Shalom everyone,
Over the years, I have listened to various people who have severe and extreme difficulty in forgiving, because of the nature of what they have suffered and had to endure. I have also taken note of the rabbinic Jewish attitude to forgiveness, along with the practicalities of forgiveness, and Yeshua’s own teachings on forgiveness. I’ve come to the conclusion that a lot of people have misconceived ideas on what forgiveness entails.
This article is not really about the one being forgiven; it is more about the person doing the forgiving. I have occasionally encountered individuals who have found it extremely difficult to forgive the wrongs that have been committed against them, and being an empathetic person, I can fully understand how they feel.
I think part of the problem is in society not comprehending this: Human forgiveness is one thing, Divine forgiveness is another thing entirely; they are not the same. They serve different purposes; the nature of each is different. There is also a difference between forgiving people you are emotionally close to, with whom your relationships are beneficial, and forgiving those whom you are not close to, with whom any restoration of relationship would be harmful, even destructive – again, the purpose of forgiveness is different in the two circumstances.
Instances where extreme forgiveness has caused ongoing suffering for the victim
Extreme forgiveness is where you effectively forgive the crime, and behave as if it never happened, and restore your relationship with the sinner, even when the relationship is harmful and destructive.
Most of you will have heard news at some point of instances where church ministers, priests and pastors have abused members of their congregations. Through my father, I have connections with the community of the Jehovah’s Witnesses, so over the course of my lifetime, I have maintained a background awareness of what is going on in that church. There is one thing that happened in that community that has taken forgiveness to the most inappropriate extremes – ignoring the crime, doing nothing about it, and maintaining destructive relationships with abusers.
Certain JW’s in Australia were sexually abused by their ministers or their church elders, and the JW church teaching is absolute forgiveness (this is also coupled with a desire not to bring the church into disrepute, and so burying the crime and not reporting it). This practice of extreme forgiveness, and no action being taken, has led to the perpetrator’s continued presence in the church as a source of permanent and ongoing trauma for their victims; the expectation that forgiveness is supposed to lead to a restoration of trust, as if nothing had happened, reinforces the devastating trauma. In the JW church, it often led to nervous breakdowns in the victims. As for the abusers, some of them have taken the forgiveness to mean that they can continue to sin, to abuse other victims, because they will always be forgiven and never be brought to account. This has made me see how the principle of forgiveness can be abused, especially if you cannot make a distinction between human forgiveness and Divine forgiveness, or between forgiveness in beneficial relationships, and in harmful relationships.
I think the problem with people putting Yeshua’s teaching on forgiveness into practice, is a fundamental misunderstanding of what forgiveness is, and a failure to make a distinction between the nature and purpose of forgiveness when it comes from human beings, and the nature and purpose of forgiveness when it comes from God. The main difference is that when a human forgives, it does not mean there are no longer any consequences for the sin itself.
Forgiveness when it comes from a human being
In the early Viking society of Iceland, it was common when someone did something bad to another person, that the victim would seek vengeance on the one who had wronged them by killing them. The relative of the one killed would then seek vengeance on the avenger. And so it would continue, on and on. When Iceland became Christian, it put an end to this perpetual cycle of violence with its teachings on forgiveness.
When a human being forgives the wrongs done to them, it does not mean that there is no price to pay or no legal consequences for the wrongdoing. This is particularly true of serious crimes, especially when the perpetrator has no remorse for their crime. Human forgiveness does not cancel out the sin, because only God can do that.
Now, I don’t normally talk about my personal circumstances, but I thought it necessary here, because some people might respond to what I’ve written by saying, “You’ve never had to suffer, you don’t know what it’s like to be traumatised, you don’t know what it’s like to find it difficult to forgive someone!“ But I do; I think that’s why I empathise with you.
During the 1980s, in my mid-twenties, there was a woman at work who absolutely hated me. She made my working life a misery. Even when she was not around, she still made my life a misery, because of the anger I felt towards her. I reached a point where I realised the controlling power she had over my mind and my emotions; even when she was not there, she still filled me with anxiety. It was so bad that, sorry to say, I was even thinking about how I could get back at her. One day I realised what these thoughts were doing to me – what kind of person they were making me into – so I forgave her. I forgave her in order to save my sanity, and to prevent my mind going to a dark place every day, because they were creating a distance between me and God – that distance was on my part, not God’s.
In forgiving her, that did not mean that what she had done to me meant nothing. My forgiveness meant that I could let go of the hurt and the pain she had caused me. I could let go of all thoughts of getting back at her – thoughts that could potentially, if held onto long enough, turn me into a bad person.
