The Miracle of Forgiveness

by Joy Atkinson

Today, in recognition of one of the main themes of the High Holy Days of Judaism, I want to speak about a miracle: the miracle of forgiveness. I suspect we have all been on the giving or receiving end of this miracle at one time or another in our lives. A couple of years ago, I was on the receiving end in what to me felt like a significant way. A dear friend whom I had lazily neglected to keep in touch with called to tell me some tragic news concerning her family. When I picked up the message from her on my message machine, and heard her say that she had some sad news that she wanted to tell me in person, I felt terribly guilty for not writing to her for so long. When we later spoke in person, and I heard her sad news, I felt worse for losing touch. When I apologized and asked her to forgive my neglect, she was gracious and genuine in her forgiveness. And so we talked, we cried together, we renewed our connection to each other through the sharing of her pain, and the miracle of forgiveness took place. It happens every day, though perhaps not often enough.

To modern Unitarian Universalists, the word "forgiveness," when it's used in a religious context, as it is during the Jewish High Holy Days, may conjure up gloomy ideas of sin, guilt and punishment, ideas most of us Unitarian Universalists have long abandoned.

American Unitarianism built its foundation upon a critique of the Calvinistic idea that humans are depraved sinners in need of redemption. And Universalism rejected the wrathful, punishing Calvinistic God in favor of a loving God who grants salvation to all. Over a hundred years after Universalism and Unitarianism were organized into full fledged denominations, Thomas Starr King, famous Unitarian minister who was raised a Universalist, summed up the difference in the two denominations: Universalists believe that God is too good to damn anyone, Unitarians believe that humans are too good to be damned.

Because of this heritage, we, the heirs of these two traditions, tend to view humans as basically good, and tend to reject religious notions of sin and guilt. We've thrown out the idea that we should feel like guilty wretches, stained with original sin and in need of cosmic forgiveness. In our latest hymnal, we have included the song "Amazing Grace," with it's traditional wording: "Amazing grace, how sweet the sound/ that saved a wretch like me," but, significantly, new wording is suggested in a footnote, as an alternative, which substitutes "soul" for "wretch." In one congregation I heard about, one UU man couldn’t contain himself during the singing of this song with the traditional wording. He yelled out, “I’m not a wretch! I’m not a wretch!”

I would certainly agree with the prevailing Unitarian Universalist view about the basic goodness of human being. We aren't wretches! But I think that this optimistic view, by itself, leaves out something else that is part of our humanness--our dark side, the tendency we also have to be selfish, hurtful, less than honest, consciously or unconsciously destructive, even downright mean at times. Sometimes, we feel cranky and tired, and we lash out in anger. Or, we feel lazy, and neglect to call a friend. Or we do far less for that important charity or social cause than we know we can. We feel hurt by someone, and wish vengefully to return the pain. If we did not have such tendencies, forgiveness would be unnecessary.

The process of forgiveness in human interaction is complex. People sometimes tend to use the word "forgive" a bit loosely. A woman arrives late for an appointment, and breathlessly says, "I got caught in traffic. Forgive me." Or a man accidentally spills his soup on someone's suit, and asks forgiveness as he clumsily tries to wipe his mishap away. Lewis Smedes, in his book, Forgive and Forget makes a distinction between forgiving and excusing. We excuse each other many times a day for our little slights and mistakes: for the lateness, the spill, for forgetting to stop and pick up milk, but true forgiveness comes after a more serious offense.

True forgiveness has a depth to it, and it can neither be rushed nor forced. An overly easy, "cheap" forgiveness can short-circuit the process of growth and reconciliation that true forgiveness offers us. And forgiveness that is grudgingly expressed, because the offended one believes he/she should forgive, or because the offended one will, by forgiving, get to feel superior to the to the offender, is bogus; it is no forgiveness at all.

There is an important step that must precede forgiveness: acknowledging the hurt. This may seem easy, but it isn't always. Some people carry around a belief that they are invulnerable to pain, and they have trouble acknowledging that they can be hurt. Others are so super vulnerable that they deny they've been hurt, and they submerge the pain, sometimes just in order to survive. Children who have been abused or molested may unconsciously go to great lengths to deny the pain of their experience—by repressing the memory of the abuse, by falling into lifelong depression, or drug and alcohol abuse, or even, more rarely, by dissociating and splitting into multiple personalities. Even lesser wrongs may be denied, treated as if they never really hurt. We learn this stoic stance on the playground as children, when, after being insulted, we chant through our stifled tears, "sticks and stones may break my bones but words can never hurt me."

"Forgive and forget" is a commonly used phrase, but to truly forgive, we must first remember. We must tell the truth to ourselves about the pain and injury that has been inflicted on us, and we may want to tell the truth to the perpetrator as well, if it is safe to do so. If we are the offenders, it is a great help if we acknowledge to ourselves and whomever we have hurt that we have done something we believe was wrong. We need to apologize, and ask for forgiveness. It sounds so simple, yet we sometimes find it particularly hard to drop our pride and admit doing wrong, and harder still to apologize and ask, humbly, to be forgiven.

