Therapy & Theology: What Forgiveness Is and Isn’t

hi welcome to therapy and theology and uh we're so excited you're joining us today this is a brand new series for us it's part of the material that i've written in my new book forgiving what you can't forget and i've got two incredible guests with me that really aren't guests they're my partners in therapy and theology right so of course joel mutamale he's the director of theological research at proverbs 31 ministries i have spent how many hours would you guess studying forgiveness just that one topic alone in the bible seated at the table with a few other of our uh uh ministry partners how many hours have we studied forgiveness now this is a heated debate it is a huge debate this is actually we don't debate much but uh the amount of hours of research and study in the in the text is definitely one of them i think it's a safe bet to say easily a thousand hours wow of research yeah just on this absolutely joel actually thinks it's more but i made him scale it back and say only a thousand yeah we're staying on the safe side we're staying on the safe side and in addition to joel mutamale we have my friend and my personal counselor jim cress and i'm so excited to have you jim and we won't guess how many hours of therapy there's confidential counseling that you and i have done together so we'll skip that part okay that's right but today's topic is an important one we're covering what does the bible say about forgiveness and what does it not say about forgiveness and i think joel one of the reasons why we have invested the number of hours that we have in just studying the biblical text around forgiveness is because it can almost seem like there are parts of the text that address forgiveness that can i don't even want to say contradict one another but provide less clarity rather than more clarity yeah and so we really wanted to follow the text keep everything in the context that it was written and seek to understand um a lot of biblical principles but also seek to address some very misunderstood concepts when it comes to forgiveness according to the bible and jim i love that you'll be able to interject into this conversation how important it is to address forgiveness appropriately not just because we want to honor the text of the bible but also we want to honor that when we're dealing with a topic like forgiveness we're often attaching that to instances that have caused people incredible trauma yes uh great pain and because healing is such a process i want to acknowledge that we may be stepping in to your life having this conversation in a time where the healing hasn't even happened yet where the wound is so fresh that even just hearing the word forgiveness you may have had a response to it a feeling like too soon i can't do this and and let me just say i understand um i want to encourage you to listen to this podcast today and if you're watching it on youtube watch this video today um just with the desire to walk toward forgiveness and if you're not even at the place where you're even willing to stick your toes in that direction um just lean in toward forgiveness and um and listen and i do want to say right off the bat before we get into some of the deeper teaching that um i understand how hard forgiveness can be i've been through a lot of very traumatic things in the past five years that um this has been such a journey for me but the other thing that i think it's important to say about forgiveness is it it i think it's pretty rare in my life with all of the relationships that i have that i'm not in some kind of relational pain at any given moment yeah and maybe that's true for all of us relationships can be complicated they can be delightful but they can also be hurtful and right now my immediate family is good but i've got some situations in my extended family that are hard and um and so painful that i'm wrestling right now even through this and and i think each of us could say that yeah so if that's where you are today you are safe here your questions are safe your resistance is safe um we want to tenderly hold your heart even in the midst of teaching what the bible does and doesn't say about forgiveness so joel let me read a couple of things before i know you're going to take the lead on this discussion but um i think it's important to provide some framework around this so i want to read seven things that i wrote in my book that we pulled out just seven sentences to provide some framework around what the bible does and doesn't say about what forgiveness is what what forgiveness is and what it is not number one forgiveness doesn't always fix relationships but it does help mend the hurting heart number two forgiveness is both a decision and a process and healing is a long journey forgiveness number three forgiveness doesn't let the other person off the hook it actually places them in god's hands number four forgiveness does not justify or excuse abuse ever number five forgiveness is required by god but reconciliation is quite conditional number six forgiveness isn't an act of our determination forgiveness is only made possible by our cooperation with what jesus has already done and number seven forgiveness is not adding on top of our pain a misery too great to bear it's exchanging our bound up resentment for a life-giving freedom thus making the mystery of the workings of god too great to deny that's so good it