"I find that when I think I am asking God to forgive me I am often in reality (unless I watch myself very carefully) asking Him to do something quite different. I am asking Him not to forgive me but to excuse me. But there is all the difference in the world between forgiving and excusing. Forgiveness says "Yes, you have done this thing, but I accept your apology; I will never hold it against you and everything between us two will be exactly as it was before." But excusing says "I see that you couldn't help it or didn't mean it; you weren't really to blame." If one was not really to blame then there is nothing to forgive. In that sense forgiveness and excusing are almost opposites."
Lewis continues "forgiving does not mean excusing. Many people seem to think it does. They think that if you ask them to forgive someone who has cheated or bullied them you are trying to make out...that there was really no cheating or bullying. But if that were so, there would be nothing to forgive. They keep on replying, "But I tell you the man broke a most solemn promise." Exactly: that is precisely what you have to forgive. (This doesn't mean that you must necessarily believe his next promise. It does mean that you must make every effort to kill every taste of resentment in your own heart--every wish to humiliate or hurt him or to pay him out.) The difference between this situation and the one in which you are asking God's forgiveness is this. In our own case we accept excuses too easily; in other people's we do not accept them easily enough."
It is no secret that forgiveness is a hard thing. It takes work, thought, practice, and yes even great struggle to truly forgive and "accept your apology" and "never hold it again you" and for "everything between us to be exactly as it was before." Yet, that is the nature of forgiveness... to look at one another with clean, fresh eyes and see the person before us as beloved. To 'excuse' is to almost set aside the belovedness in each of us... it is a cheapening of God's gift of unrelenting love.
Lord, help me to live forgiveness so that I can uphold the belovedness in others. Amen.
0 comments:
Post a Comment