Chained No More

Rich writes:

"Forgiveness is a beautiful idea - until you have something to forgive." -C.S. Lewis

Throughout the last 9 of my 32 years of life, I had a particular trial placed in front of me. Never before has my Christian faith been so tested. A severe injustice was done. Hearts were obliterated. Lives were shattered. Broken, enraged, numb - these are some words that come to mind.

I don't want to get into what happened; this is not the place. What is important, however, is that I was brought to the very end of myself where I had nothing left; I hit rock-bottom. Struggling to pray, struggling to forgive, and struggling to love myself or anybody for that matter, I trained myself to live life on the surface. I never allowed myself to go there; in denial, I refused to even think about it. Ritualistically inflicting physical pain on myself in the gym each morning, pretending it was some kind of "disciplined virtue," I did all I could to self-medicate and just avoid the wound that was inflicted. And I let it fester - for years.

It doesn't take scholarly analysis to recognize that forgiveness is one of the most challenging aspects of the Christian life. It is undoubtedly a central element in Jesus' teaching. As with every other facet of the faith, he shows us the way - amidst the betrayal of a close friend, abandonment by the ones he loved, and an excruciating execution on the cross, Jesus forgives. 

I vividly remember reading those haunting words that made it all click for me one day. Making my way through the collected writings of Dorothy Day, her words jumped right off the page and like a handful of salt thrown right into my open sore, they caused me to realize the fracture of unforgiveness in my soul: 

"I really only love God as much as I love the person I love the least."

Immediately my eyes welled up with tears, knowing there was a certain somebody out there who I didn't love at all. In fact at the time, on that breezy fall afternoon as I sat squeamishly on my brown leather sofa, it was safe to say that I absolutely hated the man. I called myself a Christian, with a tarnished crucifix dangling from my neck and a broken-in Bible in my hands, but suddenly I was at a complete loss. Dorothy's words left me speechless.

The Holy Spirit began to gently reveal how unforgiveness had been paralyzing me. Over the years, I had let righteous anger slowly harden into bitterness and resentment which eventually became a thirst for revenge. I still tremble as I type, knowing the former condition of my heart and the captivity in which I lived. Adding evil to evil is the devil's work. To bring good out of evil is God's work, and I was faced with a choice. In whose work did I want to take part?

Peter Kreeft declares that, "The best fruit, the most beautiful flower of suffering is forgiveness, the plant that blossoms only when watered with tears." And there is no alternative to forgiveness except hell, according to Jesus' parables. So in making this crucial choice whether or not to forgive, I sought to better understand the implications of unforgiveness.

Jesus is very clear in the prayer he gave us. We ask the Father to forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. If we forgive others their trespasses, our heavenly Father will also forgive us. And if we don't forgive others their trespasses, neither will our Father forgive us. So that's it. You have to forgive if you want to be forgiven.

At the heart of forgiveness is the truth that the violator owes you a debt and you choose to release him. It is to say, "I know full well what you did to me, and I recognize the injustice or injury that you inflicted, but I now choose to free you from it; I release you." Forgiveness is not treating someone as if they never sinned. That would require us to let go of reason as well as righteous anger. And the church is very clear on this notion.

In his encyclical Dives in Misericordia, Pope St. John Paul II notes that, "the requirement of forgiveness does not cancel out the objective requirements of justice... In no passage of the gospel message does forgiveness, or mercy as its source, mean indulgence toward evil, toward scandals, toward injury or insult. In any case, reparation for evil and scandal, compensation for injury, and satisfaction for insult are conditions for forgiveness" (DM, 14).

Forgiveness doesn't preclude justice. Pope St. John Paul II forgave the gunman who attempted to assassinate him. But that gunman remained in prison. Justice and forgiveness don't counteract each other. Rather, they go hand-in-hand. This simple understanding has been so helpful for me personally. It's also been helpful to take a good hard look at my own heart. Jesus came to forgive me. How could I not do the same? Found on countless prayer cards throughout the world: he came to pay a debt he didn't owe, because we owed a debt we couldn't pay. My goodness, Jesus came:

"He came. He entered space and time and suffering. He came, like a lover. Love seeks above all intimacy, presence, togetherness. Not happiness. 'Better unhappy with her than happy without her' - that is the word of a lover. He came. That is the salient fact, the towering truth, that alone keeps us from putting a bullet through our heads. He came. Job is satisfied even though the God who came gave him absolutely no answers at all to his thousand tortured questions. He did the most important thing and he gave the most important gift: himself. It's a lover's gift. Out of our tears, our waiting, our darkness, our agonized aloneness, out of our weeping and wondering, out of our cry, 'My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken me?' he came, all the way, right into that cry" (Peter Kreeft, Making Sense Out of Suffering, 133).

In the midst of excruciating pain and trauma, I turned to Jesus crucified. To run from the cross, to run from suffering, is to run from love. I try to look at a crucifix often. St. Bernard of Clairvaux said that whenever he did, Jesus' five wounds would appear to him as lips, speaking the words, "I love you."

In choosing to forgive the man who caused such unfathomable tragedy in my life and particularly that of my beautiful wife, I am released from bondage. I am released from the cycle of interior violence and hatred inside my own soul. I still hurt, I still remember the injury, believe me I will never forget; but in choosing to forgive, I myself am finally free.