The Violence of Unforgiveness (Forgiveness III)

We have to understand, too, that unforgiveness is also a violence, one that we do both to ourselves and to the one whom we refuse to forgive. Jesus’ message is that refusing to forgive will, in fact, kill you—body, soul, and spirit.[1]

This link between unforgiveness and death in the body has been confirmed by science. Diseases, and especially cancer, have been linked to a refusal to forgive.[2] Unforgiveness creates emotional stress and our bodies go into “high alert” to compensate. Imagine walking through the woods and hearing a bear in the bushes. Your body tenses and releases chemicals to make you alert and to lend you speed so that you can flee. Once the danger passes—say you run a quarter-mile and discover the bear didn’t follow you—your body will stand down. Your breath will return to normal. The chemical rush will recede. This is how our bodies are meant to function: periodic exertion from which we naturally recover.

Betrayal and emotional pain cause a similar stress reaction. Our bodies become aware that there is some perceived threat, not to our bodies but to our souls. Just as if it were responding to a bear, the body produces excess cortisol and adrenaline to help us deal with the situation. The problem is that if we don’t find a way to release the pain, we can stay in a heightened sense of alert which becomes a long-term exertion. Over time, this runs a body down, lowering its defenses, making it susceptible to a number of diseases. In other words, emotional responses have physical impacts, and the refusal to forgive or process negative emotions can literally make us sick. 

Like salt, painful emotions purify and season us so that we are transformed. A life spent trying to avoid pain at any cost becomes no life at all. But pain is also meant to drain—through grief and lament—into the ocean of sorrow beneath our feet. If an emotional response ceases to move through us and instead gets lodged inside us, we get stuck with it. Imagine a steam engine building up pressure with no release valve. The pressure will find its way out. If pain never empties into a purifying catharsis (a process often catalyzed by forgiveness) it produces a tremendous amount of pressure that will ultimately make its way out, usually in ways we don’t like and can’t seem to control. Pain will manifest as anger or bitterness or some behavior that provides temporary relief but ends up holding us hostage. It will find its way out as we snap at those people who are closest to us or rage at the person who cut us off on the freeway. It will show up in addictions—to buying or drinking or watching pornography or eating an extra cupcake when we know we should stop—as we seek to soothe our festering emotions. 

Indeed, chronic rage, depression, and patterns of addictive, destructive behavior are always connected to an unhealed emotional wound, either one that we aren’t aware of or one that we are aware of but about which we refuse to release forgiveness. Some people drink themselves into a stupor because they came from a dysfunctional family and they don’t yet recognize it; others drink themselves into a stupor because they recognize how dysfunctional their parents were but can’t or won’t forgive them for it.[3] Our lives can even look good from the outside while the interior rots, like a house with a good paint job and a crumbling foundation.  

The problem with unforgiveness is that anything we judge and refuse to forgive tends to show up again in our own lives. Consider it a law of the spiritual universe, like gravity. It’s no coincidence that many children of alcoholics who judge and hate the behavior of their parents often end up struggling with alcohol themselves, or that a philandering son tends to follow a pattern set by an unfaithful father.

Can you identify any patterns in your life that you hate yet which seem to repeat? “Compulsivity addiction” is the phenomenon of returning to a behavior time and again, repeating patterns over and over in an attempt to find freedom.[4] I was, for example, repeatedly with women in a way that drew them into relationship, and then I left them betrayed, hurt, and understandably angry. This happened over and over, even though I hated the pattern and felt great guilt and shame about it. It’s a strange truth of our humanity: we recreate brokenness because we are looking for wholeness. The serial womanizer is actually looking for real intimacy. “The young man who rings the bell at the brothel is unconsciously looking for God.”[5] We are often blind to our violence because our emotional need is so powerful. We are like bulls rampaging through a China shop, trying to get to the red cape, oblivious to the breaking glass. 

In my own story, while it’s no excuse for my behavior, I was actually driven by a desire to find something good and healthy and right. Nevertheless, if we are held in the grip of unforgiveness, as I was, even our best attempts to find freedom will fail, cut off as they are from the life of God. 

For all of these readings in one place, order my book 'Learning to Live and Love Like Jesus.'

[1] Cf. Matthew 6:15.

[2] See The Forgiveness Project: The Startling Discovery of How to Overcome Cancer, Find Health, and Achieve Peace by Michael S. Barry. Kregel Publications. Grand Rapids, MI, 2011. 

[3] To use an example from the hedonistic side of the spectrum. Of course, the example could also be of someone being overly rigid/religious, from the moralistic side. And while drinking “into a stupor” is a conspicuous behavior, our hedonism or moralism tends to be more subtly masked, such that even we ourselves are blind to it.

