My Part in the Covenant

I've been thinking about covenant the past couple days and some of the things I have learned about how covenants operate. One of the most important aspects of covenant is the unconditionalness of how they are observed. Unlike the contracts that we are so used to thinking about, covenants obligate the participates irregardless of the performance of the other party. The ones who have entered into covenant relationship are bound by their word and their very life to honor the terms of the covenant no matter what the disposition of the other party is or becomes. They promise to keep their obligations within the covenant even if the other party ignores or even turns hostile toward them. For a covenant is not based on mutual performance but on personal integrity completely separate from anyone else's performance or integrity.

Given this context it is extremely reassuring to study and understand the terms of the covenant that God has with His children, especially those who intentionally enter into the covenant with Him themselves. This gives us the assurance that we so desperately crave that our God will never renege on any of His promises to us no matter how much we think we deserve or fail to deserve His blessings. This does not mean that there are no conditions to some of the things He has promised us, but particularly the attitude and desires of God's heart toward us are never affected by our performance or lack thereof.

There is such a thing as removing ourselves from the covenant relationship that God has with us, but the results of breaking a covenant is always death. And if I think about it in the big picture that only makes sense, for to cut off relationship with the only Source of life in the universe can only result in the loss of life. But that is still not God's desire for us but will only happen because He respects our freedom and desires un-coerced love above all things.

Because of the nature of covenant relationships I can rest in confidence that God will always be working for my best good no matter what circumstances seem to indicate. I can know, in spite of apparent contrary “evidence”, that God is working everything out for my best good and for His glory in all things pertaining to my life. God has committed Himself to me in a covenant-type relationship not based on the whimsical nature of contract law based on performance. This means that even when I make mistakes or loose my head at times and embarrass or dishonor Him before others, He is still committed to my restoration and transformation as long as I allow Him to draw me back into His more perfect will.

These are all concepts that my mind and heart are still trying to grasp and internalize. It is a wonderful and refreshing truth that gives far more stability to my spiritual life than the kind of conditional love in religion that I lived for much of my life. But there is another side to this covenant that has been coming to my attention the last couple of days that is just as important to think about – but not using the contract-type thinking that is so easy to sneak into our logic.

Because I am in covenant relationship with my Creator and Redeemer that holds Him bound to me with obligations not tied to my performance, the very same principles of covenant also apply to me. So what does that implicate?

I am also bound to adopt an attitude of trust in my covenant partner irregardless of what His assumed performance seems to be in any particular moment or day. Because participating in a covenant is NEVER predicated on performance or contract, I must learn to never base my opinion about God or how He feels about me by the assumptions that I may draw from the circumstances I find myself in. I have noticed that this is one of the greatest problems that we humans have to deal with. Billions of people form their opinions about God based on what is going on in their life or what is happening around them instead of believing and trusting in what God Himself says about His attitude toward us.

Our picture of God is formed by how our parents treated us, our bosses, our political leaders and all others who exercise authority over us. We base our opinions about God on how well off we are financially or how our emotions feel when we participate in religious activities or just living our life. We form opinions about God and judge Him based on how often and accurately He jumps to meet our demands in prayer with little latitude for His superior view of life and our real needs. But in doing these things we are imposing our own cravings and selfish desires into our picture of God and are really trying to form Him in our own image.

So when God does not perform the way we want Him to we react in ways that violate the covenant. We sulk and think that God doesn't care about us very much or we think He is mad at us. Or we think that when things seem to be going well – according to our measurements of good – that we must be doing the right things because somehow we deserve the “blessings” that we are enjoying. Or we may even put a more pious front on it and take pride in our humility and say all the right religious words and immerse ourselves in religious activities and think that we are now ready to be saved in heaven. But what does this all have to do with our covenant with God?

It is starting to become a little more clear to me that my part in this covenant has a lot more to do with choosing to trust in the goodness of God Himself irregardless of circumstances than it has to do with my spiritual or religious performances in the external realm. When I indulge in doubt about His good intentions toward me and refuse to let go of the lies about God that have so long infected my thinking, I am compromising and abusing the covenant relationship that I have with my Creator. And when I try to trust to any degree on anything that I do as a reason for God to love me and save me from sin, then I am trying to have a contract relationship with God instead of trusting in a covenant relationship with Him.

It is true that certain blessings are based on coming into line with certain conditions so that we can enjoy the benefits of those blessings. But this has nothing whatsoever to do with the character of God and His feelings toward us. God is constant in His attitude and character and is always perfect love, compassion, mercy and justice. And while I may need to comply with certain conditions to enjoy certain blessings promised within this relationship just as a child must exhibit certain levels of maturity to be trusted with certain privileges, my position in the family of God and God's feelings and attitudes toward me are not based on the performance of those conditions.