When I was a small child, my father used to physically beat me a lot. He would find the pettiest of excuses to beat me, sometimes until I bled. I would often have big bruises on my body when I was little. I spent most of my early childhood in a state of permanent terror. It was only in my adult life that I realised that this had caused me to develop childhood PTSD (specifically Complex PTSD, which is as a result of multiple ongoing episodes of trauma). I spent most of my twenties in therapy, and it has left me with an inability to cope with stress (I now have Adjustment Disorder as a result). A key moment in getting over what my father had done to me, was in forgiving him the years of abuse, because it meant he no longer had a hold on me. Now he is a frail old man, has dementia, and can’t even remember the abuse he inflicted on me.
In my fifties, as a result of psychological abuse I suffered from a clinical psychopath, in a job I had in 2012, I developed PTSD again. To treat that PTSD, I was sent to a psychodynamic therapist in Lincoln. Her methods ended up making my trauma even worse – she seemed to enjoy gaslighting me, verbally bullying and belittling me, and inflicting more psychological pain on me. As a result of her abuse, she made my PTSD permanent and untreatable. The ongoing effect of her abuse was crippling. I couldn’t even get legal justice, because she and her colleagues falsified evidence and covered up her abuse, making up a false diagnosis of schizophrenia so that no one would ever believe a word I said. The only way I could move on was to forgive her, along with the people and the system who helped her cover up her misdeeds. If I had refused to forgive her, I would effectively have been saying that I want her to continue to ruin my life, that I want her to carry on causing me nightmares, and that I want to live the rest of my life being crippled by the trauma she caused me. The act of forgiving her was me turning away from her ability to cause me pain.
Human Forgiveness is about letting go
Forgiveness is not about pretending that nothing happened, or making light of the terrible things that have been done, and it is definitely not permission for the sinner to continue in their sin, or letting evil go unchallenged. It is letting go of thoughts of vengeance and retribution; it is letting go of thoughts of doing evil in return for evil. It is letting go of the harm someone can do to us in absentia, because of the anxiety and trauma their actions have caused. It is not about releasing the sinner from paying for their sins, it is about releasing oneself from the hold that the sinner has over us. It is drawing a line against the hurt and the trauma, so that we can heal. In a sense, forgiveness is not about the person being forgiven; it is about the one doing the forgiving.
Human Forgiveness is staying one’s hand from retribution
In the instance of David and Shimei (2Sam chapters 16 & 19), David is cursed and abused by Shimei during a difficult time, but David chooses not to seek vengeance, and instead shows mercy to Shimei (2Sam 19:23). The key takeaway is staying one’s actions from retribution.
Vengeance and retribution belong to YHVH. Human forgiveness releases us from the darkness of what our abusers have done to us, so that we become blameless.
If you look at any individual interaction between human beings as a form of transaction (along the lines of the psychotherapeutic methods of Transactional Analysis), the wrong that someone does to you becomes a social ‘transaction’ between two people. The pain that the sinner causes you harms your mind, and will eat away at you, until your soul is diminished. You lose from the transaction, and the abuser wins. But if you forgive the wrongdoing, you are letting go of the abuser’s ongoing ability to hurt you. You win, and the abuser loses, especially if they have no remorse. Furthermore, they still have to face God, their ultimate and final Judge.
The Nature of forgiveness when it comes from God
Vengeance and retribution come from YHVH (Dt 32:35). This means that judgment and the penalty for sin come from God. If there is no repentance, then there is no forgiveness from God, even if they have received human forgiveness. Unless what someone has done is criminal in nature – in which case, they will be judged, sentenced and punished by the law-courts – then it is all in God’s hands.
When we repent of our sin, God’s forgiveness is immediate – that is guaranteed. When King Solomon prayed at the time of the dedication of the First Temple, he prayed about forgiveness even when the Israelites were exiled, and so could not make sin-offerings in the Temple (1Kgs 8:46-51). He prayed that if people repented of their sin, that God would forgive them. In Yeshua’s case, in the story of when the prostitute broke into the room where Yeshua was being entertained, weeping over his feet and drying them with her hair, he said that her sins, which were many, had been forgiven (Lk 7:36-47). Both of these instances presuppose that when we repent, God forgives us.
