A little thing called forgiveness

During a recent interview with Fox News host Bill O'Reilly, Donald Trump was asked if he could forgive someone who had offended him. O'Reilly stated that Donald claimed to be a Christian and "forgiveness is a "Christian tenet." Donald replied that while forgiving might "probably" be the "right thing to do" he preferred another biblical tenet, that of "An eye for an eye."

I'm not too sure about Christian tenets -- a belief -- but Jesus told us to do this, so I'm all in. Till I'm not. I suspect that's where some of us land if this is a debate.

Problem is, forgiveness goes much deeper than a mere tenet. Jesus was absolutely clear (which isn't always the case, I'm afraid) about what this means to us. 

Jesus tied our forgiving to God the Father's: And when you stand praying, if you hold anything against anyone, forgive them, so that your Father in heaven may forgive you your sins.”

Uh. What?

I must forgive so that God can. If Trump was being truthful, which is something he's certainly said he always is, then he's forgone Christianity's basic concept and gone to the Old Testament. 

Let me give you an example:

In an interview with Real Simple, domestic violence survivor Pascale Kavanagh said that she never thought she would reconnect with her mother—her abuser—during her adult life. However, in 2010, her mother suffered several strokes that left her unable to communicate or take care of herself. With no one else to help, Kavanagh began to sit by her mother’s bedside and read to her. Through this, Kavanagh says the hate she had for her mother dissipated into forgiveness and love.

Or:

According to an excerpt of the book Why Forgive? in Plough Quarterly, Steven McDonald was a young police officer in 1986 when he was shot by a teenager in New York’s Central Park, an incident that left him paralyzed. “I forgave [the shooter] because I believe the only thing worse than receiving a bullet in my spine would have been to nurture revenge in my heart,” McDonald wrote. While the younger man was serving his prison sentence, McDonald corresponded with him, hoping that one day the two could work together to demonstrate forgiveness and nonviolence. Unfortunately, the young man died in a motorcycle accident three days after his release; but McDonald still travels the country to deliver his message.

Let's be clear that Jesus made this a tenet, or a precept, or even a command. But beyond all that is the idea that unless one can find forgiveness in one's heart, one can't find peace (as well as forgiveness).

I've been fortunate. I've never had anything happen to me that would negate my ideas about forgiveness. As far as I can remember, there had been nothing that would keep me from forgiving others. Oh, I can think of a couple of incidents perhaps that would make me wonder about the idea, but nothing that couldn't be forgiven. I'm sure in my 17 years in ministry there have been some who talked about my abilities or simply talked about me. That goes with the territory, I'm afraid. But I don't give them a blanket forgiveness out of some necessity from scripture. No, it's much more that I understand on a base level that Jesus forgave me, hurt for me, died for me, so what can I do? I can forgive others the way I was forgiven to the best of my ability.

Oh, there are times when it is less than easy. Surely. But we must. We simply must.

Mary Johnson lost her son in 1993 after a then-teenaged Oshea Israel got into a fight with him at a party, and shot him. With so much unanswered, Johnson went to visit Oshea in jail. After their first contact, “I began to feel this movement in my feet,” Johnson told The Daily Beast. “It moved up my legs, and it just moved up my body. When I felt it leave me, I instantly knew that all that anger and hatred and animosity I had in my heart for you for twelve years was over. I had totally forgiven you.” The two now live as neighbors in the same duplex, and Johnson has even referred to Israel as “son” in interviews. “I admire you for your being brave enough to offer forgiveness, and for being brave enough to take that step,” Israel told The Daily Beast. “It motivates me to make sure that I stay on the right path.”

Till we understand this phenomena called forgiveness, we will never be forgiven. That's Christianity. That's life.