What I am realizing is that I need to more aggressively challenge my feelings of distrust or my fears of condemnation in my relationship to God. Those things are symptoms of a contract mentality and immaturity, and they will always undermine my obligations to keep my part of the covenant. For just as God has committed Himself unconditionally to being real and taking care of me with love and to protect my heart and soul, I too am obligated to unconditionally trust Him and refuse to believe any longer the lies about Him that Satan has so filled the world with and that has terribly distorted my mental pictures of Him.

I give Satan advantage over me when I base my opinions about God on the circumstances in my life. For when I do that then all Satan has to do to keep me believing lies about God is to keep changing my circumstances, either for evil or for good. He can keep my perception of God on puppet strings manipulated by demons that can make Him look good or bad depending on how I feel at the moment. This keeps me believing that God is somewhat arbitrary or fickle, another popular lie that most of us still believe. This is why it is so important to begin accepting God's word about Himself in place of my circumstances as the basis to form my opinions of His feelings about me.

So what I am sensing is my own need to more consistently perceive God based most importantly on His objective revelations about Himself from His word and interpreted to my heart by His Spirit. Then I need to begin to view all of my circumstances in the light of that Word as well as denying my flesh's doubts about His intentions toward me. I have the obligation under the covenant to challenge every assumption that puts God in a negative light in my heart and seek for more consistent and positive perceptions of God in what is happening to me. I must start to focus more on the wonders of creation and foster appreciation for the blessings I do enjoy instead of dwelling on the pain and suffering that may be in my life at any point in time.

This does not mean that I am to become fake and deny that I have suffering or questions. It means that I choose to believe that God is not afraid of my questions and that I will not base my opinions about Him on the fickleness of circumstances in my life. I hate it when people misjudge me based on what they believe about circumstances without allowing me to define my real feelings for them. And the same applies to my relationship with God. I must allow Him the freedom to interpret circumstances based on the higher truth of His real character and not allow circumstances to define my beliefs about Him.

Musings on Resistance

I am starting to become more aware of the subtle ways in which resistance resides in my spirit and heart. I am sure there are many more ways than what I am aware of currently, but just the fact that I am capable of being more aware of them personally seems to be progress right now. I am quite certain also, that there are those around me who would be more than happy to point out what they think I have problems with in this arena. But that does not have the same usefulness for my heart for it usually tends to cause my fears and deceptions to run for hiding places instead of coming out into the light. Of course, the same principle applies to me trying to expose other people's issues in my desires to fix them. I am slowly learning to give more room for the Spirit to do what He does best instead of trying to play God in other people's lives. I have enough to cooperate with what He is trying to do inside of me.

In fact, it is starting to become more clear that anytime I am feeling tension inside of me that there is likely some sort of resistance going on. It may not be nearly so easy to correctly identify the true source or reason for that resistance, but I am getting much closer to being able to do so simply by acknowledging that resistance is present. I also notice that if I can observe this going on internally without having a sense of condemnation and guilt associated with it, then it is much easier to get closer to the real source without it hiding under some sort of camouflage.

One reason that it may have been so much more difficult in the past is because resistance has often taken on other labels and thus has been able to hide from detection. Another obvious reason is that to be honest about my feelings and fears has often invited unwanted analysis and “fixes” from others who thought it their job to point out my faults and then somehow shame or condemn me into being a better person. For some reason this approach has never had the intended effect that people expected it to have in me if they thought they could make me a better person by such methods. Again, I am painfully aware that this approach has been my own record with many of my loved ones and I deeply regret this habit.

I guess my left brain is getting its curiosity activated by wanting to know the different kinds and reasons for the resistance going on inside. And that may indeed be useful in a way, for I notice that when something makes more sense that my mind is more likely to embrace and believe it. And believing the truth is always a good thing, though intellectual belief cannot replace the more important functions of embracing relationships with the heart. This is where the left and right brain need to work in tandem to have a truly balanced life as God designed for us to experience. At least that is my observation that comes from what I have been learning.

I wonder how much effect it would have on my growth and awareness if I could record the sources and reasons for resistance without judging them or trying to immediately draw conclusions from them? The last couple days as I just became more aware of this condition inside of me I was able to sometimes identify likely causes for the resistance that I was feeling inside. It felt refreshing actually. It felt in a sense liberating to finally be able to perceive the truth of reality instead of chasing or running from shadows of guilt and threats of condemnation. Just to be able to be honest about what I am feeling or desiring without fear of being attacked or shamed for it is like a breath of fresh air.

This is not to imply that the causes for my resistance are something to hang onto or to justify. Just because I can acknowledge something as existing and present in my life does not mean that it should or should not be there. But being able to identity what is current and what is, without immediately heaping shame or guilt upon it allows me much more access to observing what it really is without chasing it into hiding from my own consciousness. I realize that this may sound absurd to many people who have done this all their life already. But for me it is coming out of a closet that I was forced into for much of my life.