With repentance comes immediate forgiveness from God. God forgives us in order to start the process of healing, to help us move forward, and set us on the path to being cleansed of our sin. When God forgives, judgment is cancelled for that sin; the punishment and penalty for that sin is withdrawn; humans cannot do that. Therefore, the difference between the two – Divine forgiveness and human forgiveness – is that only YHVH can truly forgive sin. When a human being forgives another, they are not forgiving the sin itself; they are letting go of the hurt and the pain, and allowing themselves to heal. The one who repents, says sorry, and is given human forgiveness, is set back on the path to mending and restoring their relationship with the one they have sinned against.
If a man murders your child, and has no repentance or remorse, there is no forgiveness from God, even if you, as the parents, might be magnanimous enough to forgive the murderer. Human forgiveness never absolves someone of their sin. Your forgiveness allows you to move on, trusting that God and the criminal justice system will call the murderer to account – that both God and the justice system will apply the appropriate penalty. For someone who shows no remorse whatsoever, your forgiveness does not affect their criminal punishment, or being called to account by God. However, you yourself can let go of the trauma that has been caused to you and your family, so that they can all heal, and resume your faith in God. You forgive, so that you can resume your full spiritual health, and continue blameless before God.
Sometimes God will forgive someone their sin so that a person can repent. Sometimes, a sinner might see no way out from under the weight of sins that they have committed, and the guilt of their sin prevents them from repenting. In such an instance, in God’s wisdom, because YHVH knows all things and how things will turn out, God will forgive the sin in rare circumstaances, so that the person can repent.
Forgiveness to those who repent
Within the realm of human forgiveness, there is a further difference between forgiving people we are close to, and whose relationships benefit us, and forgiving those we are not close to, and whose relationships harm us. This is where extreme, absolute forgiveness fails to make a distinction.
In the Miqra, there are several examples of humans forgiving humans, and in such examples, the relationship is restored. The best example is that of Joseph who forgave his brothers. They were genuinely sorry for what they had done to him, but were still scared that Joseph would take vengeance on them. However, he forgave them, and his relationship with them was restored. His relationship with them was important, so restoring the relationship was part and parcel of the process of him forgiving them.
In Lk 17:3-4, Yeshua said, “Be ever mindful of yourselves: If your brother sins, rebuke him; and if he repents, forgive him. And if he should sin against you seven times in a day, and if he returns to you seven times and says, ‘I’m sorry’, you should forgive him.” This is about restoring a relationship with someone you are close to, and whose ongoing closeness is meaningful to you. Torah says, ‘Do not hate your brother in your heart’ (Lev 19:17).
When a restoration of a relationship would be inappropriate after forgiveness
When someone is genuinely sorry for what they have done, only then can a relationship with the person they have wronged be restored. Such a restoration is possible with someone you have previously had reasonably good relations, and is basically a decent person.
However, even in the case of restoring relationships, one has to show some common sense. If a restoration of relationship would only cause ongoing trauma and pain to the one who has been wronged, then such a restoration would not be required; you have to be sensible.
For example, take the case of a woman whose husband is a serial adulterer. Suppose she knows what he is doing, but does nothing. He takes his wife’s lack of action as unspoken permission to continue in his sin, and it makes him believe that there are no consequences to his sin. His adultery causes her deep emotional scarring, pain and distress, but she does nothing. She forgives him every time, attempting to reconcile with him. Every time, her forgiveness gives him unspoken permission to go on sinning, making his relationship with her meaningless. The appropriate action would be for her to divorce him, because that is the only way to stop him hurting her. She can forgive him, but a restoration of relationship would only cause her further distress. In such a case, a restoration of relationship would not be wise or appropriate. Restoration of the relationship in harmful and destructive cases, is not required or expected by God.
Yeshua’s teaching on Forgiveness
In studying the cultural history of Yeshua’s time, I have come to understand that the particular emphases of Yeshua’s teachings stem from the needs of the time. Furthermore, his overall teachings do not cover the entire breadth of Yahwist spirituality or the Jewish faith – there are issues and problems never covered by Yeshua, which are nevertheless covered by the teachings of God throughout the Miqra. If Yeshua chose to focus on something, it suggests that there was an existing and pressing need to focus on it – or that God called him to concentrate on it, because the circumstances of that era required it.
I propose that there was a contemporary necessity for Yeshua to concentrate on the need for forgiveness. Just like the Vikings, the Zealots were all about retribution for wrongs – thus making human beings the sole instruments of justice, instead of God or the legal system. The Essenes hated the Sadducees, and in their writings, there was mention of how hating one’s enemies was a virtue. Also, Jews hated Samaritans, and Samaritans hated Jews. The mindset that this culture of hatred and vengeance created was one that would feed into the coming tribulation, and could potentially make it far worse. Something had to be done to lessen the effect of all this on the coming tribulation, and shorten its duration.
