Ego te absolvo

Since forgiveness is kinda the central theme of Christianity, it's gonna come up a lot on the Journey as well as on this blog. But how exactly does it figure in to our lives? We talk a lot about the Big Guy forgiving us in exchange for basically nothing. In a way, this concept of free forgiveness is the most uncomfortable and difficult thing to believe in Christianity. We feel far too unworthy to buy into this free gift sometimes. There's nothing wrong with trying to do the right thing by living a holier life; but oftentimes, when the offer of a clean slate seems too good to be true, we think we can balance out the bad with good instead of accepting God's gift. Make no mistake, there is a temporal debt for the effects of sin (more on that in the future perhaps), but no amount of good deeds or penance will make God forgive you. Christ earns your forgiveness, not you.

However, we humans like to put our own price tags on forgiving other people. Oh yes, we're almost always willing to forgive the people who wrong us... as long as they admit that they were wrong and by some act appease us. That's a big no-no. I used to be like this all the time. Not on accident, either. If you had asked me then, I would have described my forgiveness as something to be given only to those who ask. My view on forgiveness was so skewed that I had no intention of forgiving those who greatly wronged me without some form of apology. My justification for this? Well, I figured that if the Big Guy only forgave people who asked for His forgiveness, then maybe that's how people should be, too. I didn't sit around hating every person who wronged me, but I had no intention of offering my forgiveness without a "reason."

 Sometimes I marvel at how spiritually stuck up I was (and sometimes still am). Who did I think I was? Did I fancy my forgiveness some kind of luxurious commodity that all my peers craved? Like most big sinners (and I'm the biggest), I fancied myself in some way equal to the Almighty. Subconsciously perhaps, but nonetheless it's true. Anyone who sees their personal forgiveness as something valuable only to be given to the apologetic peons at their feet has some kind of God complex. Here's why my former philosophy was really stupid:

1. I thought God would only forgive openly sorry people. Well, this just isn't true. Yes, God asks for our sorrowful penitence, but He isn't limited to this if He doesn't want to be. For instance, in Matthew chapter 9, Jesus forgives the cripple's sins without so much as a word from the man (in fact, He seems to do this based on the faith of the paralytic's companions; maybe I'll return to Matthew 9 whenever I talk about infant baptism...). This isn't to say that we shouldn't confess our sins and apologize to God as much as possible, but it absolutely does mean that my faulty reasoning was limiting the scope of God's mercy.

2. I was ignoring the commandments of Jesus. When Peter asked the Lord how many times to forgive someone who sins against him, Jesus said, "... till seventy times seven times" (Matthew 18:21-22), figuratively meaning every time (although 490 times is a good starting point, I suppose). The old standby "Judge not..." envisions this unconditional forgiveness, as well (Luke 6:37). Jesus also said, "... when you shall stand to pray, forgive, if you have aught against any man; that your Father also, who is in heaven, may forgive you your sins" (Mark 11:25). And let's not forget the Lord's Prayer: "And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors" (Matthew 6:12). These last two, interestingly enough, seem to imply that the Big Guy won't be so eager to forgive us if we don't forgive others. Yikes.

3. I thought I knew who needed forgiving. What human being can see into the soul of another (well, besides Christ obviously, but He's God. Hypostatic union and all that)? Not me. When someone does something I don't like, or something that negatively effects me, I have no right to condemn. The state of that person's eternal soul is a matter between him/her and God. There is no requirement that I like whatever this person did, but there is a requirement that I forgive them; because in the end only God knows if they're guilty, only God knows if they're sorry, and only God has the right to judge them.

Yep, I was a big moron, and once I realized what I was supposed to be doing, I felt like this at first:

However, this realization was one of the most central transformations of my Christian Journey. I wish I could remember how exactly it happened, but I can't. It was more of a gradual process.

Nowadays, I try to forgive unconditionally. There are some people that I occasionally falter in forgiving, but I try. We all face a failure to forgive sometimes. But fret not! Let's talk about what forgiveness isn't! It isn't the same as forgetting, reestablishing complete trust, or pretending nothing happened. God doesn't ask us to be naïve, He only asks us to give others the benefit of the doubt when it comes to the state of their souls (it wouldn't hurt to pray a bit for them, too). Also, I have to admit, I've found forgiveness to be a surprisingly healthy way to get rid of emotional baggage. I highly recommend it. Sometimes, I even feel like this: