The Transformative Power of Forgiveness and Justice

Goodwill we are hurting people and we live in a hurting world we have received hurts probably deep ones and we've inflicted them too sometimes without knowing them that's natural there is this thing called forgiveness and it's miracle and you can be a part of that but you may not want to that's what I want to talk about today we're focusing in this part of the series and I hope that you'll be uh for this series listen to each one of them because they all build on each other we are on a journey towards forgiveness learning how to actually do it and uh the first step is to recall the hurt that you have experienced but as you do that it may strike you I don't want to forgive this person they don't deserve it and there are a lot of reasons not to forgive people are concerned well if we forgive won't that make us um inconsiderate towards people who are victims won't it make us less concerned about Injustice don't you have to be angry and passionate to make sure that Justice happens and might not forgiveness soften or blunt that edge so let's consider it because that's a very important issue. [00:21:26]

Simon weisenthal was a survivor of concentration camps who was a polish Jewish inmate during World War II in a Nazi concentration camp and towards the end of the war a nurse came and took him he had 89 relatives that were killed by the Nazis nurse came and took him to the bedside of a young SS Soldier German Nazi who had been involved in atrocities and uh he said he needed to find a Jewish person who would pronounce forgiveness over him before he died dying of his injuries he talked about uh putting a couple of hundred uh Jewish concentration camp victims in a house and then filling the house with gasoline and he and other soldiers threw grenades in to set the house on fire and then if anybody tried to escape jump out of a window they would shoot them and he talked about seeing a man with a little child and a woman that would have been the child's mother unbearable stuff to listen to and he got to the end of that and he and he said to Simon weisenthal uh I cannot bear to have this on my conscience as I am dying now I need to know that I can be forgiven and Simon weisenthal writes about this in uh a piece called the sunflower uh said he stood there for a very long time and then he walked out of the room without saying a word and afterward he wrote to a group of thinkers and artists and thought leaders and asked posed the question what would you do in that moment a lot of people wrote back and said um you know you were not in any position to pronounce forgiveness on behalf of other people that these brutalities were done for so it's kind of a different situation one novelist uh Cynthia ozek wrote and cited an ancient rinic proverb that if you Begin by being merciful to the cruel you will end up by being indifferent to the innocent let him die unshriven she wrote let him go to hell it's real important as we think about this that we reflect on what forgiveness is and what forgiveness is not so that we understand that it's quite different from condoning or excusing what is wrong actually many things are excusable but precisely to the extent that they are excusable they do not have to be forgiven um thank God that what is inexcusable does not have to be unforgivable but they are two different things. [00:82:52]

I was talking with somebody recently who was describing a person that was a Christian leader and was involved or was accused of being involved in misconduct and has been in kind of a timeout and the person was saying isn't it time that we just kind of forgive and it is very important here that we distinguished um forgiveness is quite different than in condoning condoning is to saywell the actions weren't that bad or they were pretty murky so let's rehabilitate this person let's put them back into um the old position that they used to be in to forgive is not that to you can only forgive an actual person for an actual wrongdoing to forgive is to say here's what this person did and here's why it was wrong now they may or may not be repentant about that they may or may not think that they require forgiven this um but forgiving means looking very honestly unblinkingly courageously at the wrong that was being done and naming it it does not minimize wrong another kind of false forgiving what might be called Soft forgiving that I can be tempted to is forgiveness that really flows out of fear and it's more kind of an appeasement where this is a strong person or a powerful person and I just don't want to go through the difficulties of naming the wrong that was done that forgiveness might require so I I'll just say that I forgive them as a way of getting out of having to actually deal with somebody Winston Churchill once said of an appeaser an appeaser is somebody who feeds a crocodile hoping the crocodile will eat him last um we might think about it in this way there is forgiveness and then you ask what's the alternative to forgiveness and the alternative is Vengeance vengeance is to carry malice ill will towards the one who is hurt me forgiveness involves replacing ill will with good will now Justice is a third category Justice is a desire passionate desire that uh right be done that honesty and fairness should win out in this situation and it's possible to forgive someone and be deeply devoted to Justice um if I am forgiven by someone when I have stolen them if I really want to be forgiven I will want to pay them back I will want to pay my debt to society there is no tension between forgiveness and Justice there is a great tension between forgiveness and Vengeance because in Vengeance I say I want to hold on to my right to hurt this person and so in forgiveness when we remember we remember the wrong that was done but I remember it in a different way and I encourage you now because we're actually we're not just learning about forgiveness we're we're becoming forgiving people you and I and I know I know I know it's really costly but I encourage you now to think back on someone who has hurt you and remember that hurt remember that offense and I want to talk about what L smes writes in his book on forgiveness as Redemptive remembering and our great teachers in this are the people of Israel they had suffered a great deal so now Moses is speaking to them and you and me in our forgiveness instruction manual this is in Deuteronomy 4:9 only be careful he writes and watch yourselves closely literally says watch your souls your nees closely so that you do not forget the things your eyes have seen or let them fade from your heart as long as you live teach them to your children and to their children after them for getting is not forgiving is not simply forgetting what happened as though it did not matter forgetting can be actually quite a dangerous thing he goes on to say this in Deuteronomy 5:12 um observe the sabbath day by keeping it holy as the Lord your God commanded you six days labor do your work seventh days of Sabbath on it you shall not work neither you nor son or daughter nor male or female nor your Ox not even the donkey gets the Sabbath off nor any of your animals nor any Foreigner res iding in your towns so that your male and female servants May rest as you do remember that you were slaves in Egypt remember that you were slaves in Egypt only now this is Redemptive remembering it's not remember how rotten those Egyptians were remember how much you f hated the Pharaoh remember what miserable villainous characters they were remember that you were slaves in Egypt and that the Lord your God brought you out of there with a Mighty outstretched hand God brought good out of a situation that was terrible remember but remember redemptively and then this wonderful statement later on in Deuteronomy 23:7 Moses like in case you didn't get this clearly do not despise an Egyptian I bet they didn't like hearing that too much do not despise an Egyptian because you resided as foreigners in their country well yeah foreign slaves and of course in the ancient world slavery was ubiquitous and defeated peoples generally were slaves quite different than American racial slavery but what Moses writes about here is do not despise An Egyptian in other words do not let unforgiveness fester in your spirit don't nurse that toxic cocktail of um resentment and hostility and hatred and judgmentalism and bitter let yourself ruminate over it no no no don't do that so the question today is who is your Egyptian who is somebody in your life that's uh would be easy for you to despise and it might be somebody that you despise because of their political views because they're so wrong and of course you're so right or somebody on the religious front and we see every day folks writing on all kinds of issues where if you don't believe what I do if you don't stand I stand there's a kind of contempt that comes through real quickly in the name of God very likely there's somebody in your family who hurt you somewhere along the line and um you're holding on struggling with that could be somebody at work so your word today do not despise an Egyptian remember remember remember recall the her bring it to mind but no longer uh as an opportunity to rehearse your victimhood and superiority remember God was there remember that other person Bears the image of God into someone for whom Jesus died and there is a possibility in my life and yours now that is not being the victim of ill will and Malice every day there is the creative possibility of forgiveness with Jesus which does not undermine but actually contributes to Justice in our world that's part of the miracle of forgiveness forgive us our debts as we. 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