Forgive yourself: You’ll not only feel better, you’ll be better

We usually think of forgiveness as a relational matter. They hurt me; they need to apologize. I did some wrong; I have to admit it and ask forgiveness. You may theoretically believe that is true, right? But living it out in the real world can be difficult. It is much easier to blame or avoid than reconcile.

We need to figure out forgiveness to save the world from its perpetual lack of reconciliation. As we do that, we actualize our own true self and get reconciled inside. Because forgiveness is not just between two people, is also an internal, psychological, and spiritual necessity. You also have a relationship with yourself, too. If we don’t sort out all the different voices that make up our inner dialogue, there is perpetual conflict going on inside of us, too!

For instance, last week I put out my weekly blog post a day earlier than I intended —  no big deal really. But I made the mistake because I thought Sunday was Monday! I was ready to call some computer someone somewhere to find out why my machines were all off! I finally figured out I was off and felt ashamed of myself for jumping to a wrong conclusion that cost me an hour of turmoil — so embarrassing! I accepted my “sin,” but the feelings of guilt and shame stuck with me. I did a dumb thing. Then I felt ashamed because I couldn’t let go of those feelings! What a flawed psychotherapist! I was not forgiving myself. I needed some inner reconciliation. Otherwise, I might have carried around my secret shame right through the terrific meeting at Salt and Light!

We know Jesus will forgive our sins when we confess our sins. But will we cooperate by forgiving ourselves? Some would say “Forgiving yourself is not that important if Jesus already did it.” Maybe. But I know a lot of people who are forgiven in principle but have never experienced a minute of that forgiveness in their hearts. Their presentation of themselves in the world is forgiven, which is good as far as that goes. But their inner being is unforgiving, critical, harsh and living under the law of some childhood jungle in which they grew up. Maybe you aren’t fully forgiven by Jesus if you won’t forgive yourself.

by Jaroslav SamoilenkoHard on yourself?

How many times have I heard, “I think it will all get better if I just try harder. I’m having trouble doing what I want to do, but when I do, it will all be fine.” Such a person never even gets to square one of life with Jesus because they are still negotiating whether his lovingkindness is something they can live in and express, especially toward themselves. As a matter of fact, they may be quite loving to others but hard as nails with themselves. They might have a loud inner voice that even says, “Look how bad you are at forgiving yourself!” Or even harder, “If you don’t love others rightly, you’ll be damned!” Or very logical, “If you ‘forgive yourself,’ pretty soon you’ll never confess a sin and not even be a Christian!” Rather than letting guilt and shame pass through like regular emotions, every criticism and failure sticks to them like they are flypaper, until it is hard to hear the voice of love for all the buzzing. Does any of this sound familiar?

Do you struggle with forgiving yourself? Probably. I think most of us have been quite confused about  the subject. Most of us seem to be balancing whether we are too easy on ourselves, or rationalizing our bad behavior — at times wondering whether we are too hard on ourselves, and at times condemning ourselves. Such questions are what any wise person would want to ponder, of course. But the Bible tends to go beyond them. Paul assumes we are all unjustifiable (Romans 3:23), and we’re all likely to think too highly of ourselves (Romans 12:3). His remedy is not to admit we are self-condemning and self-congratulating at the same time; he wants us to accept where we are at and accept that Jesus is with us there. Likewise, Jeremiah asserts that we deceive ourselves about our condition; we’re a mystery to ourselves, but God can truly interpret our hearts (Jeremiah 17:9-10).

Don’t you think it qualifies as a “sin” to hold ourselves in contempt even when God prizes us and has forgiven our sin (2 Corinthians 2:6-8)? Let’s consider how to forgive ourselves and be reconciled inside as well as out. Then we might be able to feel God’s compassion in our anguished souls. If you already feel some resistance to the very thought of that, this post might be for you, especially.

Why forgive ourselves?

Only God can forgive sin, so we are not talking about that, OK? I’m talking about cooperating with the Spirit of forgiveness beating on the door of our guilt and shame. We’ve been gods to ourselves and it is strangely different to come at our sense of responsibility for being good from the place of being forgiven. We are born again by forgiveness and, like so many things in Christ, we need to grow up into it.

Remember: All who are in Christ are freed from condemnation (Romans 8:1) and freed to love (Galatians 5:13). We are meant to display the mercies of God as sinners forgiven of their sins (1 Timothy 1:15-16).

Extending grace and kindness to oneself and others is the transformation God effects in those who have received His grace and kindness. God’s kindness leads to repentance, that is, the Presence of kindness leads us to agree with God’s loving way of seeing us. Such gentleness is only possible for us because Jesus has set us free from the power of sin, the tyranny of self-rule, and the oppression of evil. Jesus said “If the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed” (John 8). The starting point of forgiving ourselves is experiencing God’s forgiveness.

Keys to forgiving yourself

Clarify responsibility

Blame is tricky. Sometimes we blame ourselves for the injuries other people cause. For instance, many neglected or abused children think they must be to blame for not being cared for because they are unlovable. On the other hand, we sometimes blame others for things that are really all about us —  it is called projection. What we find shameful or unbearable, we cast on others and despise it, or assume someone else made us feel and act as we do.

When we are blaming ourselves or others, we need to sit back and do some mentalizing. Before we start reacting inside with self-loathing or outside with abusive behavior, we need clarity: What is mine and what belongs to someone else? What might be coming at me from the society, in general?

