Forgiveness Challenge: Completed

A while ago actually. I hope you can forgive me for the delay. Consistent, perhaps, with my expectations, the challenge did not offer much spiritual transformation for me personally, but I suppose I didn’t sign up because I had a lot of unforgiven memories to deal with. I signed up more for academic and spiritual curiosity. It was a way to equip myself for future ministry and for future forgiving. In that sense the challenge was successful.

Desmond and Mpho Tutu laid out a four-step scheme for forgiveness that can be applied to forgiveness of others and forgiveness of self.

1.       Telling the Story: The forgiveness process begins, in theory at least, by acknowledging the facts of an event that resulted in hurt.

2.       Naming the hurt: the story is incomplete if we cannot recognize what feelings emerged as a result of somebody’s actions. Disappointment, anger, loss, betrayal, whatever the damage, it is important to understand where the pain comes from.

3.       Granting forgiveness: The key to this step is a recognition of shared humanity. We are all human, which means we are relational creatures. We seek people with whom to share love and experience life. But it also means that we occasionally act out of our brokenness. When we are hurt by the actions of another, we must remember that the other should not be reduced to that one action, just as we should not be reduced to that one moment of pain. Forgiveness means recognizing the humanity of an offender, remembering that they also have pain in their past, and our own past mistakes are rooted in the same brokenness.

4.       Renewing or releasing the relationship: Forgiveness paves the way for a renewed relationship. While acknowledging the hurt, we can still love the other. Their sinfulness never entirely obscures their humanity, and ideally we can reestablish bonds of affection with somebody who has hurt us. Relationship and community are essential parts of the world that God created, and we should not abandon them thoughtlessly. Desmond and Mpho recognize, however, that releasing the relationship must be an option to follow forgiveness in cases of abuse.

This structure is consistent (or at least claims to be) with psychological research and the experiences of victims. The course emphasizes that forgiveness is a healthy thing for the victim. People often believe that refusing to forgive is a way of punishing an offender, but in fact the victim continues to suffer from the bitterness that needs to be dealt with.

Looking beyond the individual, forgiveness is an essential precondition for the peaceable world imagined in the gospels. The kingdom of God, revealed in the person of Jesus, is a world reconciled to itself and to God. In the Kingdom, we treat people as people. We forgive the fruits of our brokenness, and glorify God in our renewed relationships.

Desmond Tutu’s forgiveness project makes no theological claims, inviting people from all traditions to learn and experience forgiveness. But I can say with confidence that if you ask the Archbishop, he would say that the Kingdom of God is the central vision of his project.

The violent history of Northern Ireland has produced many moving case studies for the study of forgiveness. The forgiveness project has recorded hundreds of stories of forgiveness from participants, and there is a way to filter by country. A couple weeks ago I spent a good chunk of my afternoon reading the remarkable stories of forgiveness that have emerged from this tiny country. I have included the link below. I encourage you to read through a couple and see how forgiveness has the potential to transform individuals and communities in Northern Ireland. In every place for that matter. It is worth learning and worth teaching to our youth, pupils, and children.

http://theforgivenessproject.com/country/northern-ireland/