This is only a small step in a progression toward the ultimate experience of living in the fullness of reality that is only found in proper, life-receiving relationship with my Creator and source of all life. But God leads me from where I am to start with and the first step is to become of aware of what is, as well as some notion of where I am headed. For to live in denial of what my real condition is – which is where most of us often spend our time – I make myself incapable of escaping the slavery of sin that is contingent on my continued state of deception. In reality, the only power that sin has over anyone is the degree to which they continue to remain deceived about true reality.

I am becoming more and more certain that true reality involves far more heart “knowledge” than it does factual knowledge. That is the big difference between religion and spirituality in my opinion. Religion focuses more on either head knowledge as the ultimately important, or on emotional feelings disconnected from objective truth as found in the Word of God. Both paths involve self-deception and avoidance of anything that will expose problems with their preferences. But true spirituality involves living with reference to the spirit more than living for factual truth or emotional fixes. Jesus stated very clearly that God is a spirit and those who worship Him must do so in spirit and in truth. I think the real truth of that statement still eludes most of us to a very great degree.

I think I will be thinking about this more during the coming days. If I have opportunity I might try to jot down on a paper or pad the observations that I am able to detect about my deeper sources that cause resistance in my heart and mind. I am realizing that there are many more than I previously thought, but it is also exciting in a way to finally be able to expose many of them so that the light of truth from the Spirit of God can begin to resolve and dissolve many of them and replace them with... well, whatever it is that needs to replace them. Since He is the Spirit of Truth then He is best positioned to reveal to my heart the missing ingredients that I need to thrive and enjoy life and better relationships.

Unconditional Repentance

In the last two times I have looked into the issue of forgiveness, I explored what it really means or doesn't mean and the issue of whether or not it must be earned or is unconditional. Now I would like to go a little farther and look at the other side of forgiveness. Why is it necessary for me when I am an offending party to seek forgiveness of one whom I may have hurt or offended. Especially given that true forgiveness is asking a person to take upon themselves the full ownership and responsibility for the pain I have caused them, it seems like an affront or almost absurd for me to ask them to do such a thing for me.

While it is necessary for an offended person to take responsibility for their own pain in order to ever become truly free from it, what is going on in the heart of the offender, the “sinner” who has committed an offense that may have caused irreparable damage to the heart of another?

I can remember as a child growing up being forced to say I was sorry to someone whom I had hurt in some way. Sometimes the “authority” insisted that I also ask for their forgiveness as well. In order to avoid the results of resistance to obvious duress I usually complied with the demands but seldom had any significant sincerity involved. I suspect that most, if not all forced “repentance” routines, do not help anyone experience true repentance or effect the healing results of true forgiveness. These are forced exercises to make externals to appear to accomplish what we want but often end up doing the very opposite. They are really little more than trainings for hypocrisy for everyone involved. The offended party receives little healing or comfort from the forced confession of the offender and the offender learns to comply to demands under duress with little or no change at the heart level.

This scenario may be spruced up and the details refined as we grow older but the main idea of this exercise too often carries over with many of us into adult life. It permeates our whole judicial system, is reflected in the ways we report on events in the world around us in the media and has become the norm for what we look for in public conflict resolution. We may sometimes find people who try to take it to a deeper level but generally the focus is on making things look good on the surface so we can move on with life and pretend that everything is resolved.

Given this culture in our society, what are the important things that I need to know about forgiveness from the offending side of the equation in light of the real truth about forgiveness? I can begin to understand the need for me to forgive others so that I can become free in my own heart, but what are the issues going on for the person who has offended or sinned against others?

One thing I need to note before going any farther is that the person I have offended does not have to wait until I am ready to ask for forgiveness in order to forgive. God has forgiven us long before we even existed – it is never conditional on our desire for it. But on the other hand it certainly can make it easier and an encouragement for them to forgive if the one who offended them comes in a spirit of true humility and remorse asking for their forgiveness. But again, if we apply the new insights into forgiveness to this situation it takes on quite a different aspect.

What is becoming clear is that each person is primarily responsible for their own issues and the condition of their own spirit. But in addition we are also responsible for how we treat others because that is the influence that we are accountable for. So if I have offended someone, even though their own freedom from pain is dependent on their own choices, I am responsible to be honest about how I have contributed to the damage I have caused in another heart. Of course that damage is not always clear depending from what angle a person is looking at the situation, but we must learn to be much more honest about our own faults and sins and the effect that our choices or actions have on others.

