The Book of Forgiving

 

              Sometimes it feels like forgiveness is uplifted as the highest of values, and also the least well explained. A pastor (I know I’ve done this) will breathlessly describe forgiveness as the core of the gospel, or the most important outworking of the Spirit in our lives, or some other nice thing about forgiveness. And we leave it there for everyone to work out on their own. As you can imagine this can lead to guilt for those who don’t forgive, charges of hypocrisy at Christians who don’t forgive well, and folk are taken advantage of, because they forgive in ways that don’t reckon with the reality of being sinned against.

              Luckily Desmond Tutu and his daughter Mpho Tutu wrote The Book of Forgiving: The Fourfold Path for Healing Ourselves and Our World which lays out practical steps for forgiveness:

1. Tell the story—Just the facts, here’s what happened from my perspective.

2. Name the hurt—this is what happened to me on account of what happened, this is what it felt like, these are the ongoing effects.

3. Grant forgiveness—This is the step most people jump to when they try to forgive. What the Tutus name clearly is that this step can take time, the hurt could have been named a decade previous, but only with time did it feel okay to take the “I forgive you” step.

4. Renew or release the relationship—Just because you forgive someone doesn’t mean you want to continue your relationship with them, similarly the process of forgiveness often changes the relationship, the relationship should be something different on the other side of forgiveness.

              In addition to these four steps for the person offering forgiveness, the book offers a corollary, four steps to repentance:

1.   Admit the wrong—note that this is the first, not the last and only, step.

2.   Witness the anguish and apologize—you may think you know the harm you’ve caused, but you need to really know what you are confessing before you can rightly move on.

3.   Ask for forgiveness—you give the power back to your victim, you are committing yourself to the possibility of change, asking to begin again, offering to make amends.

4.   Renew or release the relationship—The victim may choose to renew their relationship with you, or they may not, yet you may both move forward into the future.

         As with the Fourfold Path of Forgiveness there are no time limits to these steps, they ebb and flow as the relationship and circumstances of both parties dictate the pace, the victim may put an end to things at any point.