is i think um one of the important aspects of those principles that you that you laid out and often we do this lisa when we're studying the bible is we want to take a step back and we want to say okay there are these verses that are so specific and each verse has a context there's a history there's so much that's going on but one of the questions i'm often asking that we're often asking in our study is what is the larger story like what is actually what is god up to and the opening pages of scripture will always go back to genesis 1 and 2. it's kind of a thing always always um and what we find is the very first act mentioned image experience of forgiveness is actually the context of humanity and divinity so we have humanity that fails to live up to the expectation standard of god and then you have the divine god the creator god who created man adam and eve man and woman in his likeness and his and in his image and where they deserved consequence for their sin they were met with mercy and forgiveness and for me this is the lens by which the rest of the scriptures are actually taking place and i love what nt wright says about forgiveness that's what he says he says forgiveness forgiveness is not simply a private transaction between me and god forgiveness involves being part of a community that are formed by forgiveness that know themselves to be a people who have been rescued from egypt the people who have come out of the land of sin and slave slavery and are now in this new creation hence we have to forgive one another like what entirety is saying is that the story of forgiveness when you and i participate in the act of forgiveness it's actually a participation in god's story and that's good i don't know about you but that gives me such hope and that gives me such assurance that this is not something isolated to my own experience but we have brothers and sisters in the faith from centuries ages past that have been doing this very thing because it is in view in that of what god has done so if you've got your bibles you can turn to one of the verses and there's so many but for the sake of time i just want us to look at two verses one is colossians 3 13 and this is what the apostle paul says he says in colossians 3 13 bearing with one another and if one has a complaint against another forgiving each other as the lord has forgiven you so you also must forgive i think it's really interesting that that first word bearing anakomai is actually a similar word that's being used in first peter 2 24. this is what first peter 2 24 says of jesus he himself bore our sins in his body on the tree that we might die to sin and live to righteousness you see there's the connection of forgiveness of our experiences and what christ has actually done on the cross and so in the same way the jesus bore the weight of sin the weight of the transgressions of humanity past present and future in this mysterious way paul is saying actually because we're wrapped up and clothed in jesus himself we're equipped through the spirit of god to bear with one another that's a reciprocal pronoun one another it means that there is an emphasis of relationship the way that i care for you you are actually expected to care back for me and then we're supposed to forgive and so here it seems very clear that forgiveness is a command because jesus himself god in christ has forgiven us and at this point there can be a bit of confusion because it feels like well if forgiveness is a command what if the other person is unrepentant and what if the other person isn't sorry at all what if they won't even acknowledge that they've hurt me right or worse yet what if their behavior is an ongoing um an ongoing situation that i can draw appropriate boundaries uh and and not to shove them away but to hold myself together however they're present in my life still and even with boundaries the limited access they have to my heart they continue to hurt me and that's when forgiveness starts to feel very hard very complicated yes but i think jim this is where i would love for your voice to step in too because i remember when um i was in the throes of still a lot of uncertainty in my relationship with art there was there was just a lot of trauma i didn't know if i would ever have that conversation with art where he said he was sorry or that he asked for my forgiveness i had no idea that reconciliation uh would ever even be possible because at that point it felt quite impossible and i remember i walked into your office and i don't know if you'll remember this or not but you asked me a very profound question you did not ask me lisa are you ready to forgive and i think it was so appropriate that you didn't ask me that question because i think at that point my desire to be obedient to god would have made me feel like i have to say the right answer that i'm ready to forgive when the trauma side of me just wasn't at that place and i'm so glad that that's not the question you asked me sure yeah the question you asked me is lisa do you want to heal and i thought it was so profound that you asked me that question at first it kind of confused me because i was like uh yes i do want to heal who wouldn't but um then you said today's a a great day to um you know start the conversation about forgiveness and i remember thinking if you were going to address with me today that today is a great day to talk about my personal hygiene like i can't