Recommitting

Forgiveness, Letting Go, Love, Marriage, Relationships 0

A good relationship is worth the effort of letting go of an annoying trait in your partner and being as kind as possible to this person you are connected to.  Those two ideas are central to your marriage vows.  A marriage is a choice to recommit to your partner every day.  Every spouse, whether recovering from a brutal betrayal or simply dealing with a sloppy partner, decides every day wehter to get up and dance with that partner again.  Every marriage goes through periods when each partner is not sure about continuing it. . . .  Forgiveness is based upon a continual recommitment to your relationship.  Forgiveness comes after grieving your losses, and it allows you to move forward in your relationship with happiness and a positive attitude.  This is true whether the losses were big (your spouse is a drug addict) or little (your lazy partner never does the grocery run) or somewhere in between — as when you accept the fact that you married a slob, you have grieved the neat person you should have married, and you have recommitted to the lovable human being you chose to be with.

Recommitting is an ongoing process; you have to recommit every time your lover says the same dumb thing again and you react with your same exasperated sigh.  You have to recommit when your lover is late yet again, or leaves a cheap tip for the third time in a week.  If your partner does something annoying but ultimately insignificant, acknowledge your dismay or loss for an instant and then connect right back again.  Try saying something to help put the annoyance in perspective and get back in the game.  You could remind yourself that “she’s worth it,” or “it was no big deal.”  Most of the time you don’t even need to let your lover know he or she has done anything wrong.

— Dr. Fred Luskin, Forgive for Love, p. 199-200

Forgiveness as a Way of Life

Forgiveness 0

Forgiveness doesn’t stand alone, as a punctual act or even as an isolated practice.  That would be too passive an understanding of what forgiveness is all about.  Rather, it is embedded in a way of life that is committed to overcoming evil by doing good.

— Miroslav Volf, Free of Charge, p. 189-190

Forgiveness and Repentance

Forgiveness 1

Repentance is important, even indispensable, and it is indispensable because forgiveness is an event between people, not just an individual’s change of feelings, attitudes, or actions.  Instead of being a condition of forgiveness, however, repentance is its necessary consequence.

If they imitate the forgiving God, forgivers will keep forgiving, whether the offenders repent or not.  Forgivers’ forgiving is not conditioned by repentance.  The offenders’ being forgiven, however, is conditioned by repentance — just as being given a box of chocolate is conditioned by receiving that box of chocolate.  Without repentance, the forgivers will keep forgiving but the offenders will remain unforgiven, in that they are untouched by that forgiveness.

Why?  Because they refuse to be forgiven. . . .  Unrepentant offenders implicitly say:  It’s wrong for you to forgive me; I’ve done you no wrong.  Or more brazenly, they say:  I don’t care if you forgive or not, because I don’t care whether I’ve wronged you or not.  Mostly, however, they say:  I am too ashamed of the wrongdoing I’ve committed to repent, too afraid of the consequences that may befall me.  In all three cases, forgiveness is rejected. . . .

That it is difficult to repent genuinely will not come as a surprise to those who have pondered the gravity and power of human sin.  One of sin’s most notable features is that it unfailingly refuses to acknowledge itself as sin.  We usually not only refuse to admit the wrongdoing and to accept guilt, but seem neither to detest the sin committed nor feel very sorry about it.  Instead, we hide our sin behind multiple walls of denial, cover-up, mitigating explanations, and claims to comparative innocence.

The accusations of others reinforce our propensity to hide sin.  We usually do all we can to justify ourselves, and that reaction is understandable.  We fear the consequences of sin.  We may lose a good reputation or be punished.  We cannot bear to face ourselves as wrongdoers.  We fear that the integrity of our very selves might crumble under the weight of our offense.  That’s why we are often able to repent only when we are assured that our guilt will be lifted and charges will not be pressed against us.  In other words, we are able to genuinely repent only when forgiveness has first been extended to us. . . .

Forgiveness does not cause repentance, but it does help make repentance possible.

— Miroslav Volf, Free of Charge, p. 183-186

Positive Intention

Compassion, Core Value, Forgiveness, Healing, Joy, Love, Relationships 0

The good news is that as we connect to our positive intention, we begin to find forgiveness.  Forgiveness is the compassion we experience as we remind ourselves that by driving a car — having a relationship — we run the risk of a breakdown.  Forgiveness is the power we get as we assert that we have a deep well of resilience to draw upon.  Forgiveness is the grace that helps us remember to look around while we’re on the side of the road and appreciate our beautiful surroundings and the people we love.  To help forgiveness emerge, we can learn to see ourselves from the point of view of our positive intention, not primarily as a wounded or rejected lover.

— Dr. Fred Luskin, Forgive for Love, p. 190

Returning Home

Forgiveness, God, Healing, Love 0

Although claiming my true identity as a child of God, I still live as though the God to whom I am returning demands an explanation.  I still think about his love as conditional and about home as a place I am not yet fully sure of.  While walking home, I keep entertaining doubts about whether I will be truly welcome when I get there.  As I look at my spiritual journey, my long and fatiguing trip home, I see how full it is of guilt about the past and worries about the future.  I realize my failures and know that I have lost the dignity of my sonship, but I am not yet able to fully believe that where my failings are great, “grace is always greater.”  Still clinging to my sense of worthlessness, I project for myself a place far below that which belongs to the son.  Belief in total, absolute forgiveness does not come readily. . . .

