On forgiveness and guilt

Regular readers might have noticed a dearth of new material on here recently. That includes my NYR book, currently stuck at 13, fully 4 days behind. I will be catching that up shortly and returning to the humorous posts, as well.

However, do not look for humor here. This one is a very personal post taking a look at where I went wrong and figuring out how to fix it. That is primarily what I have been doing for the better part of this past week.

This goes back a short way to the question of Facebook friends first written about here. 

Between then and now, a lot has happened. I spent a week formulating a pair of letters. The first one essentially said, 

Choose your friends carefully. Nobody has any excuse to not know who and what Andrea is. Think of how you would feel if someone who had betrayed you in the most horrible ways suddenly showed up as a friend to people you had long considered friends and family. Then think about how you would feel if someone cheated on you, you remarried, and later, your spouse found out that your friends had befriended your ex. 

Think about those actions, and let me know what you are thinking.

After about a week, I was going to send a second letter essentially saying the following.

I would never tell you who you can or cannot be friends with. I will, however, tell you that I choose my friends with great care and so long as you are friends in any way, shape or form with Andrea, please consider yourself unwelcome in my house and I will do the same for you. I will not be friends with someone who is friends with Andrea.

That would have included anyone. Friend, family, whatever. No exceptions. That is how serious I was about it. 

The wounds go deep in this situation. I have never really fully recovered from the damage done in the relationship with Andrea and the aftermath. The results have been catastrophic.

As I explained to one of my brothers, I am fully aware of the negative impact the situation had on my influence on them and example for them. It has adversely affected my relationships with my brothers, sisters, Dad, and friends. Even today it heavily influences every aspect of my personality.

Every year that passes moves me a little further away from the freshness of the pain of the past. There has been a great deal of help in that regard, and certainly a great deal of positive has come from it, no small part of that from my relationship with the Goose for which I thank God every day. 

At the same time, she is also an innocent bystander suffering somewhat due to events she had nothing to do with...namely, my relationship with Andrea.

I have discussed the situation with several people, and with the one exception of Kev's comment on the initial post, people have universally not only agreed with me, but, in at least 2 cases,  thought I was not moving fast enough to cut ties with those who would befriend Andrea.

The main reason for my hesitation was a strong desire to word my letters in ways that would communicate the situation clearly without being offensive. I would never have sent it as stated above in italics, I was working hard to make sure it could be dealt with logically rather than emotionally, by myself as well as others.

I have often found in the past that putting time between the occurrence of an emotionally charged event and the resolution allows for the removal of emotional reactions which exacerbate the situation.

In this case, it also allowed an unrelated matter to come to the fore.

From time to time, I do some writing for a variety of entities, all of it volunteer and covering a broad range of subjects. During this time period, I received a request to write a religiously oriented article on an interesting subject: guilt and forgiveness.

It is important to recognize a few things about the following piece: the intended audience is  Christians who are reading the Bible regularly and have better than a basic understanding of the issues involved. The passages referenced are assumed to be familiar to the reader and are therefore not clearly outlined.

Here is the result of that request:

Romans 3:23 is explicit. Guilt is something experienced by every person who reaches the “age of accountability”. The question that faces each person who comes to awareness of this fact is how to deal with that guilt. The easy and obvious answer is to search for forgiveness for that guilt.

The Christian has a real advantage in this regard. The writer of Hebrews dealt extensively with the issue when he explained the importance of Jesus being the High Priest for our faith. Jesus experienced the same temptations we experience. While He did not fail as we do, He nevertheless understands what it is that we go through.

In fact, among the last words He spoke on earth were His pleas that the death ahead be spared Him. It was a temptation more severe than any we face.

His status as understanding High Priest bears relevance to our guilt because we, as Christians, need to follow His example.

The natural progression would be to examine more of His final words, the famous, “Father, Forgive them for they know not what they do.” Certainly that applies, but even more immediate would be the oft-misquoted and more famous, “judge not that you be not judged” of Matthew 7:1.

But the next verse is the one we should key in on. “For in the way you judge, you will be judged; and by your standard of measure, it will be measured to you.”

Think carefully about the implications of that verse.

“By your standard of measure, it will be measured to you.”

There are disagreements over who can forgive, whether it first must be sought, and so forth. But the Scripture seems to leave us a very clear, thought-provoking possibility.

If my standard of measure affects how I will be judged then it certainly behooves me to err on the side of mercy and excessive forgiveness. I believe Scripture backs this up.

Ephesians 4:26 tells us, “Be angry and yet do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger.”

In other words, do not hold a grudge. Do not hold wrongs, real or perceived, against those who caused them to you for someday, your actions will be held up before God the Father and Jesus the Son. It will certainly be easier to face that judgment having led a life of excessive forgiveness and mercy for the wrongs done us when we are called to account for the wrongs we have done God.

If the standard of our measure is the measure we will be accountable to, let us err so far on the side of forgiveness and mercy that we can stand confident before God.

Certainly I think there is a great deal of food for thought in there. It should be noticed that nowhere does Scripture equate forgiving with forgetting. One can forgive a wrong suffered without forgetting what was done.

However, the part I am pressing here is my dealing with people whose actions were hurtful. It is irrelevant whether their actions were deliberate, accidental, thoughtless, or just done in ignorance. What matters is not their actions but my reactions.

It is important to note I am not disappointed that it caused me moments of anger. As the above referenced passage, Ephesians 4:26, points out, there will be moments of anger at times and that, I believe, was a justifiable moment of same.

It is also important to note I have not changed my opinion of Andrea's actions or what type of person she is.  I can be very aware of those things without holding grudges and so forth.

However, there is an onus upon me to follow, to the best of my ability, the attitudes, teachings, and mindsets, as much as possible, of Christ. 

And that leads me back to where I went wrong. Although it is speaking about lawsuits between believers, I do believe that I Corinthians 6:7 when it says, "Why not rather be wronged?" I would refer also to Matthew 7:2. I can be aware of wrong being done without taking it to heart.

The duty that falls upon me, according to Scripture, is to have compassion and mercy, to have a standard of forgiveness that is beyond what frankly I often think is possible for me. Yet that is a standard I must seek to attain.

I need to have much lower standards for what it takes to upset me. For what it takes to make me feel wronged, or, in Scriptural vernacular, sinned against.

Furthermore, when there are situations where I feel wronged I should simply ignore them, let them go. I should have such loose measures for forgiving, showing mercy, as it were, towards people as to be seen as being among the most compassionate, forgiving people that you could encounter.

I must put in my heart the ideas of Matthew 12:7 (I desire mercy rather than sacrifice) and Matthew 7:2. I should have standards of mercy that are far higher than I do.

The irony in all this is I had talked with one of the people who had Andrea as a friend and they and their wife had already independently come to the same conclusion and the resolution was already in place, and later my wife spoke with a third person and they had also come to the same conclusion, leaving just one more person I know of who has her for a friend. 

I will not be speaking to him about it, nor will I be holding it against him. In fact, should any of those I have spoken to about it change their mind and want her for a friend, so be it, that is their choice. I myself would choose otherwise if the roles were reversed..but that is me and not them.

I like to think that if the same situation were to reoccur, I will have grown through this and the happy convergence of events that led to a new and, I believe better, understanding of my role and duty as a professing Christian to act with mercy and compassion, even towards those whom it  might seem are not deserving of it.

After all, some day I will stand before God asking mercy and I know it is not something I deserve. I am not greater than God, so I need to have as much compassion as possible.