I am expanding last week’s post “Struggling to Forgive.” I talked about misconceptions (lies or myths about forgiveness) and explained that even when we truly want to forgive, we pay a huge price for the wrongs others did to us. Those wrongs hurt badly and make forgiving much harder, since it comes at such a high price for us. Because I have forgiven some very harsh people, I face the price of the pain they caused, and I am still dealing with that grief. As a result, I need to re-forgive some people when I remember past things I may not have admitted caused me pain.
We deny how much some things hurt, because we don’t want to face the pain. But our denial only keeps the pain inside our hearts. I have spoken extensively about our need to express sorrow and grieve for as long as we need so we can heal. Matt.5:4 promises, “Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.” Psalm 147:3 promises, “He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds.”
But it is not just sorrow we need to feel and express (to the Lord.) I explained that one myth about forgiveness says we should not feel anger after we have forgiven someone. The truth is that we will feel plenty of anger when someone wronged us badly. We don’t stop feeling our feelings when we release the guilty person from our retribution and place him or her into God’s hands for God’s punishment. We still have to live with how much that person hurt us. Anger is a natural response when our boundaries have been broken.
This brings us to another myth about forgiveness: we should quickly get over our anger when we forgive. Not only can we feel anger after we forgive someone, but we can also feel anger for a long time after we forgive someone. We are not crazy or unjust for feeling strongly. I shared in the earlier post that we will still feel pain, because we have to live with the consequences of someone else’s sin for a long time or even the rest of our lives, if their offense was severe. Healthy humans feel anger, even righteous anger. And as sinful humans, we will at times feel unrighteous anger too. At times we may not know if our anger is righteous or sinful, but we feel it, and we have to release it.
Some people dump all their problems and anger on another person and say, “I am venting and need to do this.” But often that is not right, and it creates an unhealthy, emotional burden on the person we “vent” to. Expressing some frustration in two or three sentences to a safe friend is often fine. But when we cross that line and go on for multiple paragraphs about someone we are angry with, we can harm them or even invite them to feel hatred towards our abuser. There is only one who can handle our harshest emotions, and that one is God. We can tell God our most angry feelings, and we can even let him know we are not sure if this is sinful or righteous anger. We can tell God for as long as we need, and then we can ask him whether we are being ungodly or just feeling righteous anger. God can show us whether we have unfairly judged the other person, hated him or her, wished him or her ill, and any other bias we may have had.
But something comforting also happens. We can find that God is angry with that person too. I shared about this in my post “Forgive and Let God Punish Them.” We are not the only ones who get angry when someone hurts us. God gets angry with them too, as I shared in that post. There is an amazing sense of justice when we realize God is not pleased with people hurting us. This displeases him, and he has promised to repay those people. Look at Exodus 22:23-24a, “If you afflict them <widow or orphan> in any way and they cry to me, I will surely hear their cry, and my anger will burn…” God is very angry when the unrighteous attack the innocent. People have an innate sense of justice, but when we strike out, in our flesh (taking revenge) we feel bad. But when we realize God will deal with those who hurt us, our anger over the injustice can begin to heal. Yet our anger will not fully go away if we don’t bring every aspect that bothers us to the Lord.
We might have fallen into the myth that good Christians never get angry and we should not even admit we have been hurt. Those 2 myths have caused many Christians to deny the offenses that were done against them. But offenses do exist, and there are plenty of people who cause them, but then they lie and say, “That did not hurt,” (whether they mean physically or emotionally.) There are so many lies generated in the name of our Christian faith, but none of them are coming from Christ. Harsh people always try to cover up their sin by saying they did not really hurt their victims or that the victim should laugh off the offense. They may even say, “Because that is what good Christians do.” How many non-Christians try to tell Christians how they should behave? Joseph did not laugh off his brothers’ attempt to kill him and later sell him as a slave. He told them, “You meant it for evil,” in Genesis 50:20.
So let’s get back to the idea of our anger lasting for a longer time than we thought it would last after we forgave someone. There are three people I am facing this anger about right now. One has been dead for years, but the Lord brought the woman up to remind me I need to deal with my feelings. I thought I had forgiven her long ago. She is not even my relative. But I sensed God asking me if I even loved her. A friend who knew her (indirectly) said I had good reason to not love her. She was dishonest, unkind, stabbed people in the back and did other harsh things. She did seem to soften in her older years, but she was never truly kind to me, but just not mean anymore. She never put effort into getting to know me. I rarely saw her, but when I did, I tried to be quiet and polite. I think she and her friends assumed I am an introvert, and because they looked down on introverts, she looked down on me. I do become quiet when I am around people who want to be the center of the attention, especially if they are harsh, angry or mean people. I don’t want to fight with people, and since people like that make known their desire to be the center of the attention, I let them have that attention.
I want peace, and I choose friends who like to share their lives with me and also let me share my life with them. So when I am forced to be around harsh people, I know it will not be for long, and it is easy for me to let them act the way they want. I have learned this with difficult bosses and a number of other people. I have to confront people at times, but if I can avoid it, I will do so. But this woman had been mean to me and some people I love for years. I did my best to forgive her each time she did those things. But I suspect I also buried some of my pain and anger over the things she said and did.
