But It’s Unfair!….
You may not know this, but I just finished the rough draft of my very first book. It’s a book about the spiritual reality that has changed my life more than anything else the last 24 years: Forgiveness!
I can’t wait to work on the last details of the book and to get it published as soon as possible. I know that the book contains truth that Satan hates with a passion. He doesn’t want any of us to live lives free from any bitterness, resentment or hatred. He wants us to be stuck nursing our wounds on our own and never dealing with our issues of unforgiveness. “Unforgiveness is the poison I drink while waiting for someone else to die”, someone correctly said about unforgiveness.
The question of fairness keeps many of us from forgiving people in our lives who have hurt us in different ways. It doesn’t feel fair that I – the victim of someone’s hurtful, destructive behavior – am the one who sits with the consequences. And, to be honest with you, it’s not fair. Not at all. Waiting for forgiveness to feel fair is a major hindrance to forgiveness. Real forgiveness will never feel fair. I don’t recall ever forgiving someone who hurt me where I experienced a clear sense of fairness. Quite the opposite.
Forgiveness is painful. Forgiveness doesn’t feel good in the moment. Don’t expect forgiveness to initially give you a great sense of excitement. But the long-term effects of forgiveness done well are myriad.
I love the story of Joseph in the book of Genesis. Joseph is brilliant, he’s gifted, he – like a lot of gifted people – struggles with arrogance and doesn’t understand his place in his family, and he’s punished and mistreated in ways that are completely disproportionate to any bad actions he may be guilty of. I associate myself a lot with Joseph in a number of different ways, but for this we’ll exclusively focus on what the story of Joseph teaches us about forgiveness. Let’s highlight a verse from Genesis 45:1 right as Joseph reveals who he is to his brothers: “Then Joseph could no longer control himself before all his attendants, and he cried out, “Have everyone leave my presence!” So, there was no one with Joseph when he made himself known to his brothers. And he wept so loudly that the Egyptians heard him, and Pharaoh’s household heard about it”
Forgiveness is painful. Cries and loud, sobbing tears are Joseph’s way of starting to process the emotions of the last 13 years of pain. In the story in Genesis, we see Joseph wrestling with his desire to forgive his brothers. He’s not perfect, he’s very much like you and me. He throws his brothers in prison, he scares them, he intimidates them, he messes with their heads in different ways to get back at them for the terrible act they did when they sold him into slavery and told their dad that Joseph was dead. But when he’s done playing games with them and he finally arrives at the station called forgiveness, we see the pain of it described in Genesis. Forgiveness isn’t straightforward, not even for some of our heroes of the Bible. They’re real human beings, and forgiveness is tough for all of us.
Do you need help forgiving someone in your life, please contact Transformative Truth. We would be honored to help you learn in the full freedom of radical forgiveness that Jesus offers all of us.