Unshackled Echo ~ July 16, 2019 ~ Changing Identifiers

If you change someone's identity, you can change their world. But when you change someone's identity in your own mind and heart, you can change your own world, long before they change and even if they don't. That's what forgiveness really is. It's spiritually giving the bad guy new papers, a new identity. Resentment and refusal to forgive is like putting yourself on constant alert and in battle mode with no relief and no time away from the front lines with all the danger and stress and fear and hate. We must be constantly on the lookout for the presence of the enemy, we must be ready for their attack, we must be prepared to defend ourselves, and remembering the pain they've  already caused and that the best defense is a good offense, we must get them before they get us.

If we see that person or are reminded in any way about that person we won't forgive, it's like alarms going off within us that can't be ignored. Battle Stations! Battle Stations! Red Alert! Then we slip into whatever battle mode  our tactics call for. For some it may be defensive martyrdom and victimhood. When the world sees how horrible that person was to us, they'll become our allies, help us and condemn them. Or it may be character assassination. Tear them down and make them look bad while showing that we did nothing wrong and may have even reacted with the poise and restraint of a saint. There are myriad ways we might react and act to defend ourselves, to push our position and to defeat our enemy. But whatever tactic we've been taught, are genetically predisposed to use and have spent our lives living by, that mode is automatic and programmed. We lose control as the auto defenses go active.

That person is the enemy and must be treated as such, whatever that means to us. We can't help it. That is their identity. They are the enemy. They are the one who did this and that and the other. They are the one who hurt us. They are the one who could hurt us again if we don't protect ourselves. But what if that is not who they are to us?

What if we truly forgave? When we forgive, we give them a new identity in our eyes and heart. We give them another classification in our defense system. We no longer see them as the enemy we must protect ourselves from at all cost and kill before they can kill us. They become in our minds the wounded that need help, that need our prayers and compassion. If they weren't spiritually sick and damaged they would have never....God, help them, heal them, draw them deeper into relationship with You and change their heart, making them safe in the process, and change my heart toward them so I can trust You to be my defender and protector and I can be free to be the me that You have called me to be and no longer the soldier on the front lines still fighting a war long over and letting the pain of the past,  which You want to heal, control me.

When we change how we see them, we change the programming that controls our actions and reactions. When we determine to see our former enemies through the eyes and classifications of God, we can respond as He would respond rather than by the old patterns. The only way to find freedom from the fighting and wars of the past though is to forgive the unforgivable, give love and compassion to those who do not deserve it and refuse to continue to fight. It's what Jesus did on the cross and what we were called to do.

Today's Unshackled Echo was previously published on

July 16, 2016.

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