Repentance and forgiveness are very closely linked. In a sense they may be just two sides of the same door. To be genuine, forgiveness needs to be unconditional and repentance too, to be effective needs to be unconditional. But true repentance and a real desire for forgiveness can only come about in response to the promptings of the Holy Spirit in the heart that motivates and empowers us to move in that direction. We may be able to generate all sorts of false illusions or feelings that pass off as repentance or reconciliation, but the true versions of these necessary elements of salvation can only be experienced in response to the enabling of the Spirit of the One who created us. To try any other method is to follow a path that is both artificial and external in nature and will leave us with less than effective or satisfactory results.

Quite likely the core reason that I commit an offense in the first place is because of unresolved issues deep in my own heart. Most, if not all sin is an outgrowth of false beliefs and residual effects of internal damage to our spirit that needs to be faced and resolved at the heart level. When I react from my pain by sinning against someone else's heart, I am simply passing on to others the results of pain that I have not dealt with myself and causing more roots to potentially spring up in other lives to be passed on to yet others if not checked by the Spirit of grace.

So part of my need to ask for forgiveness is my need to search for the root causes of why I acted the way I did to cause the offense. I do not believe it is good enough to just say some words and go through some socially acceptable motions in order to accomplish what is needed for true repentance. I not only need to do what is possible to address resolving the other person's pain but I also need to view this as an opportunity to discover a hidden fault within my own heart and receive healing. What is really needed is a mending of relationships, not a setting straight of some balance sheet or a satisfying of some artificial rules somewhere. The real issue is the condition of our relationships and the spirit within us and between us. That is the most important thing to pay attention to in the issue of forgiveness.

So what is the real purpose of seeking forgiveness in this light? It looks to me like the goal of real forgiveness is a reuniting of hearts and a repair of ruptured, damaged relationships. This is the most important aspect of forgiveness; it is to accomplish reconciliation and bonding of hearts together into a unity of spirit in the harmony of love and respect. Anything less than this is artificial and falls short of what our hearts were designed for.

So when I have offended or hurt someone the real issue is the damage in the arena of the spirit. I have wounded someone's spirit and I have great power to assist in healing for that person by recognizing my responsibility in that damage, acknowledge it to that person and seeking for healing and reconciliation with them. But again, this is not primarily for the purpose of satisfying some legal requirement as it is to correctly begin a process of healing, repair and new life in both myself and the person I have hurt.

But what happens if I am truly remorseful for what I have done, I respond to the promptings of the Holy Spirit and agree with His convictions in my heart (the real meaning of the word “confession”) and seek to make things right with the other wounded party but they are unwilling to accept my offers of reconciliation? What if they refuse to forgive me and reject my apologies? And after all, that only sounds reasonable given the true definition of forgiveness. If I am asking them to accept all the pain I caused them and not hold it against me anymore that is a very stiff request that many are not prepared to accept and even find quite unreasonable. How does that response affect the way I relate to them?

Well, I happen to be in that very situation with at least one person in my life right now. I have grappled with this issue for about a year now and desire to know the truth about this issue. I am coming to realize that I cannot hold myself responsible for the choices that the other person makes as to how they are going to deal with the pain I have caused them. I have done everything I know to do within the tight restrictions of communication that they have put on our relationship to convey to them my deep regrets for the pain I caused them and have asked for their forgiveness. But due to many years of false mentoring by other people in their life and false assumptions about my motives that they refuse to question, they find it very hard to understand that they are in bondage to their own pain as long as they hold me hostage in their mind.

Many people mistakenly believe that if they forgive someone who has hurt or abused them that somehow they will lose some sort of “protection” that unforgiveness seemingly provides their heart. It is another classic lie of Satan residing in our flesh that causes us to believe that if we unconditionally forgive someone for hurting us it gives them blanket permission to come and hurt us again. But again, this notion is based on the false definitions of forgiveness, the legal model of forgiveness that assumes that forgiveness is letting someone off the hook or pretending that the offense was not so bad as the pain we are feeling. Our hearts understandably resist going into denial of our pain and because we may think that is what is involved in forgiveness we refuse to go down that path.

This is very understandable if these false notions about forgiveness were really true. But when we begin to learn the truth about real forgiveness it will be much easier for us to begin exercising it on a more regular basis. The truth is, forgiveness is the only path that we can take to healing and restoration of our souls. All counterfeits will leave us empty and betrayed and need to be avoided. But both forgiveness and repentance are a personal choice that must be taken by the offended party and the offender respectively and not dependent on the other.

I have to personally choose to listen to the convictions of the Holy Spirit, respond to the promptings to face my real issues, take responsibility for the pain I have caused others and do as much as I can to seek reconciliation with them. Beyond that I cannot force the other person to accept my apologies or forgive me if they choose to cling to fears about me no matter how false they may be. I am responsible for my own choices only, but I must also cooperate with the guidance of the Spirit to do all in my power to address the damage that has occurred both in the spirit of those whom I have hurt and in my own spirit as well.

