Forgiveness: The Path to Healing and Wholeness

But this is where, in our churches, youth leaders play a very important role, to come alongside somebody and just to say, how are you? What's happening? I'm delighted you're here. Is there something that you're doing this week that I can join you? Maybe some kind of an athletic game or some kind of musical event or maybe some sort of just walking in the park. Just saying that you're worth my time. I like being with you. It's valuable for us to be together. I enjoy you. Those are all important messages for this person to hear. And what happens is it interrupts their anger. It becomes a time of peace for them. And they realize that the world can be a better place. They realize that there are people out there who will help to build their dignity, nurture them as human beings, and they feel kindness and warmth and just have a good overall feeling. [00:03:47]

And all of a sudden, somebody is kind. You know, I'm delighted to see you in church every Sunday. That's such a wonderful... You know, you bless me by being in church. Just thank you for being there. That's all it takes. And we can all do that. And we never really will know that we might be saving a person's life from terrible destruction. And if we are all doing it a little bit, a lot. That's great. You're welcome. will happen. A lot of good will happen. A lot of people's lives will start taking a different course. So instead of following through on the rebellion, we now begin to feel wholeness and healing. [00:05:17]

We're going to raise children differently than we were raised. Those are good things. And so these little acts of kindness, when we all engage in them, will accumulate to an enormous good for other people, for the Kingdom of God. [00:06:13]

Those you are angry with control you. Think about it. If you're angry at somebody, that occupies your mind. It taxes your energies. It's what you think about. You can't sleep at night. You have no peace. The anger that you have towards somebody else actually controls you. And none of us want that. [00:08:24]

And then mentally, when we are angry, we tend to get preoccupied with it. We find ourselves talking with other people or complaining about such a person or this person, how bad things are. We can't concentrate. We can't relax because our mind is still preoccupied with these things. And there's nowhere that we find peace. And so physiologically, socially, emotionally, mentally, these are all problems. [00:10:03]

He says, anger is the major and the most common emotion seen in children and adults. Anger. That's his experience as a counselor and as a psychotherapist. 44 % of the patients that he sees had anger attacks in the form of depression. So many of the people who are on antidepressants like Prozac or Valium or something have unresolved anger as the cause of it. Now, there's a better way to deal with anger than drugs. He said that 34 % of all his patients had anger attacks in the form of eating disorders. [00:11:41]

So, Fitzgibbons, then, as I noted before, said, the only way of dealing with anger in a permanent way, the only antidote to anger, is forgiveness. So, he says that forgiveness, then, is the major way, the only effective way of dealing with anger. [00:13:03]

Where some of this early research came out was in the prisons in America. And in the prisons, they were doing anger management workshops, how to control your anger, how to manage it. But they found out that something in the vicinity of 90 % of the people who had anger management workshops and then were released eventually, 90 % came back into prison. So, maybe not, and yet, almost all of them were there because of anger. Anger was a driving motivation. Usually... anti -social behavior as a result of anger towards parents or towards the police or towards society or government or some institution, whatever. But anger drove almost all of the prisoners, was the motivation for their being there. [00:13:28]

And it's interesting, the recidivism rate, the return rate of prisoners after they had forgiveness workshops and been released, is something like 23%. It really works. To forgive, effectively forgive, and to live in forgiveness really takes care of the anger, and it allows you to live at peace with yourself, your family, your friends, with society. And you're now a free person. You're free because you've released the anger, but you're also free because you're out of jail, out of prison. [00:14:46]

Forgiveness is a decision that is an act of the will. So the first element in forgiveness is to, or in dealing with anger, is to forgive the other person. And this is a cognitive act. It's a mental decision to forgive. It involves the will. It's a volitional choice. I forgive you for what you did to me, or what I felt you did to me. It has to be a sincere decision. It's not just something that if you just say these words, things automatically become great. That's not the case. [00:15:26]

