Making Sense of Forgiveness: Moving from Hurt toward Hope

by Brad Hambrick

forgiveness is what allows us to express hurt as hurt rather than hurt as anger. Even after we forgive, hurt still hurts. If the person who hurt us gets upset with us for still hurting, they haven’t really repented.

When you forgive, you are not making a commitment not to feel hurt. You are making a commitment about what you will do with the hurt when it flares up.

Forgiveness does not reclassify an offense from a “sin” to a “mistake.” Mistakes are excused. Sins are forgiven.

Jesus extends the opportunity for relationship, but he does not allow people with the intent to do harm to set the terms for the relationship.

With Jesus there is nothing unforgivable, but there is not forgiveness on any terms.

God’s forgiveness is an invitation to a new way of life. Those who reject this new way of life reject the terms of forgiveness.

“It is very tempting to take the side of the perpetrator. All the perpetrator asked is that the bystander do nothing. He appeals to the universal desire to see, hear, and speak no evil. The victim, on the contrary, asks the bystander to share the burden of pain. The victim demands action, encouragement, and remembering.”1

We misuse the Christian concept of forgiveness to con our conscience into silence. We categorize our passivity as the gracious, forgiving, or Christlike response to the sin of the wrongdoer.

If we are only willing to consider questions that have certain answers, we will abandon those wrestling with the hardest situations.

Joseph likely still had nightmares about being beaten, thrown in a well, and sold as a slave.

We don’t make our decisions about forgiveness with hindsight. We try to apply these narratives midstory in our own lives. The book of the Bible that best captures our lived experience is Psalms, where the author is frequently writing with angst from the middle of a situation with an unknown outcome.

To the person who is learning to manage their trauma, slower is safer. If we are going to speak of their life experience, then we should do so with the tenderness that experience requires.