Forgiveness is hard as hell. That is, forgiveness is as hard as the hell that was done to you.
If you scratch my car with your shopping cart in the Kroger parking lot, I’ll be annoyed, but forgiveness won’t be too hard, like leisurely sifting sand through my fingers on the beach. However, if you hurt my kid, digging forgiveness up out of my heart is going to be more like swinging a pick mattock into Georgia red clay: a lot of sweat, cursing, and sore muscles.
Over the past year I’ve been haunted by Jesus’ final expression of forgiveness: “Father, forgive them, for they don’t know what they are doing.” This is divine absurdity.
After being arrested for no other crime than offending the powers that be, being mocked, beaten, stripped naked, paraded through the streets, suspended by nails pounded between his bones, and slowly dying as his torturers gambled for his clothing to pass the time…
…this is the moment Jesus prays for their forgiveness!? Divine absurdity.
This haunts me because forgiveness disconnected from apology is crazy talk. Hurt me on purpose? I can forgive that. Hurt me because you’re a clueless narcissist? That’s a a bit harder. Got a heartfelt apology? I can extend heartfelt forgiveness. Defend yourself and scapegoat me as being the one in the wrong? I’m gonna hold a grudge.
But then again, for the record, I’m not Jesus.
While listening to podcasts recently, I was surprised by two takes on forgiveness that help me inch a little bit closer to forgiving like Jesus.
The first is a quote from Buddhist monk Gelong Thubten:
Do we think that if we let go of the grudge that we’ve let the other person get away with it? Wouldn’t you say that by holding the grudge they’ve got away with it? …In Buddhism there’s a teaching that says it’s like holding onto a piece of hot metal, or holding a hot coal in your hands, that’s burning you. If I’m holding the grudge they have absolutely got away with it because the thing they did—that was one thing maybe—I am now constantly hurting, and they’re absolutely the winner.
I may not be certain that hell is a place of eternal conscience torment in burning fire, but I am certain that hell is a constant burning torment in my hand. I’ve held onto that damned coal. I’ve let those who have wronged me win by permitting their actions to perpetually harm me.
Then there’s Lutheran pastor Nadia Bolz-Weber:
Forgiveness is saying, “What you did to me was not OK. But I refuse to be connected to it any longer.”
She, too, names the fact that a refusal to forgive only further wounds the wounded. Real forgiveness doesn’t let other person off the hook, but it gets their hooks out of you.
Forgiveness is breaking contact with the hot coal of judgment.
The wild, other-worldly truth that Jesus demonstrates is this: All that is needed for forgiveness is an offense. Apparently forgiveness does not need an apology to impart its freedom. It does not need a confession to work its healing. While you may never comprehend or confess that what you did was wrong as hell, it makes no difference. It is still within my power to let go of that burning coal.
Forgiveness does not proclaim innocence; it ceases judgment. Forgiveness does not tell you, “You are pardoned”; it tells myself, “My courtroom is now out of session.”