon up the kind of courageous congeniality that would enable us to return good for evil on our own steam, but isolated acts of forgiveness interspersed here and there amid everyday self-centeredness isn’t the end goal of what Jesus is getting at.

It’s very easy to hear this as a command that we need to get up, go out and do. But in reality, forgiveness isn’t really something you need to get up looking for opportunities to practice. Start where you are. Right now, there is someone you can forgive. Yourself. If there is anyone right now you resent more than yourself - for your failures, limitations, shame, or regrets - you would be a very exceptional slice of humanity indeed. And if you are like me, you have an entire ocean of bitterness seething within you; directed toward yourself. Now, you may not think about it regularly on a conscious level; it may come out as anger directed at someone else or as an unexplainable bout of depression over some relatively minor thing. But if you were to pull up the roots of your fears and frustrations, you would find everything you hate about yourself underneath.

So a life of forgiveness begins with the experience of forgiveness. Once you realize you need to forgive yourself, you may be surprised (and disappointed) to find that you can’t. You can’t because you cannot somehow stop being you and look at yourself objectively. And since you are trapped in yourself, you can recognize your faults and limitations (some of them), but you can’t make them go away all by yourself. You can say you forgive yourself, and that’s not a bad start, but soon enough, you will come face to face with your shadow-self, and you will find yourself recoiling in utter despair as it begins to dawn on you that you will always be this way. You can’t change you, no matter what two-hundred million self-help books might tell you. You can make a few behavioral modifications here and there that may yield agreeable results; but your deepest faults will still be lurking underneath the surface looking for more “socially acceptable” ways to ooze out of you. Pretty soon you won’t be able to tell them from your virtues, because they will mask themselves so well, no one will notice them; if you hang out with the same kind of people as yourself. This is precisely what happened with the Pharisees. They hid their own faults so well and exposed those of the easy targets around them (promiscuous women, tax collectors, “wine-bibbers”); never realizing that their judgmental way of living was a far worse fault than anything the tax-collectors and “wine-bibbers” did. Jesus seemed to prefer the company of the latter, possibly because they were much more in tune with their shortcomings then the religious elite.

Paradoxically, the more aware you are of your shadow-self, the closer you are to his forgiveness and acceptance. This isn’t to gloss over them and pretend they don’t matter; it is simply to take a realistic look at their true nature. They are closer to being healed when they are exposed. The only downside is this: you are unqualified to expose and heal your own faults; mired as you are in them. For that matter, a friend may be able to help you identify and overcome some of your faults, but being mired in their own, they also can only go so far in the journey with you until they have their own emotional debris to deal with. Only God is able to forgive us completely and work with us from an entirely accurate vantage point. In order for God to be able to do this, you must also forgive yourself as much as you are able. How?

By letting you by you. By refusing to pretend to be anything other than what you are. By living out of your true heart, even if your true heart is half-rotten. The center will hold if the center is Christ. Christ will spread into the rest of you like a good virus. Just be open, and be real.

Then, as you experience the miracle of forgiveness, the Spirit of Christ will open your eyes to see the people around you who are all unable to forgive themselves for a myriad of failures and disappointments. He will give you ears to hear what they are really saying and a heart to empathize with their struggles and journeys - even if the outward manifestation is something hurtful aimed directly at you.

You will find yourself doing what Christ did. Letting them do their worst to you, and then forgiving them. They have done what they have done to you; whatever it is, primarily out of an inability to experience the forgiveness God is forever offering. If you forgive them in a concrete and accessible way, you have just made the Heart of God visible. Jesus is doing it through you; you can’t do it yourself. And something will change inside of them. Sadly, they could harden their heart even further, but there is an equal chance that their heart will soften a little. However they react isn’t your concern. That is between Creator and created. You have just been permitted an inside glimpse into the great forgiveness-project of God and your heart stretches in its capacity for more God.

But if you do not forgive, your heart hardens and shrinks. It clasps around the unforgiveness and grows a protective shell; keeping God out. And you will find yourself less and less able to receive and believe in the unconditional acceptance of God. In effect, “your Father will not forgive your sins” not because he stubbornly refuses, because you won’t give him access.

Then again, he has his ways of getting in anyway, and they hurt. So don’t despair. Just let your prayer led you to further openness. Rest in his forgiveness and do your best to respond to “Divine Whisperings” when you hear them.

He will give you the strength to forgive when you need it.
Until then, be kinder to the people you see all the time.
Including that clueless scalawag in the mirror.