On forgiveness. (Part 2)

On forgiveness

Part 2: The heart of forgiveness is restoring our relationship with God – not seeking to be “let-off” for our mistakes

What is it, then, that we are doing when we forgive – and, indeed, when we seek forgiveness? Let’s deal with seeking forgiveness first, as I think that is easier.

As with just about everything, there is a good version and a bad version of it. When we seek forgiveness, it could simply be a desire to escape from the consequences of our actions. We have done wrong, and perhaps we even knew we were doing wrong at the time, but we went ahead and did it anyway, because it suited our interests at the time. On reflection, we recognise that we wish we had made better decisions. Therefore, can the negative effects of our wrong actions – now classified as “a mistake” – be written off, as though we had never made the wrong choice? This desire to “wipe the slate clean” is, I think, a perfectly good desire. The danger is when we think that this can be done glibly, as though we feel we are free to engage in any bad action because we have a “get out of jail free” card, which we play as casually as we sinned. (The root definition of “sin” is, of course, “to fall short” in our aim at goodness.) There is also the huge danger that our main desire in seeking forgiveness is to make ourselves feel better, restoring our sense of righteousness, rather than having our main focus on eliminating the harm that our sin has put into the world.

How then do we do justice to our very genuine desire to put right a wrong, when the very essence of doing wrong is that it cannot be undone? One clear answer is that repentance is not done casually, but sincerely and with genuine sorrow. This is not simply a matter of “crying enough tears” to show that “you really are sorry this time”, but it’s more about taking the measure of your actions, to feel the weight, both of what you got wrong, and of what you now want to get right. We need to be very careful that this doesn’t descend into emotionalism, whereby we “prove our sorrow” and make ever more extravagant promises that “this time it will be different” and we will not make that mistake again. What it does need to be is an intense focus on goodness, to reconnect ourselves with our primary aim in life of living in tune with God – and I think this is the core content of “righteousness”. Even more than a measure of our own actions, it is a relationship with God, who is perfect righteousness – but with God, his righteousness does not veer towards a focus on legality, in terms of who is in the right, for God’s righteousness intrinsically includes qualities of love, compassion, mercy and forgiveness. These are not in competition with, but complementary with, God’s justice, purity and ability to do what is good and right. If forgiveness is focussed on restoring our relationship with the God of love, then that will launch us into a life of living in tune with that love, so that new harm is not done, and old harms are mended.