On Forgiveness

In my previous blog post, Thanksgiving Daybook, the day after, I mention that I am pondering the topic of forgiveness; more specifically, our obligation to forgive those who do not seek repentance. Some may assume by reading this that I am currently struggling with forgiving someone; however that is not the case. The question posed continues to tickle my brain ever since my spiritual director and I discussed it several years ago. He posits that we are not obligated to forgive others when it is clear that they don't want us to and they hold no remorse for knowingly offending us. Based on conversations surrounding forgiveness that arise often, I have discovered that almost no one agrees with this position. So, I guess I am still trying to 'get my head around it'.

In agreeing with my former spiritual director, does this mean that I don't have a forgiving heart? No. I fully understand 'forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those' and I know that if we choose not to forgive someone, we cannot expect our heavenly Father to forgive us:
"For if you forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father also will forgive you; but if you do not forgive men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses" (Matt. 6:14–15).

This morning, I discovered an excellent article, that I highly recommend, on the Catholic Answers - This Rock web site written in 2003 by Jimmy Akin entitled, The Limits of Forgiveness.

In his essay, Mr. Akin discusses: Forgiveness and Feelings, Anger and Sin, Anger and Forgiveness, What Forgiveness is Not, Preemptive Forgiveness, and What Forgiveness is. This piece has offered the clarity and reassurance I have been seeking - particularly the final two sections. Allow me to quote from the article:

We aren’t obligated to forgive people who do not want us to. This is one of the biggest stumbling blocks that people have regarding the topic. People have seen "unconditional" forgiveness and love hammered so often that they feel obligated to forgive someone even before that person has repented. Sometimes they even tell the unrepentant that they have preemptively forgiven him (much to the impenitent's annoyance).

This is not what is required of us.

Consider Luke 17:3–4, where Jesus tells us, "If your brother sins, rebuke him, and if he repents, forgive him; and if he sins against you seven times in the day, and turns to you seven times, and says, ‘I repent,’ you must forgive him."

Notice that Jesus says to forgive him if he repents, not regardless of whether he does so. Jesus also envisions the person coming back to you and admitting his wrong.

The upshot? If someone isn’t repentant, you don’t have to forgive him.

If you do forgive him anyway, that can be meritorious, provided it doesn’t otherwise have bad effects (e.g., encouraging future bad behavior). But it isn’t required of us that we forgive the person.

This may strike some people as odd. They may have heard unconditional love and forgiveness preached so often that the idea of not indiscriminately forgiving everybody sounds unspiritual to them. They might even ask, "But wouldn’t it be more spiritual to forgive everyone?"

I sympathize with this argument, but there is a two-word rejoinder to it: God doesn’t.

Not everybody is forgiven. Otherwise, we’d all be walking around in a state of grace all the time and have no need of repentance to attain salvation. God doesn’t like people being unforgiven, and he is willing to grant forgiveness to all, but he isn’t willing to force it on people who don’t want it. If people are unrepentant of what they know to be sinful, they are not forgiven.

Jesus died once and for all to pay a price sufficient to cover all the sins of our lives, but God doesn’t apply his forgiveness to us in a once-and-for-all manner. He forgives us as we repent.

Yes, we still need to have a heart of mercy. God desires all of us to reside in Heaven with Him and I do believe, as Mr. Akin points out in his conclusion (please see article), that we must have the same attitude toward forgiveness as our Heavenly Father does. We, too, should will that all God's children repent of their sins and offenses. If someone has sinned against us knowingly and remains unrepentant, we must never cease to hope and pray for his salvation while we offer the deep sting of our wounds to Christ, our true healer.