I'm often re-captivated by C.S. Lewis' distinction between excusing and forgiving, so please bear with me if I've blogged on this before--I've been thinking about a fresh application of it this week.
Lewis points out that excusing a wrong is to accept that circumstances made it difficult if not impossible for a person to behave otherwise. Excusing minimizes the action and the pain caused by finding an alternate reason for a behavior that would often be extremely and deeply hurtful were it to come out that it was done maliciously.
Forgiving, on the other hand, looks wrong straight in the eye and assigns full responsibility to the one who has done the action and then fully forgives it anyway. Forgiveness is costly. It recognizes pain and wrong-doing to a qualitatively different degree.
It struck me this week that I am quick to excuse myself for wrongs that I have done. In fact, I'm also quick (or at least quick-er) to excuse other people for things they have done to me. Failing that, however, genuine forgiveness is much harder to offer either to others or to myself. It is easier to find excuse than to extend forgiveness. Forgiveness requires too much of me.
And as I've considered this, it struck me that God does quite the opposite. God is much slower to excuse us for wrong that we have done--in fact he refuses to let us off the hook in all but the most extreme cases. God rarely excuses wrong. What he does instead is forgive. He forgives recklessly and at great cost to himself. He forgives repeatedly. He forgives early in the morning and he forgives late into the night.
God, in his infinite mercy, forgives rather than excuses in order that we might have genuine intimacy with himself. God's forgiveness invites us into full reconciliation with himself.
And it makes me wonder about my own patterns of forgiving and excusing--what if forgiveness, rather than excusing, genuinely marked the end of more of my conflicts and small slights and deep hurts?
3 comments:
I think that the genuine forgiveness move is indeed much, much harder--it takes being willing to look at someone and say, "You've wronged me" (which they may not want to hear!), and it means being willing to not allow that wrong to have the last word.
I think that in the home & church culture we grew up in, forgiveness wasn't on the table. It makes hearing and saying the words, "I forgive you" feel foreign and strange to me.
Good thoughts.
no doubt, bro. i once worked with someone who said 'i forgive you' after every time that i apologized for something--it really pissed me off! i realized how much i use apologizing as a tool to manipulate a softer response to me, not as a genuine request for forgiveness.
Excuse me, but someone around here needs forgiving.
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