Once we begin to realize the individual responsibility and the separateness of each person's power to determine how they are going to act in this situation, it can be seen more clearly how even if one party dies before healing or reconciliation occurs that the other person can still choose to do their part either to forgive or to repent and seek forgiveness. In that situation God can act in place of the deceased party and provide the response that our heart needs for healing. Thus we do not have to be held hostage to our loss of opportunity for reconciliation that our heart is designed to enjoy.

Unconditional Forgiveness

Last time I explored the problem of forgiveness as it relates to asking others to forgive me while understanding the true implications of what I am really asking them to do. When I understand that real forgiveness means that the forgiving person accepts full responsibility for all of the pain still inside of them caused by the offender, it seems almost offensive or irresponsible to ask someone to forgive me for something that I have done to cause them that pain.

But there are other aspects of forgiveness that I need to explore as well. With a completely new view of what constitutes real forgiveness the implications have a wide area of impact on related issues and I feel the need to look at more of them. One of these is the issue of whether forgiveness should be unconditional or should it be requested before being granted.

This is an issue that I have observed great confusion over in the minds of many people all of my life. One of my best friends many years ago could not even bring himself to imagine that the men surrounding Hitler could ever be forgiven for the atrocities they had committed against millions of people. The horrible and intentional nature of their crimes seemed to preclude, in his mind anyway, the option of their ever being forgiven either by men or by God.

Because of this intense feeling of his – and I would note it was based on some personal experience in the events of that tragic war – he simply could not believe the stories relayed in a book I loaned him called The Cross and The Swastika. This book told about a Christian who spent months ministering to these top criminals while they were being held in detention awaiting the war crimes trials held in Nuremberg, Germany after the war. Many of these men, according to the book, accepted Christ as their Savior and claimed the promise of salvation before they were executed for their war crimes. But one man in particular rejected the messages of mercy brought by the author of this book and before his execution committed suicide in a final act of defiance to show he was still in control of his own destiny.

This friend of mine, raised in a similar theological environment that I was raised in, did not believe that forgiveness could be unconditional. Along with many, probably the majority of people, he believed that a person had to have a genuine repentance and seek for forgiveness before God would offer that gift to that person.

This is a very commonly held belief about forgiveness, but is it really true? Is forgiveness only able to be offered to those who are willing and desiring and deserving somehow to receive it? If so, what are the prerequisites to qualify for forgiveness? Different people have different opinions about what qualifies a person to receive forgiveness and these ideas permeate most religions in one way or another.

But if these basic assumptions are not true to begin with then all the theological propositions about what qualifies a person to be forgiven are pointless discussions about irrelevancies. The idea of unconditional forgiveness is shocking and revolting to many people who believe that it violates all sense of decency and justice and so dismiss it out of hand before even seriously considering whether it may indeed be true. But the reason most people struggle to accept this idea of unconditional forgiveness is because they already have confused ideas of the real truth about forgiveness. If forgiveness means some of the things I discussed last time as commonly held beliefs it is quite understandable why people struggle to believe in the possibility of unconditional forgiveness.

If forgiveness means that there are no consequences involved from commissions of sin, if forgiveness means simply getting off the hook legally and set free to continue in a life of sin, then indeed unconditional forgiveness doesn't make any sense. But then, some try to modify this definition slightly and say that if a person really repents sufficiently enough – whatever that means – then they should get off the hook legally etc. But that is just another spin on a twisted belief about forgiveness that still doesn't make real sense.

One of the problems in understanding this issue is the confusion we have about justice and the difference between God's laws and man's system of laws. There is a radical difference between the ways of God and the created natural order of principles and consequences in contrast to the artificial system of so-called justice and legal arrangements created by men. Man's laws are prescriptive by nature and have to have arbitrary punishments and enforcers to implement them effectively. They focus entirely on external behaviors though they at times attempt to determine intentions of the mind. They are also based on economics though many people are not yet aware of that fact. Human laws are a poor imitation of the true system of God's laws which operate very differently than man's. But if we do not clearly understand these differences we will tend to believe that God operates His government just the same way we do.

But God's laws are simply descriptions of the way things are, not artificial rules and demands with arbitrary punishments attached. Although God has throughout human history been forced to implement human-style laws and punishments, that was never His intention for the relationship He wishes to have with His children. He simply has to relate to men in ways that they can understand and respond to in the mental condition they are in at the time. He still has to do that yet today, but inherent in all His dealings with men is the seeming inconsistencies in His instructions that actually reveal His desire to move us far past the childlike relationship of rules and restraints to a more mature relationship of love, respect and mutual enjoyment and trust.

