It is something so hard to wrap the mind around because I can't do it. Most people I know who get honest about the real stuff, the hard stuff, the stuff that has shredded us, can't do it. Forgiveness is not hard. It's impossible. The forgiveness that matters, anyway. The forgiveness that frees us from the anguish, bitterness, misery and poison of resentment. Resentment, to feel again, over and over. To think you've gotten past it, over it, survived it, and then something reminds you and the heart feels the pins of the past pierce it, the lungs forget to take in air, the stomach twists and turns, the pressure behind the eyes builds, the neck stiffens, the jaw clenches, the anger blooms and you might as well be in a time machine emotionally experiencing the trauma all over. You crumble into despair. Or you explode, striking out at the one who hurt you, or whoever is handy. Or is that all just me?
Maybe that's not you, Dear Reader. I hope it's not, because if it isn't, then I suspect that you have been spared. Spared the brutality. Spared the kind of trauma that causes terror in the night and the day. Someone teased you once on a second Tuesday of the week when you were seven, and you had to work for years to learn to forgive that bully who embarrassed you once. I'm not trying to make light or fun. If the things that you had to learn to forgive were the not really that harsh variety, that's good, but you do need to forgive them. It's still not easy or natural. We can stew and steam all day because someone stole our parking place at Wal-Mart, and it can eat us up with anger. That's little. There's nothing traumatic about it. It wasn't even personal. But the anger we hold onto and use to power us through the day can kill us if we don't learn to forgive and let that crap go.
But that's not what I am talking about here. I'm talking about the stuff that isn't let goable. I'm looking at the stuff that is evil and unforgivable. The stuff that changes the very essence of who you are. I can't forgive everything. I can't forgive what is unforgivable. That is the very definition of the word unforgivable.
un·for·giv·a·ble -ˌənfərˈɡivəb(ə)l: adjective; so bad as to be unable to be forgiven or excused. synonyms: inexcusable, unpardonable, unjustifiable, indefensible.
The page I copied the above from had a horrible example with that definition, "losing your temper with him was unforgivable." Isn't that ridiculous?! Losing your temper with him was unforgivable is only true if him was a tiny baby that you shook to death for crying. Yeah, I think shaking your baby to death is in that unforgivable category. Some other things and people that I have found it impossible to forgive include, but are not limited to the two men who beat and raped me when I was 15, the lawyer who promised me that if I took the plea bargain being offered I would do four, maybe five, years of the eight years that they wanted me to agree to and not the seven and a half I did/ He stole two and a half years from me. That same lawyer for not realizing or caring that they charged me wrong and at least getting that changed so that I would have had the option in two more years to get some rights back that I have now lost for life. All the people who got my hopes up about parole the second to the last time, telling me that I was sure to be sent home and not receive the two-year set off I got. The man who tried to rape me in prison. The Aryan Brotherhood. The guards who abused their power and were as cruel as inmates. Being falsely accused of a crime and even arrested for it, starting the trauma all over again. Those who claimed to believe that I was innocent but treated me like I was guilty. People who refuse to let the past eight years matter more than the mistakes I made over 15 years ago. The preachers and people in the church that made a little boy believe that God hated him. The religious folks who held me to a higher standard than the other children because my dad was a preacher. Drunks who get behind the wheel and kill innocent children. A man sexually abusing a little tiny girl not big enough to ride a bicycle and then telling her that if she told anyone he'd kill her and killing her puppy to prove his sincerity. I still have days when I want to go end that guy. There are a few people in the list above that I have days where I would love to really make them suffer or send them to hell where they belong. Those angry days are hard.
Then there are the things that I can't forgive done by the guy I did try to kill, more than once. Sometimes it's easier to forgive the horrors and evil of others than it is to forgive myself. How am I supposed to forgive myself for the destruction to my own life and others? I can't forgive blowing up the bridges of relationship and giving my brothers just cause to hate me. I can't seem to truly forgive the damage I've done by confusing sexuality and physical closeness with acceptance, by allowing the fear of rejection to cause me to reject, belittle and bully others, by rejecting and hurting people I liked because I was ashamed of how others treated me and teased me for it...basically for treating people horribly wrong for all the wrong reasons. I find it unforgivable to have allowed my brokenness to take my ability to control myself and breaking the hearts of those who cared for me and who I cared for. I believed the lies that God didn't care for and love me, and my reactions to those lies made me run into the depths of hell drenched in gasoline, courting death. I can't forgive that. I blamed God for the actions and hearts of people who were as unable to walk in love as I am, and I can't forgive that foolishness.
Oh goodness I could go on and on. There's quite a list of things done to me that I can't forgive, and there's an even bigger list of things I've done that I know I don't deserve forgiveness for. Maybe you have such a list. Maybe you, like me, have experienced things that absolutely can never be made right and the very idea of forgiving them is an insult and offensive because of the damage. But then, that's the point of forgiveness. It's not about what is deserved. That's called justice. And to tell someone that they should forgive the unforgivable is so unfair and wrong. It's like saying learn to breathe underwater. We're simply not capable. And no amount of seeing and understanding the benefits of breathing underwater will enable us to grow gills. Likewise, no amount of seeing and understanding that the poison of the past is killing us, no amount of fear and misery felt by reliving the trauma of life repeatedly, no amount of desire to let go and be merciful can erase the heart's demand for justice and make forgiving the impossible to forgive possible. It can't be done.
Just like setting ourselves free can't be done. A true addict and a real alcoholic can never quit long under their own power. We can't stop being selfish. We can't love unselfishly, expecting or needing nothing in return. We can't love our enemies and embrace those that hurt us and used us. We can't change ourselves from people who sin to people who never do. We can't put our pieces back together as though we were never broken. We can't....goodness, there is so much that we can not do, and it boils down to we can not be like Jesus. The only person I can be like is me, and I'm a broken, trashed mess who hurts himself and others, who wants mercy, gentleness, comfort, solace, healing and yes, forgiveness, for myself, in spite of what I deserve while desires nothing but justice and payback for what others deserve.
And that is what amazes me so much about the love and forgiveness Christ offers. The one person who ever lived who truly didn't deserve any of the bad that happened to Him endured the pain and brutality and betrayal and rejection of humanity to satisfy justice, because someone had to pay. Justice demands blood. He did it out of love for me, knowing I didn't deserve it and never would. Knowing that I would agree wholeheartedly with the law that said I deserve to die but would wish to live, He came to make that possible. And when my evil and my sin caused the breaking of His heart and body, even caused His death, He forgave me and paid my debt. And He did the same for you.
It's His power that gives us the power to become like Him, to love God and others, to walk free from the things that enslaved us, to choose what's loving and right over what's wrong, and it is His power, His heart, His love, that makes it possible to forgive. It's not us. We can't make ourselves like Jesus. With us, no matter how spiritual we get, it is impossible. But with God, the impossible for us becomes possible. We can forgive the unforgivable because relationship with Him gives Him the opportunity to do the forgiving. It's the love of God that gives life to the dead, that pays the debt of justice and makes new and whole the broken. It's beyond our ability and power. It's beyond human possibility to love like God loves and to forgive. But God does for us what we can not do for ourselves when we let Him. That includes saying today I will not drink and drug for the drunk and the junkie. That includes loving those who don't deserve our love. And that includes forgiving the unforgivable, even ourselves.
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