I did not realize that I needed to tell God all of that pain, and admit that it really hurt. I also did not realize that to fully love this woman, I had to get out that pain. I could never be vulnerable or close with such a person. But I could have had more mercy or compassion for her, if I had first given myself that mercy and compassion. I suppose this covers another myth: we don’t have to give ourselves mercy and compassion to forgive others. We do need to be kind to ourselves and patient with ourselves and feel our sorrow and not tell ourselves the situation should not have hurt. When we are not kind enough to ourselves, we also cannot be as kind to others. We can remain quiet and act politely. I did. But our hearts will lack the full compassion for the abusers if we don’t admit to how much they hurt us and then let God comfort us. Our self-dishonesty does not just hurt us (though it does, very much) but it also can hurt the abuser. Often the abuser will insist he or she did not hurt us, and this makes our denial more likely, yet it also may make forgiving that abuser much harder.
On her death bed, this woman requested one of her children give out a blanket statement to everyone: “If I hurt anyone, I am sorry.” I learned about this blanket statement and accepted it as the best she could do to apologize to the many people she had hurt. I knew it was the best I would ever receive from her. I accepted it. But I don’t think I fully grieved over how much she had scorned me and maligned me. It seems so strange that if I had admitted to God how much it hurt, I would have found it easier to have mercy for this woman. I don’t even know if she had any problems in life. From what I learned, she actually lead a very easy life and was a pampered child and adored in her early career before she married and afterwards too. Success came easily for her, and people tended to admire her.
Perhaps some people never suffer much in their lives. At least the people who knew her never spoke of any suffering she may have felt. Yet I can still have mercy for her even though she led a mostly easy and pampered life, because she pushed me and many others away. She did suffer something, the loss of being close to people. Because she told so many lies and presented a false front, she could not know the joy of sharing her fears and sorrows with others. She presented herself as a saint. But this also meant she could not fully appreciate the joy of having her sins forgiven since she believed she had few or none. She could not draw close to the Lord and know the joy of being vulnerable with him. I think she repented and became a true believer on her death bed. But she missed out on all those years of joy she could have known. She had to show a false front to the many people she deceived. For those of us who saw through her, she probably hated us and did not love us for our insight, even when we did not use it against her. In fact, I knew I loved her some, because I was so afraid for her salvation and prayed for her when she was dying. I was so relieved when I learned her family member was reading Scripture to her and apparently talking to her about sin.
But I never knew how to give her the mercy of truly knowing her and letting her know I loved her, faults and all, because she did not admit to any faults. I also suspect I had less mercy for her, because I denied the pain she caused. I let the myth of denying my pain come between me and the ability to have deep compassion for her. God is stirring that kind of compassion in me today. My friend also was not sure how I could “love” someone who was already dead, but this wise friend said, “Maybe God knows you need to work something out like forgiving,” and I agreed. Yes, I had already forgiven her. But there are layers to the forgiveness I needed to offer her, and even though she has been dead for years, her soul lives on. God can help me better forgive her by my being honest with God about how very much she hurt me. As I admit to how much her lies and cruel intentions hurt me, I can see her not just as some deceitful and arrogant person who lead a pampered life, but as someone who must have been so lonely. People who are arrogant and dishonest are very lonely. They cannot let down their guard and admit to who they truly are, lest they lose their charade. They would rather cling to the lies they have placed around themselves than express genuine repentance over how they have wronged others.
Admitting we are wrong destroys our sinful pride. Yet God promises us joy when we do so: Psalm 34:18, “The Lord is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit.”
Our human pride does not want to say it was wrong. But pride is a lonely façade. When we remain prideful, we cannot repent and rejoice. Prideful people are not joyful. This woman was not joyful. I remember her snide remark about someone I love. I was shocked when she said mean things about him. She did not have the ready laugh of people who suffer and forgive. She did not know the peace of a person who is humble and admits her faults and trusts God to guide her. She did not know the joy of being vulnerable with other people. Other than laughing at others, I don’t remember her ever laughing.
God has increased my mercy for this woman and my love too. He is doing this with the other two people who I am still struggling to understand and forgive. I have forgiven them many times, but as painful memories come up (ones I had denied), God is helping me forgive them all over again. We might need to forgive people over and over as we finally admit they hurt us badly. We are not bad or wrong for slowly remembering pain we had buried in the past. This is not digging up revenge or offense against our abusers. It is simply admitting to ourselves and God how much that person hurt us. Then we let God heal us. As we do that we can more easily see how wounded and damaged the abuser was and have mercy for him or her too. Over and over God encourages us to do this (Psalm55:22, “Cast your cares on the Lord and will He will sustain you; He will never let the righteous fall.”)
I have more love for this woman, and many others who have hurt me, because I continue to admit I was hurt by them. I continue to tell God how much it hurts, and he keeps healing me. Then God enables me to see these abusers as fellow broken people, even when they bluster in their pride and don’t admit their faults. I have mercy for them anyway, even when some are so abusive I cannot maintain a relationship with them. I pray for you to find this peace too. Let God know how much others hurt you, and trust him to give you mercy for them. When you let God have mercy for you, you will eventually have mercy for those abusers too. God is faithful and he will give you his heart for others.
I pray we have blessed you with this post. Please share the ways you have struggled to forgive others too. Have a blessed week!