I have been thinking about life management in broader terms than most people would considering the term. There is more to managing your life than keeping notebooks or using Google’s tools to keep up with your commitments. I include personal relationships in the broad spectrum of managing my life and I got to thinking about forgiveness while writing about my views on torture. I talk about forgiveness in the closing paragraphs and had one of those epiphany moments.
Before I talk about my epiphany I am going to make an admission here that I have never made in public before. It is apropos to the topic at hand but very hard for me to type out and have here for everyone to see and pass judgement on me for my actions. I cheated on my wife. I had never cheated on anyone I had even dated when this happened. I had been what a good friend of my called a serial monogamist. I won’t go into the details because they don’t matter. Suffice to say that shortly after we were married I broke my vows to her. It goes without saying that I didn’t handle the situation well from start to finish and it culminated with me doing something I had sworn I would never do. When all was said and done I went home and confessed my sin to my wife and prepared for the worst. I expected yelling and screaming and even possibly having to find a new place to sleep for a while. What I got was forgiveness. It was instant and without second thought. There was no yelling, no banning me from our apartment. She simply and completely forgave me and has never once held it against me. Her forgiveness tore my heart out and made me feel worse than any other thing she could have done. Now this was not her intent but it’s the truth of the matter. It was hard and took me much longer to accept that she had forgiven me than it did for her to do so.
What brought this to my mind was typing out my explanation of how prosecuting people that tacitly approved torture are looked the other way would provide them absolution whereas forgiving them and letting them deal with their conscience could provide a harsher punishment in the long term. I realized, over the past couple of days thinking about it, that human beings have a need to be punished for our crimes or sins so that we feel we can accept forgiveness. It is hard for us to accept that we can just be forgiven for something we have done that hurt someone, broke someone’s trust, and so on. We don’t feel worthy of being forgiven without some of retribution being meted our upon us. Sure we can logically accept forgiveness as offered and once accepted we may even believe the forgiving party has truly let go of our slight against them but we tend not to forgive ourselves for the slight even after forgiveness is offered by the offended party.
In the season premier of House we watched Dr. House struggle to tell someone who was injured by reckless decision that he was sorry. This was not the standard Dr. House diagnostic mistake but rather a completely different situation that you’ll have to watch the episode to see. In the dialog with Dr. House and his shrink we saw that the root of the problem was not that Dr. House did not want to apologize out of arrogance but rather out of guilt. He did not believe he had any right to let go of his mistake and move on. He did want forgiveness but rather wanted to mentally flagellate himself over his mistake. An apology, even without forgiveness, allows us a chance to move past our mistakes. Once offered and if offered in earnest an apology places the onus on the slighted party. If forgiveness is refused then we must, morally, move past our mistake while taking care to not repeat whatever thing we did. I say that we have a moral imperative to move on because if we don’t then allow other’s to place baggage in our life that is not ours to bear.
Now I must tread carefully here because a simple “I’m sorry” is not enough for many situations. An apology should fit the circumstances and must be offered in earnest. If we wreck a friend’s car and leave them without transportation while their car is fixes then a simple verbal apology may be a slap in the face that requires it’s own apology later. When we apologize we seek forgiveness and as such we must be prepared to make restitution and if we are not then our apology is not worth acceptance. I do not advocate allowing apologies not given in earnest or not fitting the situation to give us permission to walk away from someone we have slighted.
Offering a true apology befitting the situation and doing so with earnest places us in a position where we can forgive ourselves for our mistakes. And that is the hardest part of forgiveness. Forgiving yourself. Human beings are not well equipped to forgive ourselves and, as mentioned earlier, feel a need for some horror to be dealt to us that is worse than whatever we have done to another. This what we must move past in our lives. We must learn to forgive ourselves. I don’t have any words of wisdom on how to accomplish this task but merely know that we must.
On the flip side of that coin we should accept apologies without reservation regardless of whether or not they fit the situation. We should dole out forgiveness with ease and do so truly and completely. We should be willing to give forgiveness without any apology whatsoever. If we do not then we create emotional and spiritual baggage for ourselves that will affect all aspects of our life. I know from my own life experiences that holding a grudge or stoking hatred in your heart will leave you a shell of the person that you could, and are supposed to, be. Holding grudges can lead to your immune system functioning at lower efficiency and put you in bed sick. I won’t bother citing the studies here because I am lazy but there are plenty that show that angry people end up sick more often than happy people. So even ignoring the mental issues that refusing forgiveness brings with it there are health concerns as well.
All of this metal rumination led to me realizing that we, as humans, have a huge amount of trouble believing we can be forgiven for our sins. Even once we accept that the Gospel we still seek ways in which to be punished for our sins. I don’t doubt you heard all the Evangelical blow hards after 9/11, the major typhoon, hurricanes Ike and Katrina, or any other given disaster claiming that those events were God’s punishment because we are evil people who deserve bad things. I tell you that those blow hards have it wrong. They want those things to be true because it would mean that being forgiven comes with a price but it doesn’t. Scripture says that God disciplines his children but it never says he tosses horrors down from heaven on believers and non-believers alike. God’s forgiveness is there for the asking and he doesn’t require us to flog ourselves or wear hair shirts to get it. We just have trouble believing that we could be forgiven that easily and that’s a shame.
Even if you aren’t a Christ Follower everything above the previous paragraph is applicable to your life. I am trying to write these pieces to be applicable to everyone regardless of their religious beliefs. Forgiveness and apologies are a key part of managing our personal lives and we should work on forgiving with ease and earnest, accepting forgiveness, and perhaps most importantly forgiving ourselves. If we practice these things then we will walk through our lives with a few more smiles and be more pleasant to those around us. Let go of your grudges, forgive old boyfriends and girlfriends, let go of your spite for your mother not being perfect, and let yourself accept your failures and move past them. You might not think it will help but I promise you it can’t hurt.
To do evil for good is human corruption; to do good for good is civil retribution; but to do good for evil is Christian perfection. Though this be not the grace of nature, it is the nature of grace. – Archbishop Secker
(Title quote by Mahatma Gandhi)
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