When people go through a big change, as many people have of late, let’s just say that at such times it’s not always the best in people that comes out.
Within these changes, and their aftereffects, people have done things that hurt others. In times of uncertainty, it’s human nature to become rather self-preserving. People begin looking out for themselves much more, and thus they are not looking out for you very much, or as much as they did in the past, and that may hurt you. People in some cases have made commitments to others and then broken them later. Some people have felt that they were betrayed. All kinds of things have happened. Those hurts are real and can be very deep.
What all of these things do, sadly, is keep fellow believers from being the body of Christ that we need to be. It hurts faith and trust in one another. It damages something that is core to the Christian faith and to our mission, and that is our love for one another, and our demonstration of that love. Someone spoke in an earlier meeting about how people we have contact with and witness to can tell if we’re sincere and if we really walk the walk of Christianity that we claim to. They can see it in how we interact with one another. It shows, and it’s an important part of our witness.
When Christians feel and act unloving toward one another, it damages their testimony, hurts others, hurts them, and goes against what the Bible teaches.
The Epistles in particular have some tough things to say about loving your brothers—a message both for those who have done unloving things to others and also those who need to forgive others.
This commandment we have from Him: whoever loves God must also love his brother.[1]
Lack of love, hurting others, doing things that cause love to die, are all detrimental. All of these things go against what Jesus asks of His followers and disciples. It’s very sad. But unfortunately, it happens. Throughout the years members of the Family Fellowship have been hurt. Maria and I are very sorry for any and all hurt that you may have experienced. We wish we all could be perfect people who never hurt others, but that’s not how people are; we are all sinners who fall short of what we would like to be.
I have this saying—I say it fairly often—and that is that people are people. Christian or not, people are not perfect. There’s none righteous except God. All have sinned.[2] That’s just the way it is. We’re human beings. We’re flawed. There’s nobody that’s perfect. None of us are loving all the time, unfortunately. We are truly flawed creatures. People are selfish. You are selfish. I’m selfish. We’re all human. We’re all sinners. We’ve all had people hurt us, and we’ve all hurt others as well.
When you are hurting, it’s hard to remember that you have hurt people as well. The hurt that you received hurts you, and that’s what you’re concerned about, because it’s your pain. But I think it’s important that you realize that there are people that you’ve hurt too, and that we all need forgiveness. You have been hurt and you’ve hurt others, and you’re going to get hurt in the future, and you’re going to hurt people in the future. That’s just life. I think that’s why the Lord said a fair bit in the Bible about forgiving.
“Lord, how often will my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? As many as seven times?” Jesus said to him, “I do not say to you seven times, but seventy times seven” (490 times).[3]
If you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you, but if you do not forgive others their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.[4]
Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you.[5]
The parable of the wicked servant in Matthew 18:23–35.[6]
I think it’s important to realize that some people who hurt you probably didn't know that they did; or they certainly didn’t know that they hurt you so deeply. They’ve moved on with their lives, and yet you still think of them in that context of when and how they hurt you, and you hold those things against them in your heart. Not only is it painful to you when you relive the hurt over and over again in your mind, but it’s actually damaging to you. It holds you back. It’s something that you need to let go of, and the way to let go is by forgiving.
I think there are very few people who deliberately set out to hurt others. It’s hard for me to believe that there are members of the Family International who wake up in the morning and say, “You know, I’m just gonna stomp on so-and-so today. I’m gonna go out of my way to be mean. I’m gonna do this to so-and-so because I want to hurt him.” Generally speaking, you go about the business of your day, just doing what you do, or you’re thinking about yourself, your own challenges and problems, and you end up doing something that hurts somebody. It’s unthoughtful, or unloving, but it wasn’t done on purpose or maliciously, and you may not realize the effect it has on others. But of course the person who happens to be hurt by your actions or words is affected and fully realizes it.
I’m sure that virtually everybody has some instance in mind where some person or persons did something to you that hurt, and you still remember it and it still affects you when you think about it. That’s a reality. There’s a pretty good chance, though, that you have also hurt other people to some extent or in some way, maybe without even being aware of it. People hurt people. That’s just the way that life is, because people are people.
So let’s go on the assumption that all of us have been hurt in some way at some time, and let’s also go on the assumption that we have also hurt other people in some way at some time. No matter how careful we are, no matter how much we try to not hurt people, we do. So we can assume that we are all sinners, and that we all need forgiveness, and that we all need to forgive.
When you forgive, you’re putting those things that are bothering you into the Lord’s hands and leaving them there—those things that work against you if you hold on to them. Not forgiving makes it difficult to progress, because it’s so easy to get stuck in this loop of “Things aren’t going good, and it’s so-and-so’s fault.” “I’m facing this problem because of what so-and-so did to me.” They may very well have done something that has affected you negatively and you may have the right to be angry. However, these events are in the past, and not forgiving is damaging you, not the person who hurt you. Something that happened in the past—whether days or months or years ago—is affecting you today and will continue to do so for as long as you keep reliving it again and again in your mind. For your own sake, you need to let it go, you need to get it behind you—and the way to do so is through forgiveness.