remember the last time it was that i even brushed my hair or washed my hair at that point i had a messy bun on top of my head i looked like a wreck so if you would have said like hey let's address the fact you might want to consider washing your hair then i would have said yes let's talk about that because that is very true we do need to talk about that but when you attached healing and forgiveness but you were so patient not requiring anything from me but helping me to see where you eventually got me is lisa this doesn't rise and fall on anyone else's actions you don't have to wait for someone to say that they're sorry you don't even have to wait for someone else to acknowledge that what they did to you was wrong otherwise you are attaching your healing to someone else's actions that you may never be able to control and that is holding you hostage by not being able by you thinking i can't heal because i can't forgive because the other person hasn't done what they need to do and so i want you to speak into that because i know you've done a lot of research and then we'll get back to continuing the conversation in the bible but i think we've got to marry the therapy and the theology here you know the first place my mind goes lisa and joel is when jesus is uh talking to the woman at the well in my office you've seen there's a marvel statue of this scene and you know he knows everything and he is wading deep into the dialogue talking about thirst really drawing her heart out kind of going to her red dot the red dot says you were here going where she was and then before he asked the question you know by the way like tell me about your husband well and then we know how that plays out i thought how how wonderful that he didn't jump right in and say it's this and it's this and you need to do that really drawing the person's heart out when someone's in trauma and you've been betrayed especially what we call betrayal trauma the the limbic brain this lower part of the brain really doesn't understand words that much in language if someone's in that hard place and maybe they really haven't with personal hygiene done much self-care i mean they're in this very difficult place to go directly into it's almost uh it's it's counterintuitive but maybe even impossible for them to even engage you in here so to go with not forgiveness right away but go into the wound because of forgiveness as we've talked about with offiami at least in greek is to cancel the debt to begin to say let's go in to talk about the debt but also cast a vision do you want to be healed that's jesus at the with the man at the pool of bethesda when he's there and he's laying there you know the legend was the angel troubles the water and first one in gets gets healed and it's like walking into an oncology ward and say anybody here want to be healed of course we do and jesus says do you want to be well i've always heard that as do you really really want to be well and so that part is i think to meet you where you were and say do you want to heal and as joel's alluded to we'll probably get in more the tie-in of forgiveness and reconciliation well my husband or this other person needs to do this and this and this before i can forgive them and forgiveness is really unilateral isn't it it's not bilateral dependent on the other person yeah when you say unilateral it's between us and god and um we have to understand and that was really my mind shift because when i was a little girl what i was taught about forgiveness is the other person hurts you then mom my great the great judge would come and you know she was the referee that would say this person's wrong this person's right now you say you're sorry now you say you forgive hug make up and go play you know and that was appropriate in my little girl world but suddenly you wake up and mommy's not here between you and your spouse right you and there's there's no judge so to speak and i think i kept waiting subconsciously in my situation i kept waiting for someone to appear to say this person was wrong this person was right you need to say you're sorry you need to say you forgive and that's how the script of forgiveness would play out but joel as we got into studying what the scripture said what helped me so much was understanding the bible does not co-mingle the ideas of forgiveness and reconciliation it actually untangles those because while forgiveness is a command by god that we are to forgive the way that the forgiveness works is we receive god's forgiveness and we let it flow to us and then pass through us so we give from the forgiveness that we have already been given it's not like we have to muster up this impossible forgiveness on our own we are just letting god's forgiveness pass come to us and pass through us but while forgiveness is unconditional reconciliation is very conditional right and it should be and the bible makes provision that according to how safe you are or according to certain parameters that are abusive or even ongoing hurt that someone is unleashing on you that they are refusing to acknowledge um you don't have to keep yourself subject to that and i think one of my favorite verses that used to feel like one of the hardest verses was when the disciples were asking jesus how many times do we have to forgive isn't that such a human question right like i want to carry a little score card around jim you've hurt me six times you've got one more