“Clarifying” who is responsible for the injury might sound like we could get caught in an endless inventory of our troubles, as if more clarity is all we need. But I think we need to go deeper than that. I am really talking about simple self-care. We feel better when our feet are on the solid ground of reality, even if that reality initially causes us some pain.

One of the reasons we shy away from clarity is because we feel things about it. We might be angry. We might have unfinished business with a perpetrator we have displaced  on people who bumped into our trigger. We might feel confused, even paralyzed. But we need to risk seeing it all clearly, since if we do not clarify who to forgive: ourselves, others, or whoever, lack of forgiveness will probably make us sick. It’s terrifying to face our pain, and so it seems easier to take the blame for it or cast the blame for it. But it is better to have a clear look at what is really going on so we can be appropriately responsible and appropriately gracious. It is deeper to have compassion for ourselves. Clarifying who needs forgiving is a good first step.

Renounce the dark comfort of your badness

You have probably heard someone say this, too, ” God can’t forgive me; I’m beyond grace.” I heard someone say on TV the other night, “I’ll see my mother again in hell.” Sometimes an unwillingness to seek forgiveness and live in God’s grace is a matter of pride – I did it my way. But more likely, doing life our own way is a matter of despair — it is all we think we can do, we’re alone. You may hear a voice that tells you. “You need to earn God’s favor and that of others.” But then you likely have another voice chime in to say, “You are too flawed to do that. You keep trying and you never make it.”

Self-justification is the universal spiritual disease that leads to spiritual death (Romans 6:23). Self-condemnation also leads to spiritual death: “For godly grief produces a repentance that leads to salvation and brings no regret, but worldly grief produces death” (2 Corinthians 7:10). We need to give up both of them. We need to be forgiven by God and then work with her to forgive ourselves — feel the love of God healing us and the power of God transforming us.

  Seek repair/make amends/foment reconciliation

 One of the best feelings in life is to sincerely say, “I am sorry I did that to you. Please forgive me.” I think someone read that line and immediately thought sarcastically, “Right.”  Some of us choke on the words “Please forgive me” because they are among the most vulnerable words one can say. They admit we’re guilty. We did something bad. We did not earn it. We are not perfect. We need something from the other person: forgiveness.

As hard as each may be, every act of forgiveness changes the world a little more, or at least stops it from going down the drain so fast. Jesus is quite radical when he tells us to go to our brother and sister and win them to a reconciled relationship (Matt. 18). That’s what God was doing in Jesus. His whole life is an invitation to connect in love, forever. His suffering is not just to fulfill some cosmic law, it is the natural process of being self-giving. When we acknowledge our responsibility for pain or the responsibility of others and seek to make things right, our experience of God’s love and forgiveness opens up, maybe even because someone forgives us or receives our forgiveness! When I experience the forgiveness of God and others I can extend it more readily to myself. (Ephesians 4)

The same experience Jesus describes going on between people, needs to go on inside us. We need to seek repair and foment wholeness in our hearts, as broken as they may be. We are prone to duking it out inside. The things we say to ourselves! I won’t write any examples because they are often unprintable. The shame that locks us into a secret view of ourselves that haunts our days! Forgiveness is an inside and out revolution.

Love with abandon

Jesus identified loving God with your whole heart and loving your neighbor as you love yourself as the two greatest commandments. He told his disciples to “Love one another as I have love you” – he assumed, of course, his disciples were letting  him love them. We are all invited to walk in love with Jesus. All of Christ’s teachings assume some new spiritual thing will happen in us, including that we will love ourselves like we experience God loving us. I am not sure we can keep loving others authentically if we do not experience the lovingkindness of God in our souls — and 95% of us want to do that.

Jesus is given over to love. He loves with abandon. Love requires courage and boldness because love is always costly and opens us to possible suffering. No one who has friends, lovers, children or a mate has never suffered for love. It calls for sacrifice. It is sometimes unrequited. It is easily misunderstood. Sometimes we refuse to forgive because we are protecting ourselves from the demands of love. Maybe right now you resent being told you need to do something you don’t feel like doing or don’t think you can do. Maybe you think it is unjust to forgive or you fear you will be diminished if you give into a bad person. But love and intimacy are only possible when we are vulnerable to being hurt again.

Love is kind — not only to others but to ourselves. Love keeps no record of wrongs — not only of others but of ourselves. Those are lovely seed-thoughts from 1 Corinthians 13. Our spiritual instincts tell us that even though our failure to forgive ourselves hinders our love for others, our meager attempts at doing it, met by the meager love others show for us is not for nothing. The process of bravely loving others facilitates self-forgiveness, too.

As soon as you read those lines, you may have noticed how you are not kind to yourself and how your record of your wrongs is quite complete. But don’t give up on yourself! God won’t. John lovingly writes to his disciples (1 John 3), “Little children, let us love not in word or speech but in deed and truth. And by this we will know that we are from the truth and will reassure our hearts before him whenever our hearts condemn us, for God is greater than our hearts, and he knows everything.”

Get help

If you are hard on yourself and struggle with forgiving yourself, a therapist might help. Most people think forgiving others and being forgiven is the right way to go. Even so, more and more people these days are shying away from love because conflict and break ups could happen. They feel unprepared and unskilled in a fundamental feature of intimacy: forgiveness. A therapist might help you get started on better relationships with others and with yourself in many ways, including learning how to forgive yourself.

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