The work of forgiveness 4

One of the difficulties in forgiving is how to go about it. I learned a long time ago that forgiveness has nothing to do with excusing the behavior, pretending it did not happen or that it did not hurt. The painful behavior happened. It was wrong. Forgiveness is not forgetting. Forgiveness does not give a pass to the behavior.

Nor does forgiveness equal reconciliation. Forgiveness can happen without contacting the offender. It does not mean you need to restore a relationship with them. It is in large part about not allowing the behavior of the person to continue to dominate and consume your life in the future. It is a gift you give yourself, that allows you to move on with scars, rather than open wounds.

Because I had a number of people and situations to forgive, I realized I needed a multi-step process to help me with forgiveness this time around. I needed to forgive each individual for only the behaviors they produced, I needed to be as thorough as I could, and I wanted to be as fair as possible. Here is what I came up with, which so far is working for me. I will examine each step in the process in some detail in future posts.

A forgiveness process

1. What do I expect from a person with this kind of relationship to me? (My expectations of a co-worker, for instance, are different from what I expect from family.)

2. What specific behaviors by this person violated my expectations?

3. What was it about these behaviors that made me angry or hurt?

4. Bring steps 1-3 before the Lord, resting in him to help me forgive and gain insight into the person and situation

5. Reflect on what I am learning, come up with new perspectives, continue to an attitude of forgiveness, and realize there may or may not be an actual moment when I feel the work is complete. It may be more of a continuum where I gradually come to feel more forgiving than I had before.

6. Have some clarity about what the forgiveness will look like in this case. I may realize forgiving one person looks different from forgiving another.

The work of forgiveness 3

A lesson I learned more than a decade ago, when I had to do some other major forgiveness work related to the church, has been helpful to me again this time around.

And that is, you cannot just sit down and force yourself to forgive because you know you're supposed to. Or because yes, it's the right thing to do. Or because, if you're a Christian, it's something Jesus thought was pretty important and you feel terrible about not doing it. Or because you realize it's been a while and you need to get on with it.

You have to want to forgive before you can start the process of forgiving.

The thing I learned the first time around, is that if you realize you don't want to forgive, you can ask God to help you want to want to forgive. Let that sink in. If you don't yet want to forgive, it is perfectly acceptable—and healthy—to pray that God will help you want to want to forgive.

This is an honest acknowledgement of where you are if you don't want to forgive yet. Perhaps you are in a place where you need to think some more, to try to make sense of what happened. Or you are so hurt that you need to be able to hang on to the feeling of being a victim a little while longer. You know you don't want to stay in that place forever, but you are not ready to give it up just yet.

The healthy thing to do is to understand where you are, own up to it, and admit you are not quite ready to move on. At the same time, you can be open to a change in perspective where you could move from where you are now, to a place where you would want to want to forgive.

Once again I find myself in need of forgiving some big things. And once again this advice (I wish I could remember where I had read it all those years ago) has stood me in good stead. Getting to a point where you actually want to forgive is possibly just as hard as the actual forgiveness process itself.

The work of forgiveness 2

One thing I am learning is that forgiveness moves in and out of focus. At times I believe I have completed the work with someone. A while later I remember some new, different thing that must be examined, considered, and forgiven. Although this does not set me back to square one, it does teach me that forgiveness is a journey that's a bit longer and more complicated than you might expect.

I try not to get frustrated by this, and instead see it as the way forgiveness works.

It is as if I am a farmer in the northeast preparing a field. At first, many rocks turn up in the field. Each of them must be dug out, examined, and put aside—perhaps into a rock wall. After a while of this, the field has far fewer rocks and can be used to grow crops.

Yet rocks still remain. In fact, some of them would probably have laid buried if it were not for the earlier plowing and removal of other rocks. Occasionally the plow will hit them unexpectedly. What does the farmer do? Once again dig up the rock, examine it, and add it to the rock wall. If the rock is left where it is, sure, crops can be grown. But whenever it's planting or harvest time, that rock will impede the process. Better to dig it up, deal with it, and then move on.

Forgiveness is like that, I think. We are walking this journey with God, open to examining and dealing with any rocks he brings to our attention, in the timing he chooses.

The work of forgiveness 1

It's been nine months since the church I helped to lead closed its doors, and during this time I have been learning a lot about myself, my relationship to God, and where I need to get my head on straight before I attempt to join and serve in a new church.

Among other things, I realized I had to come to terms with the way our church slid into its death spiral, work out my feelings towards those primarily responsible for the loss, and, because this latest church failure was similar to previous church problems in my life, make sense of the larger picture I have witnessed.

Even with a whole lot of soul searching, it took me the better part of a year to start understanding:
How angry I was.
Why I was angry.
Who I was angry with.
Why I needed to go through a process of forgiveness before I could have anything to do with a new church.
What a process of forgiveness even looks like in my case.

I hope to share my forgiveness journey with you in installments over the next months. 

The problem of sin

From some reading I am doing...

Over time a web of exclusively self-centered acts builds networks of vanity, violence, oppression and delusion, and such iniquity is visited upon the children "to the third and fourth generation." Such sin, our shared negative heritage built up through many lifetimes, spreads like a cloud of poison gas, blinding us to the true mutuality and complementarity of life.

(Tilden Edwards, Living Simply through the Day)

Sums up the problem of sin and the human condition quite nicely. Worth pondering and considering what can be done about it... then taking some action that goes against this flow.

Thinking with the church

From the New York Times report on Pope Francis' interview with Jesuit publications:

Asked what it means for him to “think with the church,” a phrase used by the Jesuit founder St. Ignatius, Francis said that it did not mean “thinking with the hierarchy of the church.”

“This church with which we should be thinking is the home of all, not a small chapel that can hold only a small group of selected people,” he said. “We must not reduce the bosom of the universal church to a nest protecting our mediocrity.”

All denominations, as well as individual churches, should meditate on this simple truth. It might help solve some of the clergy/laity and hierarchy/local church problems with which Christianity is afflicted.

Snark: the new way to shame congregations

The United Methodist Publishing House launched a website in 2011 called Ministry Matters. There are blog articles, preaching, teaching and worship resources, a library (subscription required) and evangelism and outreach ideas. The site's tag line is "supporting Christian ministry with resources, community and inspiration." It says this about itself:

Ministry Matters is a destination site for all church leaders [emphasis theirs], both paid and volunteer, interdenominational and nondenominational. The site’s goals are threefold: to equip, connect, and inspire people in ministry. While pastors will find much content designed specifically for them, other church workers, teachers, and leaders will find lots of helpful stuff as well.... Ministry Matters aims to serve Christians of many denominations—or no denomination at all!... 

The content comes from many different sources, some official, some not. Some are "big names" in the UMC world, and some not so much. The site is unevenly curated. Some articles hit a home run, most are at least mildly interesting, but a surprising number of entries just seem to be rants or vents. They are snarky, shortsighted, unhelpful, and—quite honestly from a lay perspective—rather insulting.

Posts like these are not uncommon on the site:
How to rid your church of young people
10 ways to remain 'favorite' pastor

Ministry Matters may say it is a "destination site for all church leaders," but articles like these go right for the jugular of the laity. In what way is this "helpful stuff"? It seems instead just another tired example of the thinking that the problems in churches are primarily the fault of the backwards, ignorant, selfish people in the pews.

Once again, I'd love to see the day when clergy and laity actually talk to each other and serve together. How about it?