forgive

I once heard the smartest man in the world, Greg Boyd, say that forgiveness is simply letting go. That makes so much sense to me. In the past when I let go of something it was like the moment when you are finally done crying after a good cry and you just fall back into a really cushy couch and stare blankly at the wall because it is finally all out. Your body is exhausted and your mind is exhausted. You are finally just able to simply be. You can stop thinking about the person who offended you and stop thinking about what you wish you would have said and just forget about it. Those are some of the best moments. Those are the moments when you give it up and in return are freed up.

Jesus said that God wouldn’t forgive us until we forgive others (Matt 6:14). I always thought that was cruel. That doesn’t sound a whole lot like unconditional love to me. Rather it is, “I’ll love you unconditionally as long as you follow this one condition.” But maybe I’ve been missing something. Maybe it’s not so much about God “won’t” forgive me as much as it is about God “can’t” forgive me and here is why.

Boyd shares a story about a woman in “Letters from a Skeptic” whose sister ran off with her fiancé the day before the wedding. For her whole life this lady was bitter at both her sister and her fiancé. She never forgave them. She continually chose to hang on to her bitterness and resentment. It took its toll on her. She died decrepit and angry. Boyd’s point is that if we persist in our choices we become a solidified being of our choices, both good and bad.

Maybe the reason God can’t forgive us, that is let go of it and move on, is because when we don’t forgive, we don’t let go and move on and thus we become this solidified being of resentment and bitterness. We become unlovable. Not in the sense that God does not persist in trying to woo us into His freedom, but rather because we are becoming beings of solidified resentment, we keep God from loving and forgiving us…we don’t let Him in.