Do you struggle with forgiveness? We all probably do to some extent, or at least we have at some point in our lives. We can struggle with forgiveness in different ways. We can struggle to ask for forgiveness when we have wronged. We can struggle to offer forgiveness when we have been wronged. We can struggle to forgive ourselves for thoughts or actions that don’t even affect anyone but ourselves.
Our Multifaceted Struggle With Forgiveness
When I first think about “struggling with forgiveness” what comes to mind is the struggle I may have to forgive others who have hurt me. To hold on to pain inflicted by another is, sometimes, to hold on to a kind of power.
In one sense, to be aggrieved can feel like being in a power position, once the initial pain of wrongdoing washes over us. We may, at our worst, think, “Now that I’ve made clear he has hurt me, he will have to grovel before me and ask for forgiveness, and then the power dynamic in the relationship will swing toward me.”
Another reason it can be difficult to forgive isn’t so much because we want to hold it over someone else, but because we are really just having a hard time getting over how we have been hurt. Some hurts can take years or even longer to heal, and we don’t want to forgive until we feel like some kind of reparation or healing has happened—whether within ourselves or through relational work done with the person who has hurt us.
Of course it can also be difficult to be on the other side of the forgiveness equation. We can struggle to ask for forgiveness because to do so requires humility. It requires us to recognize that someone was hurt by something we said or did, and then come to terms with the need to ask for forgiveness of that person, even if our action wasn’t intended to harm. It requires us to be the one who could be perceived as “groveling” before a loved one or co-worker, admitting we’ve sinned against them and asking them to forgive us, the wrongdoer.
Some struggle more with offering forgiveness to others than asking for it when they are the ones who have done wrong. For others, it is the opposite. For many of us, our deepest struggle with forgiveness just depends on the situation and the nature of the pain.
Perhaps most difficult, for some of us, is the the prospect of forgiving ourselves. Have you ever done something that, regardless of whether or not it even hurt someone else, has been difficult for you to get over? Something that has made it hard for you to live with yourself? Maybe you have thought thoughts like this:
“How could you have said something so insensitive and tone-deaf?”
“Only terrible people think that way—how could you even let that thought enter your mind?”
I have definitely thought thoughts like this, probably more times than I can count. As I wrote last month, I struggle with serious bouts of self-criticism and have to preach the gospel to myself regularly just to fight feelings of self-loathing that can so easily worm their way into my mind.
Earlier this year I came across some wisdom that has stuck with me ever since I read it.
The Only God Who Forgives
This summer I finally read Tim Keller’s Center Church, and toward the beginning of that book he writes:
God is the only God who forgives — no other “god” will. If you cannot forgive yourself, it is because you have failed your true god — that is, whatever serves as your real righteousness — and it is holding you captive.
I join the chorus of voices with the likes of Augustine and Martin Luther who say that at the root of all sin is idolatry and disordered loves. All sin is, at its core, a violation of the first commandment—to not worship any gods other than the one, true God.
So, when we functionally worship ourselves and our disordered loves, we find ourselves spiraling in cycles of sin and shame because we grope around for forgiveness, expecting it from a god who cannot offer it.
The only God who forgives is the one, true God. No other god forgives. In truth, we can’t fully and finally forgive ourselves.
All we end up with is shame.
We are false gods who are not able to actually forgive ourselves. Only God can forgive. We can hold ourselves captive to our self-loathing, or we can find freedom in the true forgiveness of the one, true God.
