Is Forgiveness a Duty?

Is forgiveness a duty? Is it the case that if we don’t forgive others, then God won’t forgive us? Do we have a responsibility to hand God’s forgiveness of us on to others? And are we obliged to forgive others so we can break the cycle of revenge? That's duty, and it has its place. But the motivation for forgiveness is love, not duty. 

   

But what is the alternative to dutifully 'forgiving' someone if we can't really forgive them? Well, if we are not able to forgive the alternative is not to tell ourselves that we should forgive others. The alternative is an act of will not to seek revenge against that person, and to guard against subtle acts of retaliation. There is a level of authenticity in this kind of non-aggression. We are not trying to make out everything is fine. And it doesn’t extend the harm that has already occurred. And then we can do the spiritual disciplines that I outlined previously. (Here). Maybe, one day, we will forgive the other party.

This question is similar to helping others out of a sense of guilt. The motivation for forgiving others or helping others matters. St Paul says we can do all sorts of incredible feats of self-sacrifice, but without love, nothing is gained. (1Cor 13:1-3) Acting out of guilt is really about us. Helping others out of guilt is then really about us, not the ones we help. And the 'help' we offer is very easily skewed or distorted when it is offered for our benefit.  Moreover, guilt is too closely related to self-disgust to take us very far. And guilt doesn’t build a future but is stuck in the past. 

And responding to the needs of others out of guilt will bring unintended consequences. For example, let’s say someone is feeling guilty about the blessings in their life so they decide to be ‘generous’ in money/time/goods toward those they perceive to be less fortunate. And isn’t it handy that the recipient of the largesse then comes to depend on the ‘generosity’ of the giver! I say 'fortunate' because then the feelings of guilt can be easily assuaged. Almost like a vending machine. Whole industries of charity are built on evoking this ‘generosity’. 

 In the same way, forgiving someone wallowing in guilt won’t relieve their guilt but more likely feed it. The person feeling guilty feels a little better after being forgiven, encouraging them to seek forgiveness over and over. A kind of moral addiction if you like, and Christianity calls such addiction salvation by works. (Or these days we might call it virtue signalling.) And the moral addiction easily becomes a moralistic addiction seeking out other sinners to denounce. We have a plague of this at the moment in western societies. 

 But to return to the original question: do we have a duty to forgive others? Duty ultimately skews relationships. It is good to remember that. We might think that we should at least mouth forgiveness for the benefit of the person seeking forgiveness. Maybe, but inauthenticity on our part won’t get them very far. Remember, a genuinely remorseful person won’t necessarily require us to forgive them. That's because they won't be seeking forgiveness for their sake but to heal a relationship as best as can be done. So they will let us have our feelings and our work to do rather than require us to forgive them. And genuine remorse means the person has already done some of the work themselves about their actions, who they are, and the future. 

Contrast this with the person who needily seeks forgiveness. They will need more than a show on our part. They could come to church and authentically open themselves to the One who has already forgiven them so as to heal and lead them beyond their neediness.

Some Biblical Texts on Forgiveness

This Sunday we are gathering to discuss forgiveness, and in preparation, I have distributed the following as a bit of a guide to forgiveness in the Bible. This isn't everything there is to say. But just doing this, compiling it, was an overwhelming experience. Sometimes we have a tendency to focus on bits of scripture which might be of interest but miss the overwhelming themes. So here goes:

 The New Testament uses a variety of images to express the unique event and consequences of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. Words like justification, rescue, freedom, healing, ransom, reconciliation, adoption, peace, sanctification, and forgiveness. (And there are still more.) Forgiveness is a keyword from everyday experience that is used as a lens to understand what God has accomplished for us in Christ. Here are some passages from the (Old and) New Testament that speak of forgiveness. There are more! 

 Genesis 33:1-4 Esau forgives Jacob 

Genesis 45:1-8 Jacob forgives his brothers 

Jeremiah 31:31-34. The prophet in this passage looks to a New Covenant that stands as both a renewal of the Old Covenant and stands in contrast to it. The New Covenant will bring a new intimacy with God and God’s ways, for no longer will people have to get the law from a stone tablet but it will be written directly on the human heart. They would know God’s ways by heart and their sins will be forgiven. (Jesus claims the new Covenant is enacted in his blood, see Mark 14:22-25) See also Ezekiel 36:22-28. 

