Archive for the 'Forgiveness' Category

Dr. Mike Witter recently interacted with whether or not it is appropriate to forgive ourselves. Be encouraged to read Mike’s excellent post.

Here is what I wrote in Unpacking Forgiveness regarding the question, “How can I forgive myself?”

If you are asking, “How can I forgive myself?” it is probably in reference to mistakes you have made in life. You know that your choices have caused yourself and others great pain. You want to know how you can move beyond your regret.

While is a good thing to want to move beyond your mistakes and the consequences they have reaped, there are fundamental problems with even raising this question. As I have stressed throughout this book, forgiveness is something that must occur between two parties. In light of that truth, it makes no more sense to talk about forgiving yourself than it does to talk about shaking your own hand.

More important, our great need in life is not forgiveness from ourselves. Rather, we need God’s forgiveness. When it comes to regrets and lingering guilt, we need to ask God to forgive our sins, knowing that Christ already paid the penalty for sin on the cross. Paul talked about this very point in 2 Corinthians 7:10, when he said that godly grief brings about true repentance which leads to salvation. Nancy Leigh Demoss said, “Forgiveness isn’t something you can give yourself. It is something [God] has purchased for you.”

You might respond, “Okay, maybe you’re right. Maybe ‘forgiveness’ is not the word that I want to use. But how do I get past this? How do I move beyond my feelings of regret?” The short answer to that question is that you must be increasingly centered on the cross. You must live in the glory of the Gospel. The more you focus on Christ and the truth of his Gospel, the more you will find joy in your salvation and victory over guilt and bitterness.

If you’ve ever struggled when you hear a group of Christians offer blanket forgiveness then a guest post I did on Zach Nielsen’s blog may be of interest.

I didn’t follow the Casey Anthony case closely enough to offer any meaningful opinions about guilt or innocence.

But one of my goals with Unpacking Forgiveness was to consider situations when the wounds are deep and justice seems far away. When a case such as this is so much in the center of public awareness, it is critical that Christians interact responsibly with it and take the opportunity to point people to the Cross. To that end, I offer some basic principles regarding how we ought  to respond.

• Trust God for Justice – Romans 12:19 (quoting the OT) explicitly tells us that vengeance belongs to God.  No one is getting away with anything.  I take no pleasure in writing that there will be a Hell of a reckoning one way or another very soon. No appeals.  No evidence hearings. No shenanigans.  God who sees all perfectly will deal justly in the timing that it pleases Him. (By the way, this is one of the reasons why this discussion Frances Chan, Rob Bell, and Hell is so critical, see also Mike Wittmer’s excellent book).
• Be confident that God loves little girls infinitely and eternally more than any of us. Again, justice will be served. [Update: I wrote this ambiguously - - I mean that God loves little girls more than we love little girls - - - not that God loves little girls more than, say, little boys.]
• Take no revenge. Scripture repeatedly warns us against taking revenge, again see Romans 12:19.  You may let yourself off the hook by saying, “There is no possibility of me taking revenge on Casey Anthony,” to which I would respond, “Don’t you think that some of the people writing about Casey Anthony are taking revenge? It would seem that some are trying to pay Casey Anthony back if no other way than through Tweets. Or is it just my imagination?”
• Honor our court system. Some who watched the trial and believe that Casey Anthony was guilty may be tempted to be very cynical about our court system.  Never the less, Romans 13:1-7 tells us to pay honor to our government recognizing that God is sovereign.  Like Joseph, we can say that whatever harm may have been intended, God will work it together for good for his people (Genesis 45:5-7, Romans 8:28). The government is only a tool in God’s sovereign hand, however mysterious it may seem that God allows injustice in the short run.
• Point people to the Cross. Situations like this are the opportunity for Christians to point to a balanced view of forgiveness that stresses love, justice, and grace.  Casey Anthony is not the only one who will stand before her Creator. We are all sinners, and we will all be there.  If we don’t know Christ, then the wrath of God abides on us (John 3:36).
• Examine yourself. If you find yourself feeling terribly ungracious towards Casey Anthony, then perhaps it is because you haven’t been thinking enough about God’s grace in your life.  Indeed, this is what happened with the unforgiving servant in Matthew 18:21-35. Do you get more energized about the sin or perceived sin of someone else or your own? Consider 2 Corinthians 13:5.
• Don’t trivialize forgiveness and misrepresent it by saying silly things like, “We all need to forgive Casey Anthony. Christians have so often said cheap things about forgiveness in contexts like this.  We need to point people to the Cross, not say something like, “We just all need to forgive Casey.”  Lots more to say about this, but I won’t try and re-write my book in a post – - though you could take the forgiveness quiz to get some flavor of the discussion. The answers to the forgiveness question are here.

What else would you add?

See also this column I wrote after the Virginia Tech murders or my article for Reformation 21, Packing Unforgiveness.

Notice that when this lady unpacked forgiveness with her son’s killer forgiveness meant “more than a feeling.”  The victim’s mom and the killer ended up being neighbors.

If you watch the video, you will notice there is still some of the language of privatized / therapeutic forgiveness. For instance, the victim’s mother says that forgiveness is something that a person does for herself. However, Cross centered forgiveness is not just for the person forgiving. It is for reconciliation and a redeemed relationship. Indeed, I think this story of this lady forgiving her son’s killer shows that forgiveness wasn’t simply for herself. It has also been redemptive for her son’s killer and for her relationship with him.

Of course, I have lots more to say about this in Unpacking Forgiveness

MINNEAPOLIS – In Minnesota, a young man was murdered and his killer was sent to prison. Then, as CBS News correspondent Steve Hartman reports, the story took a surprising turn.

In a small apartment building in North Minneapolis – a 59-year-old teacher’s aid sings praise to God for no seemingly apparent reason. Indeed, if anyone was to have issues with the Lord, it would be Mary Johnson.

In February 1993, Mary’s son, Laramiun Byrd, was shot to death during an argument at a party. He was 20, and Mary’s only child.

“My son was gone,” she says.

The killer was a 16-year-old kid named Oshea Israel.

Mary wanted justice. “He was an animal. He deserved to be caged.”

And he was. Tried as an adult and sentenced to 25 and a half years — Oshea served 17 before being recently released. He now lives back in the old neighborhood – next door to Mary.

How a convicted murder ended-up living a door jamb away from his victim’s mother is a story, not of horrible misfortune, as you might expect – but of remarkable mercy.

A few years ago Mary asked if she could meet Oshea at Minnesota’s Stillwater state prison. As a devout Christian, she felt compelled to see if there was some way, if somehow, she could forgive her son’s killer.

“I believe the first thing she said to me was, ‘Look, you don’t know me. I don’t know you. Let’s just start with right now,’” Oshea says. “And I was befuddled myself.”

Read the rest here.