Forgiveness

Forgiveness to most people means excusing the offense done against them and attempting to stuff or deny the internal pain they suffer. Inherently they realize there is something wrong with this but they sometimes try to force themselves to stuff the pain and push the memory out of their mind and pretend outwardly that everything must be OK because it is a religious duty to do so. This kind of forgiveness is driven by fear – fear of God not forgiving us if we don't forgive, fear of not looking religious to those around us, fear of condemnation even from our own conscience. But running away, hiding, pretending and fear do not heal. It only masks the deep reservoir of pain, bitterness and desire for revenge seething at our deepest level. But even that has to be hidden and denied for fear of condemnation.

What we really desire is for the offender to suffer at least the same pain we have suffered, but preferably much more. We want sweet revenge. We want to even the score and then some. And we think the only way to assuage our pain is to somehow inflict the pain back onto the offender, or at the least hope to see them suffer deeply from some other source while we gloat over their pain. This emotional belief has driven our belief about the nature of hell and our desire to view God sharing our emotions. We want God to feel hatred and vengeful like we do so we can be justified in our anger. If it's OK for God to punish in anger then we feel it's OK for us to indulge in it since we are in His image. But in fact – we are only creating Him in our image – and the image of Satan.

True forgiveness means acknowledging our pain, embracing it, exploring it, not hiding from it, not stuffing it. It means recognizing the source of the pain and who offended us and how much, but then choosing to take ownership of it instead of blaming. Blame assigns ownership of our pain to the offender and leaves the key for our freedom in their hand. But even if they try, they can't use the key to set us free. Only we can use the key to walk out of our prison. Facing and owning the pain and rejecting the false hope through blame and revenge releases the other person in our mind and allows God to heal the pain and truly set us free.