Forgiving Isn’t Always Easy, But It’s Necessary
Have you ever had to forgive a person that wasn’t sorry? I can tell you from experience, it is not an easy thing to do. In fact, it’s probably one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do in my life. However, I can also tell you that it is probably the best decision I could have made. Think about it this way, the longer we hold on to a grudge, the more anger and negative energy we will fill ourselves with. All we are really doing is creating baggage in our own life. Forgiving and moving forward allows us to enjoy life. Keep in mind, we should always keep the lesson we learned in mind. Just because we make the decision to move forward does not mean that we need to give someone another opportunity to put us in the same position.
05/10/2018
The last two sentences salvaged this short post.
If a person cannot apologise, i.e. acknowledge an inappropriate behavior abusing the trust given to them, then they value being right more than the relationship so it is best terminated rather than seeking restoration of the trust. Likewise there will be people with whom there is no relationship in the first place with whom one has no desire to rebuild the relationship.
In brief there are two main types of justice: retributive and restorative.
Where restoration is the goal then in Luke Christ says first rebuke your brother, and if he repents (apologises) then forgive, and be prepared to repeat this process many times.
Where restoration is not the goal, or it is but the person pushes back against the rebuke or otherwise will not acknowledge the behavior as inappropriate so terminating the restoration process, then Christ does not say forgive anyway and move on together.
You move on alone but asking the Father to forgive them for they know not what they do. The process is better encapsulated by the word ‘pardon’.
The difficulty arises when the nature of the relationship involves a degree of intimacy which cannot easily be cast aside as when two brothers move on and never speak for decades and especially when two people are married.
So in the latter case for example in case of an affair it is absolutely vital for an acknowledgement of the inappropriateness of the affair to be offered. Only then can forgiveness be extended. Even then it is essential for contact between the partner who engaged in the affair and the third party absolutely cease, or any interaction between the two be in the presence of the betrayed marriage partner.
08/10/2018
Thank you for your comment. We send out healing thoughts to anyone going through betrayal.