If we are to understand better the truth about forgiveness then we need to also understand the truth about law from God's perspective. When we begin to perceive that God's laws are descriptive in nature rather than prescriptive, then the need for “getting off the hook” becomes irrelevant and a completely different dimension of reality begins to emerge. Included with that new perception of reality comes a radically different picture of God in our hearts as we begin to perceive a God we do not have to cower before but a God who is longing to have a sensible, realistic, two-way relationship with each one of His created beings.

Having a proper understanding of both law as God sees it and forgiveness in its true form we can also begin to make much better sense of what really happened at the cross of Calvary. Instead of Jesus offering Himself as an appeasement sacrifice to neutralize the anger of a God thirsting for revenge and blood, we begin to see the expression of an infinite heart of passionate love expressing that love in ways that at first seem very baffling to us. Part of what really happened at Calvary was the exact reverse of the teachings of many Christians today who believe that sinners will suffer eternal wrath in the hands of an angry God in the fires of hell. What happened at Calvary was a loving God falling into the hands of angry, hate-filled men. In doing so He exposed the natural consequences of sin – death in all its hideous ugliness.

But what was the most prominent feature that emerged during the hours of torture and agony that the Son of God suffered at the hands of sin-filled humans? It was the clear light of unconditional forgiveness in the blackest darkness of men's system of supposed justice exposed as the fraud that it is. While the legal system of men was used and manipulated to appear to produce justice while it was obvious that is was nothing but a veneer of legitimacy, God displayed the truth about real forgiveness as being the choice of the offended God and having nothing to do with the attitude of those needing His forgiveness.

When we look at this situation through the lens of a correct concept of real forgiveness it suddenly makes so much more sense. Remember, forgiveness is the choice on the part of an offended party to take full ownership of all the pain caused them by another and refusing to hold it against them. This allows complete freedom in the heart of the offended party from any bondage to being hostage to those offending him. That does not mean there are not natural consequences that occur as a result of the actions and choices of the offenders in their own lives. In the true system of principle-based “law” that governs the universe, natural consequences are inevitable unless grace and mercy intervene to prevent them. But that does not mean that forgiveness is not there all along.

Jesus did not die in order to give God permission to forgive – that is based on human-style judicial thinking and is not reflective of God's reality. Jesus died in order to demonstrate the forgiveness that has always been and always will be in the heart of God toward His wayward children, human and angelic alike. Jesus came to reveal in His life and death both the passionate love of the Godhead for us and the results that all will suffer if they choose to reject the forgiveness already provided for them and is irrevocable. Just as God's love is eternally unconditional, so is God's forgiveness.

At this point some would argue that if we are unconditionally forgiven then that would necessarily mean that everyone would be saved, and most people know that is not true. So since everyone will not be saved then it is concluded that there is no such thing as unconditional forgiveness.

But this is simplistic and circular logic that does not hold water upon close examination. It again is based on an assumption that if a person is forgiven then they are automatically going to be saved and will end up in heaven. But forgiveness is not synonymous with being safe to live with God for eternity in a loving relationship with Him. And being lost does not mean that a person was not forgiven. It simply means that that person rejected and repulsed the forgiveness that was available to them at any time they were willing to receive it and allow it to transform their heart. Being prepared for heaven is a very different thing than being just forgiven.

God is not the one who determines whether or not we are saved. He will be the one who exposes the choices that each person has made in their deepest heart to the onlooking universe, but He does not make the choice about that person's destiny. Each person is fully responsible for the choice they make themselves about what they will do with the forgiveness and grace that are irrevocably in place and will always be. The choice each one of us makes about our belief in God's forgiveness and His attitude toward us will determine whether that forgiveness will have a transforming effect on our hearts or whether we will cling to our appeasement models of fear-based religion. We can never earn God's forgiveness by any amount of repentance or performance or appeasement of any kind. We can only believe in what is already in the heart of God and change our opinions about how He feels about us thus releasing His power in our souls to re-create His image in our hearts.

In the same way, we must follow the example of God in not thinking that others have to repent to a satisfactory level before we are willing to forgive them in the true sense of the word. To do so is only to hold ourself hostage to the choices of those who have hurt us. What insane reasoning! Why would we wait for an abuser to repent before we are willing to be free in heart and spirit? Because of lies believed about ourselves and about God, that's why! Because of false notions about forgiveness and justice and many others things that Satan has confused and blinded our minds and hearts with. The clearer we see the truth about God and the unconditional nature of His love and forgiveness the sooner we will feel the attractions of love in our hearts and the quicker we will begin to heal and be on the path to wholeness again.