One of the greatest challenges of the spiritual life is to receive God’s forgiveness.  There is something in us humans that keeps us clinging to our sins and prevents us from letting God erase our past and offer us a completely new beginning.  Sometimes it even seems as though I want to prove to God that my darkness is too great to overcome.  While God wants to restore me to the full dignity of sonship, I keep insisting that I will settle for being a hired servant.  But do I truly want to be restored to the full responsibility of the son?  Do I truly want to be so totally forgiven that a completely new way of living becomes possible?  Do I trust myself and such a radical reclamation?  Do I want to break away from my deep-rooted rebellion against God and surrender myself so absolutely to God’s love that a new person can emerge?  Receiving forgiveness requires a total willingness to let God be God and do all the healing, restoring, and renewing.  As long as I want to do even part of that myself, I end up with partial solutions, such as becoming a hired servant.  As a hired servant, I can still keep my distance, still revolt, reject, strike, run away, or complain about my pay.  As the beloved son, I have to claim my full dignity and begin preparing myself to become the father.

— Henri J. M. Nowen, The Return of the Prodigal Son:  A Story of Homecoming, p. 52-53

The Forgiving Father

Forgiveness, God 0

We are so familiar with the Parable of the Prodigal Son that we forget part of the message, and that is the response of the elder brother.  As I read and reread Scripture it seems evident that God is far more loving than we are, and for more forgiving.  We do not want God to forgive our enemies, but Scripture teaches us that all God wants is for us to repent, to say, “I’m sorry, Father.  Forgive me,” as the Prodigal Son does when he comes to himself and recognizes the extent of his folly and wrongdoing.  And the father rejoices in his return.

Then there’s the elder brother.  We don’t like to recognize ourselves in the elder brother who goes off and sulks because the father, so delighted at the return of the younger brother, prepares a great feast.  Punishment?  A party!  Because the younger brother has learned the lesson he has, in a sense, already punished himself.  But, like the elder brother, we’re apt to think the father much too lenient.

— Madeleine L’Engle, And It Was Good, quoted by Carole F. Chase in Glimpses of Grace, p. 144-145

No Unforgivable People

Forgiveness, God 0

There are no unforgivable people.

Should we forgive even those who refuse to repent?  Consider once again God’s forgiveness, which serves as a model for ours.  There are people who think that in relation to God, repentance comes before forgiveness.  But that can’t be right.  God doesn’t angrily refuse forgiveness until we show ourselves worthy of it by repentance.  Instead, God loves us and forgives us before we repent.  Indeed, before we even sinned, Jesus Christ died for our sins.  God’s forgiveness is not reactive — dependent on our repentance.  It’s original, preceded and conditioned by absolutely nothing on our part.  We can do nothing to become worthy of it for the same reason we can do nothing to earn any of God’s gifts.  Before we do anything, before we even exist, God’s giving and God’s forgiving are already there, free of charge.  God doesn’t give and forgive conditionally.  God’s giving and forgiving are as unconditional as the sun’s rays and as indiscriminate as raindrops.  One died for all.  Absolutely no one is excluded.

Why should we forgive unconditionally and indiscriminately?  We don’t do it simply because a law demands we do so.  We forgive because God has already forgiven.  For us to hold any offender captive to sin by refusing to forgive is to reject the reality of God’s forgiving grace.  Because Christ died for all, we are called to forgive everyone who offends us, without distinctions and without conditions.  That hard work of indiscriminate forgiveness is what those who’ve been made in the likeness of the forgiving God should do.  And . . . that hard work of forgiveness is what those who’ve “put on Christ” are able to do.

— Miroslav Volf, Free of Charge, p. 179-180

Wishes

Forgiveness, Marriage 0

When we forget that all we can really do is hope or wish for the results we want, we make things harder for ourselves.  When we forget that our ability to make our wishes come true is limited, we create grievances…. 

Try to remember one thing:  You risk disappointment every time you want something from your partner.  So much of forgiveness training involves accepting this simple fact of life.

— Dr. Fred Luskin, Forgive for Love, p. 180-182

No Unforgiveable Sins

Forgiveness, God 0

The scandalousness of God’s indiscriminate forgiveness hits us even harder when we are called on to imitate it.  When we need to forgive, most of us, perhaps unconsciously, feel entitled to draw a circle around the scope of forgiveness.  We should forgive some, maybe even most, wrongdoings, but certainly not all.

Maybe we think unintentional offenses are forgivable, and deliberate ones are not.  But how would we draw the line?  How intentional would the offense need to be?  If the offense were truly unintentional, there would be something to be sorry about but nothing to forgive; it was just an accident.  Or maybe we think small offenses are forgivable, and horrendous ones are not.  But again, where would we draw the line?  An offense is an offense and has as much right to be forgiven as any other, which is no right at all.  No line separates offenses that should be forgiven from those that should not.  There are no unforgivable sins.

— Miroslav Volf, Free of Charge, p. 178-179