Why Can't I Forgive?
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When I speak or write on forgiveness, I know that people will respond with questions, and sometimes, objections. The subject hits home. We have all suffered some kind of wrong and we who are disciples of Jesus know that we must forgive. But how? How can I forgive when I am angry, feel betrayed, and cannot trust the person who has hurt me?
One of the reasons we do not forgive is that we misunderstand what constitutes forgiveness. We think that forgiveness means a cessation of anger. If that is so, and I am still angry, I must not have forgiven. But that is not so. Forgiveness makes it possible for me to let go of my anger, but it is not an anger-reliever in the way that ibuprofen is a pain reliever.
If you slap my face, I may forgive you, but my face will still sting. Forgiveness does not make the pain go away. Likewise, forgiveness does not make the anger go away. That takes time, prayer (not just for yourself but for your offender), and the reception of grace.
We’ve been told that to forgive is to forget, and if we have not forgotten, we have not forgiven. Jeremiah 31:34 is sometimes quoted in support of this claim, for God says that he “will forgive their wickedness and remember their sins no more.” If God forgets my sin when he forgives, mustn’t I forget your sins when I forgive?
But God does not say that he will forget. Rather, he says that he will not remember. In Jewish culture, to remember is more than the unintended recollection of some past event. To remember is to recall, to reimagine, even to reenact some past event. So, when God told the Jews to remember what he had done during their journey through the wilderness, he instructed them to relive it for a week, to build “tabernacles” and stay in them, to reenact the wilderness wanderings. They called it “The Feast of Tabernacles.”
When God says he will not remember, he does not mean that he cannot remember—he does not have amnesia. He means that he will not recall what has happened (our sin) to our harm. He will not use what we have done against us. He chooses not to “relive” our wrongdoing or summon it up to use in judgment against us.
When we forgive, we do the same. It is not that we cannot, but that we will not, remember. When Clara Barton, the founder of the American Red Cross, attended an event where a former enemy – someone who had done wrong by her – was present, her friend pointed the wrongdoer out and recalled what the woman had done. Clara seemed not to remember. The woman, surprised, said something like, “Surely, you remember,” and went on to detail the offence. When Clara did not get upset about it, her friend persisted. Finally, Clara said: “I distinctly remember having forgotten that.”
That is what we do when we forgive. It is not that we cannot remember, but that we choose not to remember in order to harm the other person—even in our own minds. To forgive is not to forget, nor is it the cessation of anger. Forgiveness is a covenant before God not to use a person’s sins against them to their harm. When I have forgiven, I will not recall that person’s offence in order to harm them in the eyes of other people, in my own eyes, or by taking vengeance (even the passive-aggressive kind) against them.
There is still more to forgiveness, which I have described elsewhere (https://shaynelooper.com/2022/10/30/as-we-forgive-our-debtors/), but even after people understand what forgiveness entails, they may still struggle to forgive—and not know why. They have decided not to harm the other person in any way, even in their own thoughts, yet they continue to do so. Why isn’t it (forgiveness) working? Why can’t they do it?
One reason may be that, although they have forgiven the offender for the offence – something that took place years ago when he/she did this to me – they have not forgiven the offender for the hurts that offence caused. For example, I might forgive you for telling a lie about me in your foursome on the golf course last summer, but that lie cost me a promotion. It caused a rift between me and a long-time friend. It led people at my church to distrust me.
If I am going to forgive you, I must not only forgive you for what you did, but for what you caused. This is often the missing link in forgiveness, and the reason for our seeming inability to forgive.
This kind of forgiveness is costly, but it is the kind that God himself offers. He not only forgives us for what we have done, but for what we have caused. The repercussions of human sin have been vast and inexpressibly harmful, causing even the death of the Lord of heaven and earth, yet God has forgiven. And he is our example (Colossians 3:13).