Excerpt: Forgiveness

For many years, my younger brother, now one of my favorite people, was my nemesis.  No matter how our battles started—and they were physical and fierce—when it came time for the parental judgment call, I was invariably found to be at fault.  This, I thought, was grossly unfair.  No matter that I was four years older.  From my perspective, he was the privileged male child, exempt from scullery duty and paid—paid!—to mow the lawn, a job I passionately, irrationally coveted.  Plus, he was a tease, a conniving little beast who knew every weak and rotted plank in my character and purposely slammed his high-top Keds (I was jealous of them, too) down hard whenever he saw the opportunity.  I blamed him for my having to serve time in the corner while the happy shrieks of the neighborhood kids drifted through the window like the life that was passing me by . . . . 

However, one rainy afternoon all this changed. We kids were restless and bored and the situation was degenerating rapidly.  I could see that look in his eye; he was plotting, I was sure of it, and soon full-blown teasing would erupt.  And then I would hit him, and I would be in the corner again, and he would spend the rest of his day darting smirkily past me in my invisible cell.  But somehow, our sister saved us; she plopped a record on the turntable and started to hum and spin. Though neither my brother nor I can put a finger on what happened next—no words were exchanged, or at least none that we can remember—we suddenly found ourselves locked in one another’s arms, slow dancing to “String of Pearls.”  I was twelve, he was eight, and not since he was a baby in his bassinet (my baby, I’d thought of him then) had I adored him so honestly and purely: so protectively.   

In a twinkling, we’d been released from mutual hostility, from blaming and recrimination, from smoldering jealousy and wishing ill upon the other.  What was left after the sudden vaporization of habitual negativity was nothing short of miraculous: a delicate, courteous loving-kindness toward one another that—despite a few setbacks when we were in our teens—has characterized our relationship ever since. 

What we two had experienced, all unsuspecting, was grace.  Though we were far too young to analyze what had gone wrong between us or who was to blame for it, and though we were still too immature to offer an apology to one another, deep inside we yearned for peace.  That honest longing was all it took; God filled in the gaps for us, the gaps we were too young to negotiate on our own.  Only now do I understand what a remarkable gift that sudden, unexpected reconciliation represented.  Most of the time, forgiveness is not this unthinking or instantaneous.  Instead, it is more often a complex, painful process, fraught as any novel with disappointments and reversals.  “Forgiveness is the final form of love,” says theologian Reinhold Niebuhr, but lest we mistakenly assume that because we love, we are natural-born forgivers, Gandhi adds this caution: “The weak can never forgive.  Forgiveness is an attribute of the strong.” 

Why is forgiving such a challenge?  From whichever perspective we approach it—whether we are trying to forgive someone who has hurt us, or are in dire need of forgiveness ourselves—when we enter into the process, we find ourselves laid bare.  The intense searchlight of mercy invades our every hiding place.  We cannot go through being stripped of false dignity and self-justifying excuses without being changed.  Transformation is unavoidable, for our blind eyes have been opened and now we see. 

Table of Contents

Introduction

Part I Before We Can Forgive

• One Forgiveness and the Problem of Evil
• Two Forgiveness and the Problem of Justice

Part II Preparing Ourselves to Forgive

• Three The Evil I Do Not Wish to Do
• Four Telling the Difference Between a Real Hurt and a Wounded Ego
• Five Disciplines as Preparation for Becoming a Forgiving Person
• Six False Forgiveness

Part III Forgiving

• Seven Forgiving Those We Do Not Choose (Parents)
• Eight Forgiving Those We Do Choose (Marriage Partners)
• Nine Forgiving in Community

Part IV Being Forgiven

• Ten When We Are at Fault
• Eleven From Wounded to Healed

Conclusion

• The Unforgiving World Vs. The Kingdom of God

Acknowledgements

Notes