Forgiveness

Found at Remember Rwanda

This weekend I'm in the Pacific Northwest giving a seminar to a group of Christians about forgiveness. It is interesting to see people come to these workshops wearing their frustration and defensiveness on their faces. At least, as the speaker, I can look out across the audience and see the pain and incredulity they must feel. They don't look at each other, so it's not as visible to them as it is to me.
Something really jumped out at me during last evening's talk, and that is the balance between insight and responsibility. Let me explain.

People who have been unfaired against in some manner tend to keep track of what has happened to them so they have a way of making sense of the flood of feelings they experience. They create stories about who hurt them, what it meant to them, how it has affected their lives, and the practices they have adopted in response to the hurt. People tell themselves these stories often, adding details to bolster why they do what they do or feel the way they feel. Such a story initially helps to make sense of why they feel so miserable. As time passes, these stories can take on lives of their own. It gets trotted out whenever the person feels sad about the results of being unfaired against, and it is told as justification for any number of ills in one's current situation. As it is rehearsed, the teller becomes firmly fixated in the past and unable to move ahead. They mistakenly refer to the past in order to somehow come to terms with the present. The story gets told over and over until onlookers say things like, "He really has issues with authority" or, "She has relationship problems" or "He's one of those walking wounded people." These stories get told to people hardly known to the one telling it, because the story is so tied into the individual's sense of identity that they can't explain themselves without explaining what has happened to them. It is a real turn-off to have to listen to explanations of how a person was hurt, aggrieved, frustrated--over and over and over. Grievance stories are crippling.

We all have some sort of grievance story about someone or something. It is human nature to try to understand why we are the way we are. It is shirking of responsibility to use those stories to excuse ourselves from being accountable for our behavior in the here and now. We remain trapped by the past, waiting for someone else to change before we will grow or be responsible for the way we are acting.

I have seen this happen over and over in therapy. Therapy is a place where people learn how the past has impacted the present, what their natural propensities are, and how to deal with their circumstances. But a number of people enter therapy merely to understand why they are the way they are, and then do precious little to deal with their current unacceptable behavior. They mistakenly think that it is enough merely to gain insight into themselves but they leave therapy without any substantial change. They are still prickly to deal with, abrasive, self-absorbed, and without concern for anyone but themselves. This is not successful therapy. (and many of us have been accused of providing this type of therapy when in fact, the clients drop out of therapy the minute we begin holding their feet to the fire about their resulting behavior. "I'm wounded, can't you see" is their response).

We hear theology that smacks of this idea, too. If you realize that you are a sinner, come to God, and that's all you do. Yes, because we are human we can't muster a whole lot more than that. What gets left out is that we now must walk in newness of life through the Spirit of God. We are responsible for our behavior after we come to God, through His life-changing grace. We don't rehearse how damaged we are by sin without asking God to change us. We work at it while He works within us. That's why it is called a spiritual discipline--it requires something from us.

All of us are wounded. We live in a sinful world where at times we have to come to grips with circumstances that we wouldn't wish on our worst enemies. Understanding how badly we have been hurt is not adequate. Being responsible for the way we subsequently treat others is the rest of the story that needs to be developed.

Today I hope to help our seminar attendees think about how to move beyond their grievance stories and into responsibility for their behavior. When I look into the faces of the hearers and see the "Aha!" expressions and determination to be responsible for themselves, I will know that real growth has occurred.

I'd better get out of bed and get to the church!

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