Forgiveness–Session Three
Start with the Lord’s Prayer
When I forgive, I feel closer to God and I feel more the person God meant me to be.
Fear is useless, what is needed is trust, our work is to stay open in prayer. God’s part is to lead us along the way to new freedom.
Usually the things we need and want to forgive fall into three categories that cover all of our relationships. Desiderio calls these the three big forgives, and they mirror the three big loves found in the Golden Rule in Luke 10:25-28.
“Just then a lawyer stood up to test Jesus. “Teacher,” he said, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?” Jesus said to him, “What is written in the law? What do you read there?” He answered, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind: and your neighbor as yourself.” And Jesus said to him, “You have given the right answer: do this, and you will live.”
The three big forgives are to forgive God, to forgive your neighbor, and to forgive yourself. The overall process is about forgiving our neighbor, but we’ll look at these first two as well because if we have a grudge against God, or we are unable to forgive ourselves, forgiving our neighbor will be impossible.
Forgiving God
If you are blaming God for doing something to you, or allowing something to happen to you, then you have to come to some sort of reconciliation in order to grow in your relationship with God. Use the example from Carolyn Hax. Examples from Desiderio. A woman who didn’t like her body. Mad at God because of our dysfunctional family. A man who is chronically angry with God because of disease that killed his daughter. Hurts from the church. Cases of abuse. God should have been protecting us. Where is God in this situation? Shouldn’t God take better care of me? Where was God? If God is good, why does God allow evil to happen?
God’s answer is Jesus Christ. Jesus is the best person and the worst things happened to him. Jesus met evil with love and he teaches us to do the same thing. Jesus wants us to meet the problem with love. This problem of evil cannot be solved, it’s a mystery we live with. God understands how we feel because Jesus suffered from evil. God entered into evil, wept with us, experienced it on the cross and overcame it. IF we are angry at God, we need to forgive God so we can move on with our spiritual lives. God is not happy w/ the way things are, God has been betrayed by creatures that God created out of love. Perhaps we will develop some empathy for God.
Forgiveness is the loving choice to renounce evil and do good.
Forgiving ourselves
Accept God’s love, admit the reality of original sin and our piece of it, have Empathy for ourselves, let go of self-blame and move toward self-acceptance. Forgive yourself as you would forgive your best friend.
We have to develop empathy for ourselves in order to forgive ourselves. We have to understand how we have hurt ourselves and move from self blame to self acceptance. Do you feel guilt or shame? John Bradshaw Healing the Shame that Binds You
Guilt—I made a mistake.
Shame—I am a mistake.
In order to move past our guilt over something, we can make restitution for the mistake and take responsibility for our mistake.
Shame has to be replaced w/ a positive sense of self—we may have to forgive ourselves anyway when we haven’t done anything wrong. People who are abused sometimes feel that they are responsible for the abuse. Forgiveness rewires us to have a more fulfilled life. We have to forgive ourselves for being human, especially when we try to play God. We have to have some empathy for ourselves, realize that we are fallible. We have to rely on God and depend on God to help us. Desiderio suggests that when we are in a bad place and down on ourselves that it’s helpful to keep substituting positive for negative thoughts. Focus on things you’re grateful for.
He suggests other practices to move from negative to positive. Focus on strengths. Do good to others. Cultivate compassion, recognizing in others the same joy and hurts that you have. Do something to identify common humanity that you share with other human beings. Think of someone who loves you and hold that person in your heart. The value of our mistakes is what we learn from them. Forgiving ourselves usually happens gradually. It’s good to remember all the esteemable things we’ve done along the way. Photos of the good things in our lives. It’s a good idea to put the photos in a mental slide show—the ones that show yourself in your best light. Leave the others in the box. Play the slide show over for yourself. Remember yourself at your best moments. Be grateful for small graces—our faults don’t disappear all at once—we make progress little by little. The power to change comes from God—bringing our feelings to God in prayer and asking God to remove that feeling helps us move past guilt and shame.. Praying for others helps us to get ourselves out of thinking about ourselves.
Two daily practices that Desiderio does to develop a sense of gratitude.
Prayer before bed each night. Make a list of three things for which you’re grateful. Write a gratitude list, even on a bad day.
And each morning, he says the prayer of St Francis. (Pray this prayer at the end of class.)