(part 3)

A Troubling Truth about Forgiveness

Forgiveness is something that has changed color quite dramatically for me in the past few years, especially after I learned what it really meant and involved. Letting go of many of the false preconceptions generally believed about this concept and embracing the real truth about forgiveness also involves facing a troubling aspect that was never seen before.

I usually find it helpful for context to explain some of the old ideas commonly held about forgiveness that I now realize are not accurate. I suspect that stopping nearly anyone on the street and asking them what they think forgiveness means would produce some of the following ideas.

Forgiveness is forgetting about what someone has done to hurt us.

Forgiveness is letting someone off the hook who deserves to be punished. (But if the heart is consulted about this option it will usually be discovered that a great deal of resentment is harbored as a result.)

Forgiveness is pretending that we were not hurt by someone when in reality we still feel the pain, we are just trying very hard to suppress it in the name of Christianity, or whatever other ideal we may hold.

Forgiveness is trying to ignore the pain that an offense has caused us because someone insisted that we had to forgive. This is not really successful but we sometimes think it is if we can repress our pain so effectively that we don't notice it anymore.

There are many more subtle definitions of forgiveness that I suspect could be uncovered if people were interviewed about this, but what I have realized is that none of these things is real forgiveness the way it must take place for effective and long-term healing to occur. (Not noticing our pain after lengthy repression is not healing.) And if the heart could be interviewed about any of these commonly held beliefs about forgiveness I think it would be quite dissatisfied with most all of them. But since it is the intellectual part of our brain that commonly steps in to answer these questions based on what it thinks is the “correct” answer, the heart is seldom heard on this issue. It is usually suppressed both internally and by society around us in an effort to comply with the demands that we mistakenly believe forgiveness requires of us.

A few years ago I watched a video by a Christian pastor/counselor who illustrated true forgiveness in a story he told about a couple he was working with who had very intense problems in their marriage. As is often the case, the story was far more effective at conveying the real meaning of the word much more than simply an intellectual explanation of what it means. But I have also found it helpful for the kind of thinking I like to do to condense the principles uncovered in the story to words that explicitly lay out what it means. Maybe that is because my right brain relates better to the story with its emotions and drama, and my left brain relates better to logical explanations that correlate to the reasons the story is so effective. With both sides of my brain tracking in the same direction, maybe I then feel more balanced and congruent.

Even as I am writing this, part of my brain resists the need to tell the story as I remember it because it would take so much time and effort to write it out in length. But another part of my brain says that if I don't I am a hypocrite after all that I have just stated about the importance of stories conveying the meaning far more effectively. So to avoid contributing to undermining my integrity with hypocrisy I better take the time and effort to go ahead and relate the story before I go on.

As I remember it, this couple was on their last attempt to possibly patch their marriage back together even though the wife was quite certain there was no hope. The husband had had an affair while away from home on business and the marriage had been in turmoil, separation and pain ever since. (I am sure I am leaving out many important details, but it has been awhile since I heard the story myself.)

The wife related that her family had been Irish Catholics for many generations and no one in their family had forgiven anyone for generations. Evidently it was just not something they ever did in their family. As they sat there in the pastor's office locked in their pain and memories and emotions, the solution to reconciliation seemed impossible.

The pastor turned to the wife and asked, “How much money could your husband give you to take away the pain he has caused you?”

The wife was shocked and almost angered by this question. She looked at him in unbelief and exclaimed, “There is not enough money in the whole world that would effectively take away the pain that I feel inside from what he has done to me!”

The two people sat facing each other in front of the desk but they could not look at each other's eyes. The husband was numb in his emotions and just sat staring at the floor. He could not feel repentance like what might be expected of him even though he regretted what he had done. He really did not know what to do or where to turn at this point. The wife sat across from him pondering the dilemma they were in and the implications raised by the question that the pastor had asked.

As she began to see more clearly what the real situation was and her husband's complete inability to remove the pain that she felt inside, it began to become clear to her what her real option was. She made a decision and looked up as she said, “There is nothing that he can ever do to eliminate or remove all the pain and suffering that he has caused me. So I choose to accept full responsibility for all this pain that I feel and I do not hold it against him any longer. I accept the pain as my own.”

In that moment her husband looked up at her with a look of shock and amazement and instantly burst into tears and lunged into her arms. The two embraced for a long time crying onto each other's shoulders and allowing their hearts to once again engage with each other in what was the real experience of forgiveness.

As I listened to this intensely emotional story for the first time, and in fact each time I hear it, I was struck with the amazing truth of what forgiveness really means. But the implications of this truth resonate far beyond this story. When I take the principles revealed in this story and apply them to not only my own relationships with others but to God Himself, I am amazed at all the implications and insights that suddenly burst into the open about the whole plan of salvation and what is really going on with the Great War between Christ and Satan. I begin to get a much clearer view of how God goes about winning this war and the relationship that He has toward everyone who has offended or spurned His love for them.

