Few teachings of Jesus are more mysterious and difficult than his words about forgiveness: “If you forgive others their sins, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you won’t forgive others, neither will your Father forgive your sins” (Matthew 6:14-15).
To be frank, it feels to me like Jesus is asking rather a lot. Forgiveness is difficult even in relatively mundane circumstances, such as when a friend, who you know truly loves you, breaks their word or reveals a confidence. But we could all probably name cases where the damage goes soul-deep. Where one human being inflicts the kind of wound on another that will likely leave them limping the rest of their lives.
Sometimes the perpetrator is not sorry, or not as sorry as they should be. Or perhaps they are not around to express whether they’re sorry or not. The damage is catastrophic, even life-ending. The offense is soaked in denial, self-defense, or sheer recalcitrance. In such circumstances, what could forgiveness even mean?
Some time ago, I was wrestling with this question in prayer in a specific context of life-altering pain when a thought occurred to me—maybe impossible forgiveness begins with a very small step of simply allowing my wounder to be more to God than they are to me.
The verb “allowing” here may seem strange to some. After all, God’s grace and forgiveness for somebody else is not dependent on my permission. But I am becoming convinced over time that much of the spiritual life is an exercise in consent. God is taking the initiative within me and the world. I am learning how to consent to that work, how to consent to my healing, how to reduce my own resistance, how to add my “yes” to Christ’s. As a part of this same journey, I am also learning to consent to the truth of God’s initiative and God’s work within others, my enemies.
It strikes me that this picture of nascent forgiveness does not ask any of us not conjure warm and loving feelings toward our wounders. It doesn’t ask us, at least at this early stage, to release our anger or even to somehow desire our enemy’s good. It only asks us to recognize and acknowledge that our relationship with this person is not the limit of God’s, that this person might be more to God than they are to us. And it asks us, over time and with the help of the transforming Spirit, to begin to give our true consent to that reality.
What I am really doing in the journey of impossible forgiveness is seeking to surrender the other person more and more fully to their primary God-relationship. I am slowly releasing my desire to dictate that relationship’s terms, to place myself between God and my enemy. I am learning to give up my position as middleman and throw my wounder back on God.
This, I believe, is exactly what we find in the biblical lament tradition. Biblical laments acknowledge the depth of the wounds and pain, then project the full force of that pain in God’s direction. In lament we seek to cast our enemies back toward God.* Sometimes in the Bible, in the cases of the deepest sorts of wounds, this transfer happens with very strong language, even curses (see Psalm 137). But still, even when it does come in the midst of the curses, it may be a real beginning, the first move down the road of impossible forgiveness. Because in throwing my enemy onto God, I acknowledge a different relationship as defining for their story.
If this is not the whole of forgiveness, perhaps it is its earliest seed. Perhaps it is the place toward which, in the depth of our pain, we might first begin to reach.
Heavenly Father, you alone know the depth of our wounds. Forgiveness is impossible. But you have done impossible things before. So we offer you what we have to give right now—our rage at the wicked, cast on you with full-throated shouts of protest. Receive this as an act of worship. Make something from it. Make from it our freedom. Amen.
* For deeper exploration of this feature of biblical lament, I recommend Ellen Davis’ book Getting Involved with God: Rediscovering the Old Testament (Cowley Pub., 2001).