 Ezekiel envisages God washing clean the people of God and providing a new heart of flesh rather than their old hearts of stone. With new hearts and a new spirit within them, they will be able to follow God’s commands. (36:25-27) And they will, finally and truly, be God’s people and God will be their God. (36:28) And notice that God does this not because the people deserve it, but it is an act of grace, because of God’s name, that is, who God is. (Compare with 1John 2:12) 

 Matthew 6:7-15 Lord’s Prayer and forgiveness 

Matthew 18:21-22 (See Genesis 4:23-24) vengeance and forgiveness 

Matthew 18:23-35 a huge debt forgiven compared to the miserly slave

 Mark 2:3-12 What is easier to say? 

Mark 11:25-26 when you pray, forgive … 

Luke 6:37-38 forgive and you will be forgiven 

Lk 7:36-50 Which of them will love him more? … hence she has shown great love 

Luke 15:11-32 the forgiving father 

Luke 24:44-49 proclaim repentance and forgiveness of sins (see also Acts 5:30-32; 10:37-43; 13:38-39) 

John 20:19-23. Receive the Holy Spirit … 

Acts 7:60 Stephen forgives his murderers (see also Luke 23:34) 

2Corinthians 2:5-11 forgive and console him …anyone you forgive I forgive 

Ephesians 1:3-14 with a smorgasboard of images for God’s love for us in Christ. 

Ephesians 4:29-5:2 

Colossians 2:14 

Colossians 3:12-13 

Philemon 1:17-21 the debt he owes you, add to my account 

Hebrews 10:11-18 quoting Jeremiah 31 

James 5:13-16 

1John 1:8-2:2

Further Thoughts on Hypocrisy (Part 1)

 Hypocrisy is such a nasty word. Its root is from Greek for an actor with a mask in a performance, a critic/interpreter underneath (the mask). That is, what you see is not the real person. 

The usual way of thinking of hypocrisy is to picture someone who acts and speaks in a way that does not reflect who they really are, and they wear this 'mask' to dupe those around them. Undoubtedly, this does happen, but it is not the only problem. Most of us don't want to be knowingly false to ourselves. Think of someone who has lost the fire in the belly for their 'passion' (what a terribly overused word these days) and no longer believes in it, and yet still must maintain the talk and the walk. Hypocrisy, I suppose, but most people get hollowed out and unhappy becasue they know they are play acting. They move on and discard the mask.

What is more common is the hypocrisy that is not directed to the outside world, but inwardly, to the hypocrite themselves. The hypocrisy is more likely unknown to the alleged hypocrite, at least consciously. The more common hypocrisy is the attempt to convince ourselves that we aren't who we really think we are.  We put on a mask for ourselves, desperate to convince ourselves. Forget the idea that we are trying to dupe others, hypocrisy is primarily about self-deception. Of course, the self-deception is strengthened if our hypocrisy convinces others as well. This is one reason why trying to be 'good' is a trap. ('Only God is good' says Jesus, see here.) Wanting to be good can easily become wanting to be good (or whatever the deception) because I suspect that I might be, or could be, bad etc. That's hypocrisy. And it is a path that leads away from our full humanity. No wonder Jesus didn't like it much. (See here.)

A Longer Reflection on Forgiveness

 

Forgiveness is important,  as is its lack. But before we talk about forgiveness there are useful spiritual disciplines to mention first. 

So, let us say that we believe/feel we have been wronged. Perhaps we are angry. Here is a discipline that, under some but not all circumstances, may help as we head to forgiveness (or not), and grow into the full stature of Christ.

1. So, who is the person who has done this? I mean really, who are they? Questions to ask: I wonder how they have come to be this person? What have they been through, how have they grown past the difficulties of their life, whether these difficulties are self-inflicted or inherited? Continue with these and other explorations about the person and the incident(s), and what has led to this alienation between you that you are experiencing. Call this increasing our sympathy or empathy for the one you believe has wronged you.

2. How about me? Where am I in all of this? Think about the lead up to 'the incident(s)'. What can I learn about myself? Am I ready to 'die' to whatever has brought me to be so angry or offended? (E.g. pride, self-importance, or perhaps my anger reveals a part of me that I am actually uncomfortable with, a discomfort that has led to my angry reaction and feelings.) This is not a call to attack oneself, but rather, an invitation to self-understanding, or you could call it sympathy for our own particularity as human beings.

I find that this discipline leads to insight about myself and others, and can let me give up some of what is driving my alienation from the other person. Sometimes, because of this discipline, I can forget and move on. 

Not all feelings, not all actions, not every alienation from someone, will yield to the above discipline. Sometimes there is a remainder: I understand something of why they did this, and yet ...