[4] See “Impaired Decision-making, Impulsivity, and Compulsivity: Addictions’ Effect on the Cerebral Cortex” by Horvath, Misra, et al. https://www.mentalhelp.net/articles/impaired-decision-making-impulsivity-and-compulsivity-addictions-effect-on-the-cerebral-cortex/ [January 31, 2018].

[5] Marshall, Bruce. The World, The Flesh, and Father Smith. Houghton Mifflin Co. Boston, MA, 1945. Page 108. (Often attributed to G.K. Chesterton, but see https://www.chesterton.org/other-quotations/ [July 17, 2017])

The Violence of Human Hearts (Forgiveness II)

Indeed, forgiveness is necessary because we do violence. The story of human history is essentially a story of violence. Many ancient cultures taught that God (or the gods) forged the world in violence or in war.[1] Immediately after the Fall of Man in Genesis 3, we have a story of murder, as Cain kills his brother Abel.[2] Of course, we see violence every time we turn on the news or, perhaps even closer to our home and within our own hearts. Still, we may not think of ourselves as violent people, and perhaps we do no physical violence. But violence takes many forms, and you don’t have to pick up arms to inflict it. 

When I was five years old, I had a birthday party at McDonald’s. My best friend, John, came late, just as I was opening my gifts. The first toy I opened was a M.A.S.K. car, the hot toy for five-year-old boys, and from the end of the room, John called out, “Brandon, what is it?” 

I heard him, but I pretended I didn’t. He cried out louder, “Brandon, let me see!” By then I knew that he knew I could hear him, but I still ignored him, despite the desperation in his voice, which revealed that I was hurting him. I felt a sick shiver of elation. There was something alluring, intoxicating, about holding sway over someone. About being able to inflict pain. About having power. It was nothing physical, but nevertheless, I did violence to my friend. 

I have done far worse. But there is something so pure and distilled about this memory in my mind, unclouded as it is by the justifications or covering-over that comes more skillfully with age. As a child, I could feel the undiluted desire for power which, no doubt, still lives in me. It was a barbaric impulse beyond words, which I felt as lust and energy. The longing to be the one overpowering and not the one overpowered. To be the one powerful enough to do violence, and never to receive it. 

We live in a violent world because humans seek power to feel safe and to get what they want, and sometimes getting power requires—or seems to require—violent means. This is the human pattern: we long for love, but we will settle for power. When the Scripture talks about sin, it is talking about this: the inevitable human tendency to focus on self and then to hurt others in our attempt to get what we want. It is something we are stuck in, something that we can’t fully find our way out of on our own. Indeed, we often don’t even know we are stuck. 

Jesus himself was crucified to satisfy the lust of those who wanted him out of the way so they could maintain power and control, although their notion of what was happening was entirely different. They framed their actions as defending the faith. (We should note how easy it is to justify, hide, and repackage our lust for power.) It is this same Jesus who, on the cross, beholding those who crucified him, said, “Father, forgive them. They don’t know what they are doing.”[3]

Wait… what? 

First of all, why don’t they know what they are doing? It’s because violence is not rational, it’s emotional and primal. Our pursuit of power is so visceral, so interior to ourselves, that we are blind to it. We are always acting to meet some emotional need, much of the time before we even realize it’s there. My feelings have often been hurt by some unintentional comment my wife makes, which I misinterpret or make overly significant. My response—which happens before I even have any conscious idea what I’m doing—is often to lash out with a snarky retort or just cold silence. Anytime I feel threatened, I tend to respond immediately, before I’m aware of it, blind to the violence I’m doing. Jesus constantly warns us about this state of being caught by our own mechanisms of violence yet also blind to them.[4] Only when we see our chains can we hope to be free of them.[5] When Jesus heals us, so that we can see, he reveals all the ways in which we have done violence and in which we are currently doing violence, so that we can turn from darkness to light. 

Jesus himself demonstrates this turning into light. He forgives those crucifying him! How does he do it? How did Jesus, caught in the hurricane of violence, refuse to engage hatred or spite? How did he confront violence with forgiveness instead, destroying violence itself in the process?

To enter the story that Jesus writes, we first have to acknowledge our own relationship with violence. We have to acknowledge the violence that has been done to us, for many of us have been in the place of my friend John, standing in pain, unanswered and uncared-for. And we also have to acknowledge the violence that we have done, perhaps with willful intention, perhaps without meaning to do it at all. After all, even though I didn’t intend to hurt the woman I promised to love and marry before reneging, I did violence to her nonetheless. If we are to be free, we must account for and confess all this violence.

For all of these readings in one place, order my book 'Learning to Live and Love Like Jesus.'

[1] See, for example, the Enuma Elish, a creation myth from Babylon (7th century, BC).

[2] Genesis 4:1-24.

[3] Luke 23:24.