shot you've hurt me seven times we're done right right yeah but jesus's reply that used to feel kind of harsh to me yeah where it says no jesus says no you forgive them 70 times seven right but the reason that used to feel harsh is because i used to think that jesus was implying we keep ourselves in that situation and we just keep being the bigger person it's like oh you hurt me again i forgive you you hurt me again i forgive you hurt me again i forgive you and that is not at all what when i put it in the bigger picture of scripture yeah what i think jesus meant i think jesus was encouraging us to place ourselves in as much proximity as we can or as much distance as we need with that person so that we can remain safe enough to have a heart of forgiveness even when the other person continues to hurt us over and over and over and if that person makes that choice to hurt us over and over and over it is okay for us to draw bigger and bigger boundaries again boundaries do not shut the other person down or away or shove them away in any way boundaries are meant to hold me together so i need to put myself in a place and a proximity where i am not getting wounded to the point where forgiveness feels impossible yeah and i know there's some complicated dynamics you know because sometimes it takes maybe a small child has to grow up before they can put enough distance between them and a parent that is hurting them i realize there's complications here but i also know jesus spoke those words out of tenderness not at all to perpetuate that um someone not treating you appropriately is okay jesus wasn't saying that he was saying forgiveness is about your position of your heart keeping your heart soft keeping your heart in a place of being swept clean of bitterness resentment holding grudges because it's too heavy of weight for your tender heart to carry yeah that's so good i think jim and lisa what you both have said um the apostle paul is getting at in such a unique way um there is a very specific word typically used in the new testament for forgive you mentioned it already it means to cancel the debt and every expectation that you and i would have of the apostle paul would he would use that word to describe forgiveness and yet in colossians 3 13 when he says forgiving he uses an unusual word called chirozomai and kerosomi built into that word it's a compound greek word built into that word jim you probably already know where i'm going there is a word called charis and karis means to extend grace it is the word for grace so think about this and i think this is actually that the theological um fruit and soil that we have that says what is forgiveness supposed to look like well what is grace grace i think in the simplest definition is unmerited favor it's something that you and i did not earn and this is what paul is saying forgive each other as the lord has forgiven you that is the picture of grace and yet this forgiveness is about this release it's it's about not allowing ourselves to be enslaved by the actions of other people and yet there are boundaries and so i want us to just take a look at um romans this is still paul and this is romans 12 18 and this is what paul says if possible i i love this if possible so far as it depends on you live peaceably with all now it's important for us to know in romans 12 paul starts off in 12 1 talking about the covenant community of faith the the believers the church in rome right but as he gets towards the end here he's working himself from the inside out and now he's talking to all people how do christians how do we respond to non-believers and this is what paul is getting at he says if possible which seems to indicate that sometimes it's not possible right and then he gives a condition if possible so far as it depends on you now where's that responsibility on me as far as it depends on me to live peaceably with all what is that also implied that also implies that i have a responsibility but there is also responsibility outside of me that i can't control and i can't own and this is where we have that if possible so far as it depends on you live peaceably with all and so while you and i are commanded to forgive this is how i like to think about it we have a requirement that is given from god that we are to forgive and that requirement comes with the responsibility and that responsibility is to pursue reconciliation if possible so far as it depends on us to live at peace with all people um and i think this is so important and instructive for us because it safeguards us from putting ourselves in positions and jim i know you have so much more to say about this where i think historically traditionally i just want y'all to know there's never a situation where you're forgiving of somebody else is the opportunity or the reason that you keep yourself in a dangerous position emotionally spiritually or physically that is not in scripture we're called to forgive and to reconcile if at all possible and i think sometimes you know where it says as far as it depends on you to live at peace i think we have to emphasize that word peace and the um responsibility is as far as it depends on you so i i i can decide and this is very empowering i can decide what can i contribute here without any expectation of the other person because jim we've talked about before expectations can sometimes be premeditated resentments right so i have to say what can i do to