One answer was for people to forgive, to let go of their hatred, anger, and need for retribution. Furthermore, the bonds within families that were threatened by division, could weaken the ability of the Jewish people to survive and come through the tribulation. In my humble opinion, I think all these things formed the background to Yeshua seeing the need for forgiveness, and why it was such a big part of his teaching – to bring down the temperature, and enable the Jewish people to survive the coming upheavals, without tearing them apart.
Yeshua’s teaching on ‘Loving one’s enemies’ is not about ecstatically embracing those who have traumatised you; it’s about not demonising those who are against you, or answering their evil with evil; it’s about ensuring that you remain blameless before God, and making sure that your soul does not drift off to a dark place that keeps you apart from God. ‘Love’ in this instance is not about getting romantically involved with those who hate you; it’s about not actively harming them, it’s about treating them the way you want to be treated yourself.
There is one thing that Yeshua taught that causes a lot of problems for people who, for one reason or another, find it emotionally very difficult to forgive. He said, “But if you do not forgive others their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins” (Mt 6:15). There is another similar statement in Mk 11:25, “And when you stand praying, if you hold anything against anyone, forgive them, so that your Father in heaven may forgive you your sins”.
This does not mean that, if there is someone who has seriously hurt you or traumatised you, and you find it hard to forgive them, that God will never forgive a single one of your sins ever again. This is one of Yeshua’s idiosyncratic methods of teaching, where he used extreme metaphors to get a point across (another example of extreme metaphor was, “anyone who says to a brother or sister, ‘Raqa’ [‘worthless moron’], will be answerable to the Great Sanhedrin!” – he didn’t literally mean that, he was using extreme metaphor to drive home a point).
In order to understand what Yeshua meant by his teaching, you have to look at one of his relevant parables.
There is the parable of the unmerciful servant (Mt 18:21-35), which throws this teaching into its proper perspective. It is not about general forgiveness; it is specifically about a case when someone forgives you for something really serious, but then you cannot forgive others for smaller, more trivial matters. In the parable, the first servant was forgiven of an amount that he could never hope to ever pay off in his lifetime. Then a fellow servant turns up who owes him a much smaller amount, but he has no pity on this fellow servant, and has him thrown in jail. This is the type of situation in which Yeshua’s teaching applies: ‘If you cannot even forgive others for small sins, how can you ever expect God to forgive you for greater sins?’
Summary
Only God can truly forgive sin. When God forgives sin, that means that God treats us as if the sin never existed – as if we had never committed the sin. The judgment for the sin, the calling to account, doesn’t happen, and the heavenly punishment or penalty for the sin is never imposed. When a human forgives, none of that takes place.
When someone has wronged you, especially if the wrongdoing is serious and life-breaking, and the wrongdoer has no remorse for what they have done, you feel angry at the wrongdoer. You might even want to get back at the wrongdoer, make them pay for what they have done. You might spend your waking days thinking about what you would like to do to that person, how you want to make them suffer, how you resent them. Your mind might even get taken to a very dark place indeed. You might even suffer long-term mental-health problems from what that person has done to you, to the extent that it affects your ability to carry out the normal activities of life.
God does not suffer like that when humans do wrong.
Even if we never see our wrongdoer ever again, even if we never meet them again, they still have a stranglehold on our lives. As long as we can’t forgive them, we are giving them permission to wreck our lives, to disrupt and torment us. As long as we don’t forgive, we are giving them permission to crush our hearts, to push our emotions further and further along a dark road that takes us away from God – we are giving them permission to do all of that.
When we forgive another person, we are effectively denying them permission to crush us. We are letting go of the cord that ties us to our abuser, so that they cannot darken our emotions any longer. As long as we cannot forgive, they are able to continue to abuse us, so once we let go, we are emotionally set free to get on with the rest of our lives.
In the meantime, the wrongdoer still has to face God’s judgment, along with the penalty they still have to face for their sin, their crime. That doesn’t go away when a human being forgives.
Conclusion
Extreme and absolute forgiveness doesn’t help the victim, it only helps the sinner, the abuser. We have to learn to make a distinction between Divine forgiveness and human forgiveness, and also, a distinction between forgiving someone we are close to, in order to restore the relationship, and forgiving someone we are not close to, in which case restoring the relationship would be harmful. The purpose of forgiving someone you are close to and value is to restore your relationship with them, and the purpose of forgiving someone whom you are not close to, and perhaps shows no remorse, is to let go, and deny them permission to carry on hurting you.