forgive, sort of

Forgiveness can rattle your world. I'm the kind of guy who does forgiveness posturing pretty well. I can talk about grace and how healing it can be when you open up the darker places in your soul to someone who will listen with few words and stand with you in your shame, allowing God's Spirit to gently heal and nurture you back, where you find yourself more humble and grateful and awake to life with its mixture of suffering, shame, and joy. But looking like someone who forgives and being a forgiver are different. Love, wisdom, humility, grace, forgiveness, patience...the idea of these is so attractive but safe. There's hardly a cost to an idea. You can read about them, hear about them, study them, be inspired at the coffee house with friends who talk about them. And hopefully this will be a launch pad. But for me, I've become comfortable being busy. Loving my three loves. Wearing the banner of tiredness to justify non-action. By the way, this is a good way to lose good friends and keep yourself from having to make new ones. Most of the time I don't want to step it up and abandon my pride so I might actually do some forgiving and loving. I'm too tired. This person won't change anyway- they qualify for at at least five DSM IV diagnoses. So why bother? I give out way more than I receive already. Do you know how much time it will take, the kind of conversations I will have to endure, the misperceptions, the ad hominem accusations? I just don't know if it's worth it. The cost-benefit analysis in my head doesn't add up. And yet I know this is scarcity thinking. I'm assuming that I have such limited resources, that once I expend them, once I make the call (or receive the call) and go through the exhaustion of listening and restraining and attempting to forgive, that I will be so depleted and angry that I won't see it as being worth it. If I had more faith, I would believe that God can give me unlimited resources at the exact moments I need so that I can be a genuine person, one who forgives and loves and extends the time of day to people who tend to deplete me. I guess I just don't want to live by faith as much as by what I can see and do and manipulate.

 I wonder if it makes a difference if the person you need to forgive actually wants to be forgiven, or if they just don't see it. They have done nothing wrong in their own eyes. There's been no ethical violation, no emotional trespass, no half-truth, no crime, no wake of destruction for the decisions in their life. This is the person for whom forgiveness seems impossible. They don't want it. They're not asking for it. They're just asking for acceptance and endorsement of their lifestyle, and they're pretty blind to the effect of their choices. And they just can't understand why you won't accept them. But the one who says I'm really sorry for what I've done, that I've hurt a lot of people, that I was wrong, even selfish, that I can't imagine how this has affected you and others, and that I want to live different, I'm going to try, and if you need space from me, take it, I am learning to respect space, and I hope we can meet again on healthier terms when I'm ready and you're ready. I can much more readily forgive this person. And it actually makes me look at myself and see where I might need to confess and change and grow. God's rules are hard to follow. Forgiving someone multiple times when they offend repeatedly. I'm more of a one-time forgiver than a multiple forgiver. And even then, it's usually when I feel like the person is genuinely sorry and showing some change. Otherwise, I count the cost and usually conclude that it's probably too much. Relational cut-offs are easier. But when is something a cut-off or just a healthy and strong boundary? Do I have to be in relationship with someone after I forgive them? If not, then did I really forgive them? How do you know when real forgiveness happens?  There is so much to consider and sort through. Cheap forgiveness, like the students who make banners saying"We forgive you" to the guy who shot and killed 15 kids in their classrooms the day before. That's hollow. That's cheating. There's no cost to their "forgiveness," but it's a nice banner and it's newsworthy. I've heard of people forgiving the perpetrator after he's dead, and the freedom that finally comes to the forgiver. I guess I just don't know if forgiveness is supposed to be unconditional, or if it is, how that really works.

What I do know is that I need to ditch the scarcity thinking, the world of ideas alone, and trust that God will provide the means, the strength, the stuff, the whatever it is, to get out and forgive and love and become the person that I'm not yet.