But as I thought about it over the past few years since hearing this story, another aspect of this suddenly struck me as very troubling. I believe if we view forgiveness in this new light that we will be forced to rethink very seriously the flippant or mindless ways in which we often relate to forgiveness or the ways in which we try to force our children to ask for forgiveness.

Think about it seriously with me here. Forgiveness means that the only way I can become free of the pain of an offense is to take full ownership of my pain and release everyone else. I also have to let go of all desire on my part for vengeance or retribution, even at the heart level. When I come to realize that the offending party is completely incapable of bringing healing to my damaged heart by anything they can do, say or experience, then I can choose to stop holding them hostage by my bitterness toward them and release them to be responsible to God in their own relationship to Him. I will accept that the pain I feel is resident within my own heart and no longer try to link it to the one who incurred it to begin with. And after I release believing that they can fix me, either directly or through their being punished, I can then be ready to find healing and release in my own soul and spirit.

If I am not willing to take this act of intentional forgiveness and release in its true form, then I will continue to harbor either an open or a secret desire that somehow, sometime that person will experience pain that will force them to know what they have done to me. We mistakenly believe that we will somehow feel “healing” satisfaction in seeing others suffer who have hurt us and thus we will somehow become freed of our own pain. But this is an illusion, a lie that is so deeply rooted in the human psyche that we mostly assume it must be true. But it is really part of the deception of sin that has infected our thinking since the fall of the human race into sin.

This belief in the need for revenge or punishment, to make others feel the same or worse pain than we feel, lies at the root of much of our reasoning and even under girds much of our mistaken theology about how God is going to resolve the problem of sin. It is pervasive in many of our suppositions about justice and is the foundation of most of our legal apparatus and system of punishments. But nevertheless, it is still a false presumption and keeps us locked in a cycle of pain and dysfunction that takes us lower and lower as we get farther away from the ways of God.

Because of these assumptions about crime and punishment that pervade most of our thinking, our notions of forgiveness parallel that false line of reasoning. If an offense must have a punishment as we normally assume it does, then forgiveness must mean escaping deserved punishment and thereby getting away with an offense while leaving someone else holding the bag of pain and consequences. But all of this is reasoning based on the kingdom of darkness and upon which all the kingdoms of the world are founded.

Understanding real forgiveness, like so many other aspects of true reality, requires a complete and radical rethinking of all of the aspects of reality and truth. But that is more than I have time or space for right now but is something that I am continually seeking to understand better. At this point I would like to explain the other side of forgiveness that should change the way we think about it from a different perspective.

It is one thing to accept the true meaning of forgiveness – accepting full responsibility for the pain someone has caused me and releasing them from being our hostage. This allows me to then turn my pain over to God and in turn receive His forgiveness, peace and joy in my heart in place of the former pain. (see Matt. 6:12) But what about when I ask for someone else's forgiveness? In light of a clearer understanding of the real meaning of forgiveness, what am I really asking them to do for me? I know that for myself this new understanding has given me pause before glibly asking someone to forgive me. It is one thing to forgive someone else, as difficult as that may be. But what does it really mean for me to ask for someone else to forgive me?

It appears to me that what I am really asking the other person (or God) to do when I ask for forgiveness is for them to take full responsibility for all of the pain I have caused them and no longer hold me responsible for it. That sounds rather wrong in the way we typically view fairness and justice, but in the light of what I have learned I cannot avoid facing this fact. If this is what forgiveness really means – and I believe it is, for it is far more effective in resolving our relationship problems that the false notions about forgiveness ever accomplish – it makes me think much more seriously about what I am really asking a person to do when I ask for forgiveness. I hesistate to use these words so lightly as I often have in the past.

What complicates the problem is that while I may better understand what I am really asking someone to do for me when I ask them to forgive me, I also realize that quite likely they are hearing my request with the false ideas about forgiveness still firmly embedded in their own assumptions and so they will not understand what I am really asking for if I simply use the word forgiveness. But if I explicitly spell out what I am really asking them to do it becomes even more painful for both of us, because what I am asking for is generally considered highly unfair and unjust. It almost seems to be an affront to ask for someone's forgiveness in the light of a true understanding of the word; but on the other hand forgiveness is the only path to real reconciliation and healing for both parties.

It is a truth that forgiveness does not have to be asked for to be extended. Forgiveness can be refused but still be valid for the person forgiving. A request for forgiveness can be rebuffed and rejected as well, but the need to seek forgiveness is still no less important on the part of an offender. All of these aspects of forgiveness require further exploration and I want to do that. But for this time I simply wanted to expose some of the real issues involved in forgiveness and the implications involved in asking others to forgive us.

(part 2)