First step in Letting Go.
Look deeply at what went wrong.
The first truth—we are good creatures of the God who wants the best for us.
The second truth—we do not love perfectly. We know ourselves as imperfect. We are born as good beings in a fallen world. Fallen nature—we have a great capacity for self deception.
Water ski on the river of denial.
When we’ve been hurt, it’s important to tell the story of what happened to a supportive and objective person who can see through another set of eyes. Telling story helps us to be more objective. We can’t do this alone. We live in a community of believers and we need a community to forgive.
Pay attention to both facts and emotional content. Write out the story of what happened as if you were a newspaper person. Just report what happened. Drain the emotion out of it. Be objective.
A person is a person before they become an enemy. We dehumanize our enemies. Propoganda campaigns dehumanize others. When we turn the other person into a demon, we turn ourselves into victims, and then we give up responsibility for the situation. In any situation, two imperfect people are involved.
It’s dishonest to say it’s all my fault because then you don’t have to do the hard work of forgiveness.
Desiderio suggests trying this when trying to forgive a person who has hurt you. Pretend that you have to write and deliver the the person’s eulogy in front of his family and loved ones, and think of three good things you could truthfully say about the person.
Examine and name your feelings around the transgression and the person who hurt you.
The only way out is through.
Name the feelings and discover what they are. Some people have a better emotional vocabulary than others.
Mad, glad, sad, and afraid.
These are feelings we have when we are in a state of unforgiveness. Disappointment, rejection, self doubt, abandonment, loss, humiliated, mocked betrayed, deceived, abused, insecurity.
Name the feeling, bring it up and move it out of our psyche.
Discover, disclose and discard.
Any assault against us creates loss and anger.
We feel diminished. We have less than we had before. Some people feel sadness, but suppress their anger. Others suppress their sadness by being angry.
Grief sharpens understanding and sharpens the heart—John Adams.
When grief is avoided, it can rupture relationships.
Desiderio says that at a funeral, forgive everything. Grief makes people do crazy things. People may act out in crazy ways. Old hurts can come back unchecked. Grief turned to anger can manifest as a fight over a detail, hard heartedness can push out compassion.
Forgiveness is the process of inviting compassion back into the situation.
Name the anger for what it is—grief gone wild. Anger has to be dispersed by empathy. Convert anger into something more godly—Colossians
Getting rid of anger is done with God’s grace—a spiritual conversion will only happen with God’s grace.
Don’t forgive too quickly. We rely on God’s grace to forgive. God works with who we are to bring about healing from a hurt. We have to have patience to work through the process.
Any forgiveness that bypasses justice is cheap forgiveness, has not acknowledged harm. If the hurt was no big deal, the forgiveness has no real value. Going along to get along—dishonest to forgive, cheap forgiveness is dishonest forgiveness. You can’t go deeper in a relationship—superficial forgiveness means that the relationship is going to remain on a superficial level. Unacknowledged dishonesty between two people about lack of forgiveness means a cool relationship.
Sometimes the offended party offering excuses for the behavior of the offender. This is another form of cheap forgiveness. This is easier than to show anger or sadness out of fear. Desiderio gives example of father who is constantly late to visit with his son (mother has custody). This is not healthy forgiveness. Expressing feelings and work through them. We only offer unconditional forgiveness after we’ve worked toward conditional forgiveness. Only when conditional forgiveness proves to be impossible, then unconditional forgiveness may be the thing. Sometimes we have to detach from the offender.
When the situation is not going to change, we have to detach and move on.
We are beloved children of God who live in an imperfect world. Being honest with ourselves about our strong feelings of anger. We can tame anger by acknowledging that we are really sad and that our grief has turned into anger. Discover, disclose and discard. Tell the story to another person who can help us be objective. Look at hurt in larger picture of our lives. God gives us gift of forgivenss to help us get beyond hurt.
Looking deeply lets us know the depth of the hurt so that we know the depth of the forgiveness.
Accept those who have hurt us for who they are, admit they aren’t going to change, and then detach with empathy.
Remember, when I forgive, I feel closer to God and I feel more the person God meant me to be.
Fear is useless, what is needed is trust, our work is to stay open in prayer. God’s part is to lead us along the way to new freedom.
End with the Prayer of St Francis that Desiderio suggests praying every morning.