contribute to the peace but be free from fully expecting the other person to contribute to the piece on the same level just this week i had to send a text message to someone and i i very much um and i shouldn't even say i had to i had the opportunity to contribute to some peace this week and it took a hot minute for my feelings to catch up i'll just be honest because i did not feel like i had done anything wrong but i wanted to give an opportunity for peace in seeking to understand before being understood myself and so my contribution to peace was if what i said hurt you please forgive me that absolutely was not my intention at all but i want to recognize i've thought about what you might be going through i thought how hard this might be and how hard this might be and how hard this might be and i want to fully acknowledge that and i want to say if i've contributed in any way to the hurt that you've been experiencing please forgive me um but i had to send it knowing i have to do this with no expectation at all other than the satisfaction to know i've contributed to the peace of this situation and what they do is their choice and their journey i cannot work harder on someone else and they're willing to work on themselves i can only work on me thank you very much that came after spending many hours with you jim right okay and we're going to cover that in our codependency that's right therapy and theology about some people absolutely try to work harder on another person um so i and i want to speak to that too the idea what i call often and i have these in my office i have an arrow and then i have a boomerang is to deliver this as an arrow that means it's shot straight and i think that's implied even in luo in greek the idea of to to loose to let go of yeah even as part of forgiveness and so i'm going to do this as a one-way shoot as an arrow straight and and a boomerang is but you're going to receive this or i might long for that person to respond but i am going to in essence as we've said clean up my side of the street and then really honor them that they get to decide what they do i want this nuance to around forgiveness that a person will often say i get this a lot when there's been betrayal trauma will say you know what i see this it's like psalm 51 i do have this much of a broken and contrite heart the other person though who was offended feels like yeah but it feels like really there should be more there's just a little more nuanced gravitas to what you ought to own what you've done the person owns it and they're really owning it but it may be that they're not owning it as much emotionally as you'd like them to so on this side of the street to say i want to offer this if i've done this and then let it go and let them have their process and i do want to say jim i have so much empathy um for the person who feels like the wrong done to them is um is so costly it's so hurtful maybe even you felt at times the hurt that the other person caused is unchangeable wow yeah um that can start to feel unforgivable absolutely because the wrongs can never be righted in a way that returns me back to the pre-trauma or pre-traumatic event that happened to me in some ways maybe at times literally they cannot be righted at all because i've worked with many people and joel and i were talking about this before we went on set is to help people forgive dead people in an empty chair and say dad mom you know or they've gone by a cemetery and i know the body the body's there and the person is not there but they speak and there's no chance that person can speak and own it so they can say i want to release this and literally the person won't be able to respond like at all but they can still forgive but i think the place that i had to get yeah is to recognize that god hasn't commanded forgiveness so that the other person is set free from the actions that they took god hasn't commanded forgiveness to negate that there are consequences here god hasn't provided forgiveness of thee so that it makes light of your pain or says that what you went through doesn't matter there is a freedom aspect to forgiveness but you are not freeing the other person from the consequences of their choices that is between them and god that's right and any sin that a person commits i believe the consequences for that sin are already built into their action so you don't have to worry about will this be addressed will this person learn their lesson will this person finally wake up and see what they did that is for god to do and even if you never see it don't assume god isn't addressing it you love it yeah but the freedom aspect for forgiveness is that i deserve when i've been deeply wounded by someone i deserve to stop suffering because of what the other person has done to me yes and the only way to sever the suffering is to implement this gift that god has given us and the gift is lisa forgive take the forgiveness i have given to you let it pass through you and it will clean out from you the heaviness of bitterness resentment and ongoing anger and it will start to sever the suffering so you can get on with the healing i like that as uh dave ramsey likes to say you know in his radio show uh have people scream we're debt free and back to afiami to cancel the debt and the idea there to be there and say i'm releasing all of this and i'm going to borrow hopefully not out of context or isogetically as we say in theology