 Indeed, plenty of human history will never and should never yield to the above discipline. No matter how much we understand what lays behind or led up to the incident(s), there is no simple forgetting, no easy moving on as though it 'doesn't matter'. (The discipline above can lead us, in some situations, to say exactly that, "It doesn't matter." And this can be real and genuine. To say "It doesn't matter" is to say I've grown, and it - the incident, action, and the alienation I felt - doesn't matter like it did formerly.)

But when there is a remainder, or when understanding, sympathy, empathy, do not cover the sin, we have entered the realm of forgiveness.

The first thing to say about forgiveness must be its asymmetry. Forgiveness is not deserved, it is not earned, it is not a reciprocal coming down off our mutual high-horses and meeting somewhere in the middle. It is full of grace, if you like. 

Forgiveness costs us. We venture into alienation, and bringing reconciliation where there is human alienation is neither easy nor cheap. Grace is always costly.

Jesus is, if you like, God's spiritual discipline as outlined above. In Jesus God becomes one of us, one with the human condition. God knows human sin (in need of forgiveness) from the inside, as a victim of it, to the point of betrayal, desertion, torture and execution. God knows us and our sin. God understands us and sin. But the Incarnation (God becoming human in Jesus), death, and resurrection of Jesus are more than (to use my metaphor above) a spiritual discipline. In Jesus God overcomes the alienation of sin. This is God and God's way: God becoming what is not God (in this case sin, godforsakenness, and alienation, see 2Corinthians 5:21 and Mark 15:34) and in this complete embrace of what is not divine bringing reconciliation with what was formerly alienated (us). 

And then there is the resurrection. Of course, we should not separate the two, cross and resurrection. The forgiveness that is brought about through God's embrace of godforsakenness (see Mark 15:34) is the resurrected Jesus. The forgiving victim of sin offers forgiveness and sends his disciples out to proclaim repentance and the forgiveness of sins.

There is freedom in this. God's freedom in embracing human sin, and in this freedom carrying our freedom (misused in sin) so that we can grow into our true freedom as children of God.

And there is grace in all this. Undeserved forgiveness (there is no other kind) that is utterly asymmetrical. Forgiveness is always ahead of us; in Christ forgiveness never catches up to us, but we catch up to forgiveness. That is, even though we seek forgiveness through repentance, and hear the word of grace and absolution after, it is forgiveness that arrived first at that place, and we were drawn to it.

Freedom

 After the Western ideal of unlimited freedom, after the Marxist concept of freedom as acceptance of the yoke of necessity—here is the true Christian definition of freedom. Freedom is self-restriction! Restriction of the self for the sake of others! (Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn)

Jonah, Resentment, Idolatry

There is a lot to say about the book of Jonah. After all, people write good commentaries on the book even though it is only a few pages long. The book begins with Jonah fleeing from God because God wants him to go to Nineveh and warn the city of impending destruction. He eventually goes to Nineveh after a short sojourn in the belly of the great fish, and calls the people to repentance. He doesn't try too hard. (See 3:3-4) But it works; the people repent, much to the chagrin of Jonah.  After the people of Nineveh repent and God relents from destroying the city, Jonah is displeased. He complains to God,

Is not this what I said while I was still in my own country? That is why I fled to Tarshish at the beginning; for I knew that you are a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love, and ready to relent from punishing." (4:2)

It's tough when you are the last one to repent. It's a bit lonely I suppose. The Ninevites repent, and even God relents, that is, changes God's mind, which is a kind of repentance. But Jonah can't relent in his judgmentalism. And he is angry.  So God tries to show him why God has relented. God brings a little bush up and then has it die. (4:6-8) Jonah is upset again, this time about the bush. And God says, in a way similar when Jonah was angry about Nineveh's escape from destruction, "Is it right for you to be angry about the bush?" (4:9, cf 4:4)

Idolatry is always hard to give up. That's why the 'idol' (see here) became an idol in the first place. Jonah has a set idea of God fuelled by his judgmentalism, anger, self-righteousness or similar. And not even God's enacted parable with the bush and explanation following, can change him. Well, actually, we don't know. The story ends without us knowing Jonah's response to God's explanation of God's mercy to the Ninevites. The book closes open-ended, functioning as an invitation to us to repent of hardness of heart, directed at others (and by implication ourselves). 

Idolatry

Whatever we adopt and assert as the ultimate controlling factor in our lives is our god. We do not need to love it and worship it. We can even fear it or hate it. But in our religion we try to control it. (KarlBarthfor Dummies)