So a decision is no longer to condemn the other person and hold anger and resentment towards him, but to forgive is now to extend grace, kindness, and respect. It's a decision not to perpetuate the anger, but to extend to the other person acceptance and to treat them as a human being. We're going to talk, when we get into the servanthood material, we're going to talk about what it means to be a human being, what it means to have human dignity. [00:16:15]

And it means now that we have to respect the other person as a person who is an image -bearer of God, a person who therefore has dignity and value and worth as a person. And therefore, we extend to them kindness and goodness, because that's what nurtures their dignity and builds that dignity up. It also means that we have to forfeit judgment towards them. And instead, we offer pardon. And now, finally, it means we have to forfeit judgment. [00:16:48]

to let go of our anger our pain our resentment our desire for revenge it's a huge decision it's not an easy decision um usually forgiveness is a once for all act it was for god and so when it talks about forgiveness in the in the bible it's it's once for all however we have to revisit that decision often because the anger returns something triggers our memory and we get angry again we say oh i'm so angry at that person but now we say to ourselves but i've decided not to be angry i've decided to forgive and you rehearse that decision that you made when i was doing these workshops in africa and also in bosnia and kosovo and croatia we had a symbol is very important in many cultures it's very important in african culture i think here too if you see your churches you see symbol and these symbols represent reality things spiritual realities so in africa we would give them a piece of paper and they would write the who was the object of their anger and particularly in places like liberia and croatia they would they would have some terrible extremely horrible things that have happened to them some things that you could hardly talk about but they would write them down they had a chance to share them with others in a in a small group sometimes you'd hear them going you know and they were rehearsing something and some of the stories i hold i heard i i can't even tell you [00:17:31]

then when it came time to forgive the people who hurt them we gave them a match and they took that paper and they went over and there was a cross there and beneath the cross was a place where they could light the paper and burn it and drop it there in front of the cross it's a very solemn time [00:19:15]

It's a choice of the will, and we may have to return to it often. It doesn't mean that you're doing forgiveness poorly. It just means we're human beings, and it means that these things are very, very painful things that they are not going to go away quickly. So the first is a cognitive decision. The second has to do with the affective part, or the emotional part of who we are. Our emotions take the longest to heal. It's the hardest part of forgiveness because emotions touch the very deepest part of us, and it's that deep part of us is where the pain lingers and remains the longest. [00:20:22]

But I think that's wonderful when that happens. It's nice that when God forgives us, He takes our sins and trespasses and removes them from us as far as the east is from the west. He puts them in the deepest part of the sea where no one can find them. And He puts them in another place, literally, between His shoulder blades. It's the one place where you cannot ever see. You can't see your shoulder blades. So God does that for our sins. And in His pardon, He immediately offers to us love and embrace and care. And we are assured of His forgiveness, His eternal forgiveness. It's a wonderful thing God has done for us in forgiving us our sins and in the pain that we caused Him, the pain of the cross because of our sins, you see, a human life or God human life. [00:21:20]

So what it does not mean, what this forgiveness does not mean emotionally, it doesn't mean that we forget, that we forget that it ever happened. The human body isn't wired that way. But it does mean that we choose not to dwell on the negative events. We choose not to dwell on the painful experience. In Liberia, one fellow spoke up, there were 500 people in that conference, it was just huge. But one fellow spoke up in the group that I was with, and he said, we must forgive and forget. Another fellow spoke up and he says, I can forgive, but I cannot forget. [00:22:41]

And there was more silence. It was a very solemn, somber time. Another person spoke, and he didn't know it, but he was quoting the words of Martin Luther, the reformer. And he says, he said, and Africans, remember how we speak in Proverbs sometimes? He said, you can't keep the birds from flying over your head, but you can keep them from making a nest in your hair. You can't keep the memories out of your mind, but you don't have to dwell on them. Now that may be hard, but let me tell you how it helps me or what helps me in those situations. [00:23:31]

