Forgiveness Over Easy

In the last installment I threatened to tell you why I believe people want forgiving to be easy. If people believe forgiveness is even worth doing to begin with they are going to want it to be easy. However, just like the complexity of the hurt and emotion that we are struggling with as we enter into the forgiving process forgiveness itself is filled with difficulty and takes many different skills and commitments to accomplish. What I am saying is that forgiveness is not easy. There are many compromised, watered down anemic versions of forgiveness floating around out there and those are easy. Unfortunately they do not accomplish the true goal of forgiveness which is first and foremost reconciliation.

I know what you are thinking. you want to know why on earth you need to be reconciled to that jerk that ruined your life or that drama queen who broke your heart or that deadbeat who took your money and now refuses to pay you back. The one thing these people have in common is that we have a relationship with them because they are our friends and family. This is where I want to start. With your inner circle. Your family and close friends. People who are in your life for the long haul. You ARE going to be in a relationship with them anyway you may as well work on learning to forgive. Why you ask? I would have thought you would already know this. You (and I) are going to say and do things to these people that will require forgiveness and they are going to do the same to us. When this happens. When a trust is broken, when a commitment is not kept, when a hurtful insult hits home, when you are crying because they did that thing again the process of forgiveness has already begun.

Uncle Guy: "MickGee you are such an idiot. How can forgiveness begin when the good insults aren't even done yet?"
Me: (with extreme sarcasm) "Well... so nice to hear from you again 'Guy' where you been?"
Uncle Guy: "Oh I never left, the question is 'where you been?'"
Me: "I... um... HEY! We're talking about forgiveness here right?"

My Uncle brings up a good point. Most people think forgiveness doesn't start until after you have been hurting for a while and finally want it to stop... or something along those lines. This could not be further from the truth. When we are talking about family and friends we already know something about our interactions. That something is the world famous 'second chance.' We all want them. We ALL need them. Some of us even deserve them. While most of us do not.

Uncle Guy: "Man MickGee you make zero sense. How did you even get a blog in the first place?"  
Me: "Guy, let's just dial it down minute and give me a chance to explain. You are so impatient"
Uncle Guy: "Get to the point already!"

So in the forgiveness process the first thing that happens is the offence. This is a nice word for hurt, pain, wrong, sin, evil, etc. The fact remains in order for there to even be forgiveness or the need for it someone first needs to have been wronged or offended. There needs to be someone to blame. In the previous post I talked about our relationship to God and how the wrong we had done required us to make a sacrifice for forgiveness so we could be reconciled with him. Now I want to talk about relationships between men and women, boys and girls. In this case what should happen is once the offense is known there should be a communication from the offended party to the wrongdoer. Now most of us are not gong to like this next part because it is difficult and takes skill and practice to get good at it. What needs to happen is a confrontation. In a perfect world the guilty party would just show up and confess to what he had done. However in our world of 'whatever you do don't get caught' and 'deny everything' this would seem very counter intuitive right?

Uncle Guy: "I have NO problem with confrontation"
Me: "Ya... I know"

My point here is that when you are dealing with your people, your inner circle. You need to pull out your best skills of communication. You have to let it all out. You need to let them know what they did to you and how it has impacted you. You need to let them feel it. Some of us have a natural ability to do this. (You know who you are). But you also need to be careful not to offend them while you do this. I know this is challenging but we are talking about people that we WANT to be in a relationship with most likely. What I am trying to get at here is the idea that every time something goes wrong with those you love and care about. When there is a rift in the relationship you need to already be thinking about how the forgiveness part is gong to work. If we can learn to become forgiving people and not just people who occasionally forgive then we have a shot and seeing forgiveness returning to our culture. But we have to learn this for ourselves and with those who are closest to us. Forgiveness take practice and learning about what forgiveness really is can take some time. There are a lot of forgiveness imitators and haters out there. Don't let them cheat you out of what forgiveness is for.

Uncle Guy: "You said that you were going to tell everyone whey they want forgiveness to be easy... when is that gonna happen...?"
Me: "You're right Guy. I will simply have to ask them to forgive me. I am an abstract thinker and sometimes I take the less than direct route to make my point."
Uncle Guy: "This blog is a waste of cyberspace"
Me: "Sorry you feel that way Uncle. Maybe it's time for you to go."
Uncle Guy: "Me? Go? Sorry nephew I am here for the "long haul" so you better get used to it"

Looks like my uncle and I have a few things to talk about. Her his my chance to practice telling him how his undermining is demoralizing and doesn't really help improve my blog. Stay tuned. Next time I will explain what the offender should do in response to being accused and hearing what damage he has done.