Another important step in the process of true forgiveness involves allowing time, when it's needed—time for the one who is hurt to experience the pain, time to grieve, time to allow the process of healing to take place, and perhaps, time for the offender to make amends or change the behavior that has caused the pain. It is certainly possible to forgive another person even if that person does not admit to wrongdoing, or won't change the hurtful behavior. But in an ongoing relationship, when the offender admits to causing the pain and asks to be forgiven, the healing is much, much easier. As psychologist and expert on sexual abuse Marie Fortune puts it: reconciliation happens "when forgiveness and repentance meet."

Once you have forgiven someone, do you then try to forget the wrong? Can you forget? Psychologist Thomas Szasz once said, "the stupid neither forgive nor forget, the naive forgive and forget, the wise forgive, but do not forget." The wise remember, because they do not naively deny the reality of the dark side of human nature, and they also have no wish to be martyrs by allowing hurtful behavior to be repeated over and over again. So they remember, and they forgive, because they know that forgiveness breaks through the cycle of conflict and pain, and opens up new possibilities for healing and wholeness.

Forgiveness does not imply that the offender is off the hook of responsibility. He/she should still be held accountable, but even if the offender won't make amends, even if the relationship ends, forgiveness is possible. Forgiveness stretches out its hand in peace, and does not require punishment, or restitution, or an even score. In the New Testament, when Peter asks Jesus: "How often must I forgive my brother if he wrongs me? As often as seven times? " Jesus answers " Not seven, I tell you, but seventy times seven." To truly forgive, we need to let go of the balance sheet. It is often not easy, and it is not always possible.

An old hurt can be forgiven even without the perpetrator's help, even if the perpetrator is long gone from our lives. But then, why bother, if the offender is gone? It may be worth the effort, because forgiveness may do as much or more for the one who is forgiving as it does for the one who is forgiven. When you forgive, you lift the burden of pain and anger from your own shoulders, you cease to wallow in helpless victimhood, and you refuse to let the injury dominate the rest of your life.

I've spoken about being open to forgiving someone, and about being forgiven by someone. But sometimes, the person we may have the most difficulty forgiving is ourselves. When we fall short of our own aspirations and expectations, when we make promises to ourselves that we fail to keep, it may be especially hard to let these personal shortcomings go.

The wisdom embedded in the High Holy Days of Judaism is that all three forms of forgiveness are addressed: asking for forgiveness from others, forgiving others, and forgiving ourselves. Through fasting and meditation, and through the words of prayers, songs and chants, people search their souls. They ask for forgiveness of those they have hurt, they grant forgiveness to those who have hurt them, they release themselves from unfulfilled vows they have made concerning their own behavior, and they open themselves to the gift of forgiveness from God.

Lewis Smedes has said that if there is an "ought" of forgiveness, it is not an "ought" of obligation" but an "ought of opportunity." We can't force it, even prayer and ritual can't make it happen, but we need to be open to the opportunity, and these High Holy Days are one tradition's reminder of the need to try to keep our hearts and minds open to the gift of forgiveness.

I believe that our forgiving is not entirely due to the efforts of our own will. After days or months or years of consciously or unconsciously working through the pain of an injury, forgiveness may just seem to come of its own accord, in its own time. A close friend of mine, who experienced the intense pain of a relationship break-up some years back, and who was beset for many months by anger, guilt and dreams of revenge, described to me how she woke up one morning, and realized that she had just somehow finally forgiven the man who left her, and the one he left her for. Had she chosen to just nurse the grudge and hang on to the anger (and we often do this because anger sometimes feels so righteous, so powerful), she may not have been open to the liberation that forgiveness brings. Recently, I spent some time with someone whom I felt very hurt by years ago. As we were chatting, I became aware that, slowly over the years, I had truly forgiven him. Just being aware of how forgiveness worked its magic on our relationship, I felt a lightness, a buoyancy, an almost physical feeling—like taking off a heavy backpack you’ve been carrying around all day. It doesn't always happen in this way, and sometimes we can forgive only partially. Sometimes, it doesn't happen at all. That is when we need to forgive ourselves, for not being able to quite get to forgiveness. But when it does happen, and it often does, the experience of forgiveness has something of the bright and healing quality of a miracle. In the words of Lewis Smedes, with which I close:

No one could suspect, in the nature of things, in the natural cause and effect of things, that anyone should ever forgive. We perform a miracle that hardly anyone notices... When we forgive we come as close as any human being can to the essentially divine act of creation. For we create a new beginning out of past pain that never had a right to exist in the first place. We create healing for the future by changing a past that had no possibility in it for anything but sickness and death.

When we forgive, we ride the crest of love's cosmic wave; we walk in stride with God. And we heal the hurt we never deserved.