If I start singing a hymn or if I read something in the Bible or if I rehearse God's forgiveness of me and then Him calling me to do the same. Or sometimes if I get busy with a favorite project or a hobby or call a friend or maybe exercise, do some workout kinds of things. What happens is that when you have dwelled on this pain and anger and this resentment towards another person or towards a group of people, when that's been part of you for a long time, the wiring in your brain now is very thick and very heavy and it's very strong. And so the memories keep coming back because everything reminds you of that strong network in your brain about the anger and that event. [00:24:10]

Now what you have to have, what you need to happen then, or what, I'm sorry, what needs to happen then is that if you interrupt those thoughts, those negative thoughts, the thoughts of anger and revenge and the desire to get even somehow, when you interrupt that, eventually you interrupt it quickly and the brain cells that made that network so strong, they begin to fall away and that network now becomes weaker and weaker and weaker. And after a while, after a month or two months or three months, pretty soon you don't think of it but maybe once a day. After a year, maybe you only think of it once a week. It's when you interrupt those paths that reinforce the network, you interrupt those, that network actually gets weaker and pretty soon you have victory over it. [00:25:04]

So when that anger returns, when the emotional hurt surfaces again, you just remind yourself, I've forgiven that person and then you automatically do something that will take your mind away from it and pretty soon the thoughts will not return so quickly. So there's the cognitive part, the mind, which is the choice to forgive. There's the emotional part, which is the most deeply affected and it takes the longest to recover. But as we practice our decision to forgive and refuse to dwell on the negative thoughts, on the pain, it gets better. [00:25:54]

negative emotions, desire for revenge, etc. And then I think we move into a neutral zone where we no longer desire revenge. It would be nice if somebody did it, but we no longer desire revenge ourselves. But we can't do good towards them because it's just too much for us right now. The emotional pain is still so harsh. So we end up to neutral, but we stop. The first thing we have to do after we forgive is we have to stop the negative behaviors. And at that point, sometimes the best we can do is just to be neutral. Neither do good nor bad. Neither think good but not think bad. Just take a little time to heal. That seems to be what happens with most of us. [00:27:44]

And from there then, we move into small steps of kindness. In Croatia, I forget who it was, somebody had told a lie about a person. And as a result, the police came and took the house away from that family. The family who told the lie got the house. And it looks like they're going to keep it now, even after the war and everything. So this family had to forgive. They probably weren't going to get the house back, so they had to forgive. And they went into this neutral part, and then at a certain time, for some it might be several weeks, for some it might be several months. Then the woman who was kicked out of her house took some cookies over to the woman who was part of the lie and gave her some cookies. A small act of kindness. And the beginning of healing. Now, I don't know what happened after this. But then, so now, you begin the process of healing. [00:28:41]

Only when we are in community are we whole people. Only when we are in forgiving, healing, reconciling relationships can we become whole people. When we are alienated from our brothers and sisters in some way, we become fractured ourself. There's something missing. There's something that's not functional within ourselves. I think he was wise. [00:31:26]

Forgiveness is not blind to justice. So a group of prisoners forgive. You don't open their jail cells and say, yes, fine, be gone, everything will be, no, no. Justice still prevails. And sometimes compensation is required. I'm dealing with an organization and a family right now where it's gotten very sticky but at this point compensation seems to be one of the sticky points. But very often that has to be negotiated. So if the other couple who lied and took the house, if they in some way became convicted, they should have to compensate or give the house back if they wanted to make things right. [00:32:05]

Forgiveness is not reconciliation but it may lead to reconciliation if the conditions are right. Forgiveness is not an act of weakness or giving in. It's an act of enormous strength, enormous discipline, enormous courage. You don't forgive somebody who'd done something wrong if you're weak. You hold on to the anger if you're weak. If you're strong and courageous, you forgive. [00:32:58]

Because the next generation needs you and me to forgive. Because it is within our power and it is wise to reconcile with our enemies. It's what God did to us. We were His enemies. He chose to reconcile. Our own healing is transferable to others and to our children. And it promotes wholeness in our children and our children's children and their children. And in this part of the world, in my part of the world, we need this desperately. [00:33:43]