Now, that is not an easy thing to do. It’s also not necessarily an instant thing. You can pray, you can ask the Lord to work in your heart, you can say “I forgive,” and you can sincerely forgive; but even if you do all that, it doesn’t mean that those negative feelings go away forever immediately.
You may know the story of Corrie ten Boom, who was taken from her home during World War II and ended up in a concentration camp. She was treated very cruelly. She saw her sister die there. She saw friends die. Some time later, after the war ended, she went to a meeting at a church and one of the guards from the camp was there. He didn’t recognize her but she recognized him, and seeing him brought back terrible memories. During the course of the meeting he asked her for forgiveness. She had to make a decision right on the spot—was she going to forgive him? She took the step to forgive.
She said the process of being freed from the hurt of some past event can be compared to the ringing of those big church bells. It takes a lot of effort to pull the ropes to get them ringing, and then once they’re ringing, when you let go of the rope, the bell doesn’t stop ringing immediately. It continues to ring until the momentum of the bell finally stops. You let go of the rope and it still goes ding ... ding …. ding ….. ding …... and eventually it stops.
You can forgive, and when you do, you let go of the rope; but all your negative feelings don’t necessarily go away immediately. It can take time, and you have to fight to stop thinking about them. Even once they are largely gone, from time to time something happens, or somebody says something, and the memories resurface and it comes at you again. But if you have forgiven, if you have truly given it to the Lord and forgiven someone, it is forgiven. You’ve done what you needed to do. If it comes up again, you may have to fight against those feelings again, and you should, but you have forgiven.
Having thus learned to forgive in this hardest of situations, I wish I could say I never again had difficulty in forgiving! I wish I could say that merciful and charitable thoughts just naturally flowed from me from then on. But they didn’t. If there’s one thing I’ve learned at 80 years of age, it’s that I can’t store up good feelings and behaviour—but only draw them fresh from God each day.
Maybe I’m glad it’s that way. For every time I go to Him, He teaches me something else. I recall the time, some 15 years ago, when some Christian friends whom I loved and trusted did something which hurt me. You would have thought that, having forgiven the Nazi guard, this would have been child’s play. It wasn’t. For weeks I seethed inside. But at last I asked God again to work His miracle in me. And again it happened: First the cold-blooded decision to obey, then the flood of joy and peace. I had forgiven my friends; I was restored to my Father.
Then why was I suddenly awake in the middle of the night, hashing over the whole affair again? My friends! I thought. People I loved! If it had been strangers, I wouldn’t have minded so.
I sat up and switched on the light. “Father, I thought it was all forgiven! Please help me to do it!”
But the next night I woke up again. The negative thoughts returned. They’d talked so sweetly too! Never a hint of what they were planning. “Father!” I cried in alarm. “Help me!”
His help came in the form of a kindly pastor to whom I confessed my failure after two sleepless weeks. “Up in that church tower,” he said, nodding out the window, “is a bell which is rung by pulling on a rope. But you know what? After the sexton lets go of the rope, the bell keeps on swinging. First ding then dong. Slower and slower until there’s a final dong and it stops.
“I believe the same thing is true of forgiveness. When we forgive someone, we take our hand off the rope. But if we’ve been tugging at our grievances for a long time, we mustn’t be surprised if the old angry thoughts keep coming for a while. They’re just the ding-dongs of the old bell slowing down.”
And so it proved to be. There were a few more midnight reverberations, a couple of dings when the subject came up in my conversation. But the force—which was my willingness in the matter—had gone out of them. They came less and less often and at last stopped altogether. And so I discovered another secret of forgiveness: that we can trust God not only above our emotions, but also above our thoughts.
—Corrie ten Boom (Excerpt from “I’m Still Learning to Forgive”)
[1] 1 John 4:21 ESV.
See also: 1 John 4:20; 1 John 3:10–12, 14–15, 16–18; 1 John 2:9–11.
[2] As it is written: “None is righteous, no, not one” (Romans 3:10 ESV).
For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God (Romans 3:23 ESV).
[3] Matthew 18:21–22 ESV.
[4] Matthew 6:14–15 ESV.
[5] Ephesians 4:32 ESV.
[6] The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who wished to settle accounts with his servants. When he began to settle, one was brought to him who owed him ten thousand talents. And since he could not pay, his master ordered him to be sold, with his wife and children and all that he had, and payment to be made. So the servant fell on his knees, imploring him, “Have patience with me, and I will pay you everything.” And out of pity for him, the master of that servant released him and forgave him the debt. But when that same servant went out, he found one of his fellow servants who owed him a hundred denarii, and seizing him, he began to choke him, saying, “Pay what you owe.” So his fellow servant fell down and pleaded with him, “Have patience with me, and I will pay you.” He refused and went and put him in prison until he should pay the debt. When his fellow servants saw what had taken place, they were greatly distressed, and they went and reported to their master all that had taken place. Then his master summoned him and said to him, “You wicked servant! I forgave you all that debt because you pleaded with me. And should not you have had mercy on your fellow servant, as I had mercy on you?” And in anger his master delivered him to the jailers, until he should pay all his debt. So also My heavenly Father will do to every one of you, if you do not forgive your brother from your heart.
Copyright © 2012 The Family International.
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