Forgiveness...what?

The problem with forgiveness is that people want it to be easy. If it's not easy they want nothing to do with it. Unfortunately forgiveness is never easy. Have you tried it? Then you know what I mean.

This is not the only problem we face with forgiveness though. We also have the issue of knowing what forgiveness is and what it's for. You think you know? I am here to tell you that you do not. In fact, I am here to tell the world that not only do we not know what forgiveness is, what it is for and just how difficult it is. We have totally lost forgiveness and replaced it with something else. Something that is truly NOT forgiveness. If you doubt me then check this out...

Forgiveness predates every single person living on the planet right now. You didn't invent it or discover it or evolve into it. It is an ancient idea that goes back in human history many many thousands of years. Yes that's what I said. THOUSANDS of years. So let's get away from the idea that you or I or any other "expert" who wrote a book or went to some very expensive and reputable learning institution somehow created the new improved version of forgiveness. Because that just is not true. In fact the exact opposite may be true. Those expert people may actually have damaged and mutilated forgiveness into something it was never intended for. All the while believing they would win the Nobel prize for doing it. Okay, I am sure it is at this point I need to say... I am not against experts or education. Quite the opposite. We need to learn and understand. However we need to be careful what conclusions we draw under the force of public pressure and a modern culture looking for NEW answers to old questions.

So we are not the creators of forgiveness. The origin of forgiveness in the history of our world goes back to a time when man was wrestling with the BIG questions of life. He wanted to know what the sparkly things were in the sky at night and if they would ever fall down on him. He marveled at the rain, the wind, fire, nature, woman, love, fear, death... It was near the beginning. Man looked to the heavens and found God or gods depending on your particular paradigm. What was discovered was man believed that God was not exactly pleased with what was going on down here. Long story short (and it is a fascinating story by the way) it was determined that in order for things to be made right between man and his God there would need to be a sacrifice. That's right, I said sacrifice. Something was gonna have to die! What happened then you ask? Well an expert would take the animal (we won't talk about the God's who required human sacrifice here) butcher it properly and offer a sort of bar-b-q sacrifice to God. Why would we do this you ask? to have forgiveness of course. Man believed that when the sacrifice was made that all of the "bad" or "wrong" things which had been done could be placed on the sacrifice. Then once the sacrifice was killed and offered to God those wrongs were gone... forgiven. What man really wanted was to be in a good relationship with his God who he believed ruled over everything. Really what it came down to was man finding a way to have reconciliation with his God. That when he had broken trust with God there was a way to do something that could make it right. That could grant man forgiveness for what he had done and bring reconciliation between the two; God and man.

Now I realize some people at this point would like to stop talking so much about God. You may have some idea about God that will not agree with the premise of this little story. Sorry about that. I am not particularly fond of stories about slavery either but I still acknowledge them as history. What I am telling you here is not religion as much as it is history. Even though told very loosely which I am sure will get me trouble with someone. We are going for concept here people and not necessarily empirical fact and detail. So are you still with me... ?  

What I hope you understand was that this concept was of utmost importance at one time in the mind of man. There were festivals and celebrations leading up to the time of sacrifice in man's history. It was much more central to who were as humans than it is now. Being right with the God of the universe had a very strong appeal to most everyone. People wanted forgiveness and people wanted reconciliation. Forgiveness is for reconciliation. That is why it exists. I know what you are thinking... that sounds hard. Damn right it sounds hard. In fact without the sacrifice part it was impossible. IMPOSSIBLE. Got it!?
So let me ask you. when you think about forgiveness today does the thought of 'sacrifice' and 'difficult but essential' even enter into your mind? Probably not. Do you wanna know why? Well I am going to have to save that for another blog post. Suffice it to say. We want it easy and we want it now and we want it with zero confrontation and if possible without having to speak to another human to get it.

You know what? I have an idea. I am going to set up an app. It will be called "Forgiveness 123" what you do is type in your 1. wrongdoing 2. your apology and 3. your request for forgiveness. Then you will get a reply text that says. "You are forgiven and everything is going to be just fine... have a nice day - sincerely the Universe or God or Jambi or Your Inner Self or the Light of Life" This way you can get forgiveness from whoever or whatever you think you need forgiveness from without even actually having to speak to the person who you hurt or wronged...would you like that... I bet you would. Hmmmm... I wonder if that would actually work? Well, stay tuned. I have a lot more to say about forgiveness and how we have completely lost it.


-MickGee