Forgiveness: Who Can Do It? (Requirements to be a qualified forgiver)
Now the second requirement: To be a qualified forgiver you must be a wronged person.
It is one thing to be hurt and another thing to be wronged, and we need an eye for the difference. Some people seem blind to the moral factor of life. They just cannot see it. They are morally handicapped.
Some people tend to be apathetic when someone does them serious wrong. Others tend to be volcanic when someone steps on their toes. Both have a failing when it comes to discernment. The first sort put up with the worst of unfair slings that people aim at them, put up with them as if they had them all coming. The second kind spring into action like alarmed leopards in instant retaliation for any accidental invasion of their space. The first type puts up with everything. The other puts up with nothing. Neither type does well at forgiving.
Discerning people have an eye for moral differences. When someone hurts them accidentally, they accept it as one of the risks of living around clumsy people. But when they realize that it was no accident, that the person who hurt them knew what he was up to, they know that they were not only wounded, they were wronged besides. This is the kind of moral discernment that qualifies a person for forgiving.
We are wronged if a friend betrays our secrets, or a parent abuses us, or a partner steals from us, or a collegue lies about us and costs us a promotion. We are wronged whenever someone gets us to trust him and then uses our trust to exploit us.
Of course, anybody can be wrong about being wronged. We can be conspirators in our own suffering; we may actually have encouraged the person to take advantage of us. Or we may think the other person meant to injure us when in fact we have been victims of a sheer accident. And if it comes down to it, we may have deserved what he did to us. We may feel wronged when in fact we are only wounded.
None of us forgives with 20/20 vision. I suppose that many of us have forgiven somebody who did not really need to be forgiven. And it is probably better to forgive too much than to forgive too little. Grace can afford a bit of overspending.
Still, the rule holds: To qualify as a forgiver, one needs the discernment to know that what she suffered, she suffered unfairly, that she has not just been hurt but offended and wronged as well.
[Lewis B. Smedes, The Art of Forgiving (New York: Ballantine Books, 1996), pp. 42-44.]
Any thoughts?
Posted by Ruth at 2/19/2004
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