Forgiveness

If I had to name one thing that keeps us locked into our frantic evolutionary minds, our lack of peace, our high rate of relationship break-down, our quickness to anger, violence and war, I would have to say it is our resistance to forgiveness and forgiving.

We have a brain that evolved over 40 million years - a brain that sees danger and rivals everywhere - a brain that has been so successful for humanity because it suspects everything, sees everyone as a rival, and thrives on countering real and imagined resentments, slights, threats, put-downs and insults.

On our own, we haven't got a chance.

We are lucky enough not to be on our own. We have an excellent plan - a plan just about everyone says they agree with - a plan that, sadly, is mostly ignored. 

The plan is based on the command that we must love one another.

That is not an outpouring of emotion: it is an act of will - so just requires our determination to love an other person.

Sounds easy enough, and maybe it is usually easy enough to love those who love us - but the plan expects one more step: to love our enemies. Again that is nothing to do with emotion: it is an act of will that we love each other person created by our Creator. Just watch the news and you will see that that act of will can be pretty demanding. 

But those distant threats are not the hardest part. Our brain is much more aggressive when it comes to what it sees as a personal threat. Jesus started very close to home: our brother. He went so far as to say that we are not welcome at Church if we have not sorted out our issues with those close to us first.

Our biggest challenges are always with those close to us: family, colleagues, friends, members of our community. The little resentments grown large, the remembered slights and insults embellished with age, the put-downs stored and cherished and watered by our brains. These are the hard ones.

But fortunately forgiveness also is not an emotion: forgiveness also is an act of will.

And the Church wants to make forgiveness so easy it becomes a habit. It has developed a ritual of forgiveness and reconciliation that is particularly relevant in Lent as we remember who we were created to be - and as we prepare for the great feast of Easter when we celebrate who we actually are.

The formula that drives this ritual is very simple:

1. "I am sorry."
2. "Sorry for what? Let's get that part clear."
3. ...
4. "OK. Then you are forgiven." (God loves us, of course we are forgiven if we ask, and we are clear what we need to be forgiven for.)
5. "Now go and put it right - or make up for it."

And that allows us to start again. 

But we must get that act of will going if we are to defeat the evolutionary seeker of insults in our brains. Every person we know was created by God, and is wonderful: full of wonders. We need to deliberately look for the wonderful. That needs to be our habit. Only then will we get good at forgiveness. 

And only then will we be able to see the true glory of God's creation around us.