Reflection on Forgiveness

I recently heard a woman ask a question on forgiveness that highlighted major problems in our culture’s understanding thereof.  In her instance there was another person who wronged her and as a Christian she felt like she was responsible for forgiving the offender, but she was struggling with how she could forgive that person when they were not even sorry.  This is a popular question that comes from even more popular misunderstandings on forgiveness.  We know forgiveness is only called for because some intolerable form of hurt and/or loss has occurred. Moreover, it has occurred in such a way that the relationship is irrevocably damaged.  The mistake then comes when forgiveness, if it does occur, is enacted as a privatized or unilateral event.  There has been an overabundance of counselors, teachers and pastors that paint it as the process of accepting, tolerating, excusing, forgetting or letting go of the injury.  Though there are circumstances where most of these are valuable courses of action to take, not one of them should be mistaken as the process of forgiveness. Hurt and loss occur in varying degrees some of which can be pardoned and overlooked, but then there are some that cannot.  In David Augsburger’s Helping People Forgive, he suggests that one can only forgive the instances that cannot be tolerated, excused, forgotten or ignored.[1]  It then becomes a process that acts interpersonally requiring movement from both sides.  Augsburger uses the metaphor of a bridge that “must stretch, unsupported, across vast emptiness… risking the unknown, the unsupported, the unpredictable… joining the separated; forgiveness constructs a new path.”[2]   We must then see it as a reconciliation that moves forward together in a new or renewed relationship. 

So also, as Christ pointed out, forgiveness must consistently be given, so far as it is in our control, but it cannot be extended apart from another’s repentance (Matt. 18:15-35; Lk. 17:3-4). Bonhoeffer echoes this sentiment in his opposition to the “cheap grace” of the church that in one way could be characterized by the incessant preaching of forgiveness without repentance.[3]   We must see the process as being twofold in grace and truth so that it occurs on the basis of unconditional love, yet nothing is overlooked as the offense is mutually faced, restitution is made (when need be) and both the offended  and offender begin working in new direction toward a restored and healthy relationship.  If repentance is absent and relationships are not being reconciled then forgiveness has not and cannot happen.  In effect, the answer to the woman’s question of how she could forgive her offender who was not sorry (whether because that person was unaware of the offense or had no empathy for the damage they caused I don’t know) is in fact a problem until both are ready to face and work through the offense for a better way of life together. Forgiveness must overwhelm the isolated places of circumspection that forbids reconciled relationships so that all involved can move forward together in the shared life of mutual trust and care.

[1] David Augsburger. Helping People Forgive (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press 1996), 28.

[2] Ibid, 6-7.

[3] Dietrich Bonhoeffer. The Cost of Discipleship (New York, NY: SCM Press 1995), 43.