but to telesty that jesus it is finished and there's a part of that that greek word to say i've released it all now the emotional forgiveness as we've talked may take time but to say even their telescope it is finished it or some level i'm done i've really released this and may i just ask real quickly for for joel or for either one of you there's two things i want to comment on you're the first person i've ever heard say and teach what you taught so how i've missed it unless you god gave you that through a divine seriously message or a divine anointing from his word but the idea when you said the first time that hey everybody vincent's is mine i will repay which is in this passage that joel just took us to but you said when i sin god has promised a he won't be mocked you'll reap what you sow there is a reaping but i don't see it and i remember when you first said that i was stunned by that i went and i went be assured that person in their own secrecy addiction their own mess that they're in they're reaping i just may not see it so i want to i want to thank you for that because that really helped me i thought boy that really helps because the context joel that you read here i notice it's like a doughnut hole do not be haughty all that repay evil for no one and then if possible as far as it depends on you live peaceably then it's right back to you but leave it to the wrath of god never avenge yourself so it's like that we are wired for justice aren't we and i want it now and you may not get it with the other person we'll have to talk about some other time but one of the really cool aspects of that passage is what i see is a chiasm and a chiasm is where the meaning of that text is in the middle and the rest of the text before and after it gets its meaning from it and so we have this call this command to pursue a life of peace and at least you said the word is important it is it's the greek word rene and it actually is rooted in the hebrew word shalom that's awesome and so i mean we just have this shalom we know is a greeting or it can be it can be like a hello or a goodbye but it's peace it's peace it's peace be with you peace go with you peace when i greet you in peace when i say goodbye yeah yeah well thank you both so much and just as we wrap up today i want to acknowledge one other thing that i think is really important and certainly when you read forgiving what you can't forget the book that i've written on this this is a big part of what you will start to understand it's something i didn't understand for a long time and now that i do because of studying the bible with joel and hours of counseling work hours and hours and hours of counseling work with jim i now understand something about forgiveness that i want to leave you with today forgiveness is both a decision and a process you don't have to feel like you have to rush through your hurt or negate what you've been through or even boss your feelings around and conjure up some kind of spiritual maturity that overrides your emotional well-being to pursue forgiveness you don't have to do that you can make the decision to forgive and you can walk through the process of forgiveness and god is patient with us god respects the gravity of pain in the human heart jesus himself in hebrews chapter 2 very much is aware that he was complete divinity and absolute humanity all in one jesus knows the weight of the hurting human heart so there is grace in this process for me it was important that i verbalized i forgive you and then follow up those words and whatever my feelings will not yet allow for the blood of jesus will surely cover that just acknowledged that god's forgiveness that flowed to me now flows through me and that is what is enabling me to even say the words of forgiveness that start the process and i've made the decision to forgive and no one can take that away from me and even if weeks down the road or even hours down the road if those feelings of trauma start coming back that doesn't mean i'm a forgiveness failure it doesn't negate that i did something with forgiveness it doesn't mean i did this forgiveness thing wrong it means i've made the decision to forgive no one can take that away from me but now the emotional trauma and the processing that happens when those memories come back that hurt when those feelings come back that feel so fresh and so strong over what this has cost me it's just time now that i'm dealing with not just the fact of what happened but also the impact that this has had on me and so there may be many other more moments of forgiveness as i deal with the impact of this but the fact of forgiveness is sure and secure when i utter those words i forgive that is being obedient to god's command then i can also walk through the process of emotional healing and through the process in time as i become aware of the impact i can forgive and forgive and forgive for all of the instances of the realization of how much this has cost me i pray that that helps you today forgiveness it is not easy but it is a beautiful way to start pursuing healing in your heart keeping your heart swept clean so you don't have to carry the weight of all of the hurt that you've experienced it is time to stop suffering because of what other people have done

Channel: Official Proverbs 31 Ministries

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Length: 38min 18sec (2298 seconds)

Published: Tue Nov 17 2020