[4] Again, see Luke 23:24, and also the Gospel of John, where Jesus constantly speaks of blindness. E.g., John 3:19.

[5] Cf. John 9:41.

Into The Generous Life (Forgiveness I)

It is more blessed to give than to receive.[1]
-Jesus of Nazareth

Jesus wants to free us to live fully from our adoption and as ambassadors of the Reign of God. The Holy Spirit is constantly working to draw us into these two great realities, of grace and of partnering with God to see all things made new. What an amazing truth: God is not “out there,” and we’re not trying to get close to Him so He’ll reward us. He is already with us and “within us,” working, drawing us to Him, leading us into life.[2] As we receive this reality, we become free to give without measure. 

Life as an adopted child of God is about making present the Reign of God for others, as an ambassador of God’s Kingdom.[3] As a cup filled to overflow spills its water, a life grounded in grace naturally overflows with compassion, empathy, and justice (the pursuit of wholeness for others) for others. If we aren’t clear on Jesus’ invitation to make present the Reign of God—with him and for others—we don’t yet grasp our adoption. But experiencing God’s heart naturally births generosity within us. This Generous Life leads us into life’s greatest joy: giving. Discipleship is learning to live and love like Jesus, and that means learning to give.

In walking this path of joy (for is there any joy greater than giving?), Jesus asks us to do hard things. In the words of the Dread Pirate Roberts, “anyone who tells you otherwise is selling something.”[4] Jesus himself says that following him is not easy.[5] However, it’s in practicing hard things that our old, false self—the part of us which is only focused only on ourselves—is stripped away so that resurrected life in Jesus can be fully birthed within us.[6] Jesus’ love for us demands the development of character that is not native to our souls.[7] Discipleship is about transformation and transformation means character development, that we would become vessels who carry the Reign of God within us. The wooden cup that overflows can only carrywater because it has first been hollowed out.[8] In other words: the development of character is painful. Central to character development and The Generous Life is forgiveness—a spiritual practice that Jesus puts at the center of his teaching on what it means to live in the Reign of God. It may not come easily, but forgiveness is a practice that will remake us. And we cannot live in our adoption or as ambassadors of God’s Kingdom without it.

Things Done To Us and Things Done By Us

I have been betrayed by close friends who’ve lied to me or attacked me. I’ve had to forgive, and it was incredibly painful. 

I’m sure you’ve experienced something similar.

I have also needed great forgiveness. From women whom I used and betrayed. From a woman to whom I promised love and marriage, only to break my word. I felt guilt and shame over what I did, yet what she experienced was far more painful.

This is our life—the things done to us, and the things we’ve done. Again, I think the histories of the Exodus and the Exile represent, on a spiritual level, a great reality of human life: there are things done to us that bring us into captivity or slavery, and there are things we do (often in response to those things, though sometimes not) that also bring us into captivity and exile.[9] And Jesus has to deal with both in order to free us to live in and from our adoption as children of God. 

In fact, Jesus makes it explicitly clear that if you are to live in the Reign of God, where there is only freedom, it will mean practicing a radical forgiveness. It will mean forgiving even when it feels impossible. It will mean humbling ourselves and seeking forgiveness, even when that feels like death.[10]

Sounds like fun, right? But then again, Jesus did say, “If you give up your life for my sake, you will save it.”[11] He makes it clear that forgiveness is at the heart of being saved and becoming an agent of peace in a violent world. 

For all of these readings in one place, order my book 'Learning to Live and Love Like Jesus.'

[1] Acts 20:35.

[2] Cf. Philippians 2:13.

[3] See Paul’s theology in Romans 8, where life in and by the Spirit flows into the redemption of all creation. 

[4] The Princess Bride. Film, directed by Rob Reiner. 20th Century Fox. 1987. 

[5] Cf. Luke 9:32.

[6] See Romans 8:10-20, in which Paul describes the Spirit of God birthing us into awareness of what it means to be a child of God. Once again, the reality already in place must become our reality. Cf. Ephesians 1:3, Colossians 2:20, 3:1, etc.

[7] I can’t cite an exact source, but I’m pretty sure this beautiful phrasing came from my friend Bill Hull. For more on his take on transformation, see especially his book Conversion and Discipleship  (Zondervan. Grand Rapids, MI. 2016.) See Chapters 4 and 5, “The Holy Spirit and How People Change, Part I and Part II.”

[8] “Is not the cup that holds your wine the very cup that was burned in the potter’s oven?” (Gibran, Khalil. The Prophet. Alfred A. Knopf. New York, NY. 1923. Page 29.)

[9] See “What is the Story of Scripture?” in ‘Chapter 11, The Grounded Life: Scripture.’

[10] Matthew 5:23-24.

[11] Matthew 16:25.