Let us Talk Forgiveness 4 - Forgiveness of God

Forgiveness theorists suggest that the experience of forgiveness is different if one is forgiving another, receiving another’s forgiveness or forgiving oneself, or receiving God’s forgiveness. But it is different if a person finds fault with God or blames God for his or her problems. The book of Genesis made it clear that God was happy with all his creation and indeed saw that everything was good. The struggle between good and evil has been in the world as far back as creation itself. The blame game all started when Adam and Eve sinned and disobeyed God. When asked what had happened Adam passed the blame to the woman and the woman passed it on to the snake. Since the snake could not speak, it seems the blame went back to God, perhaps for giving man free will. When I blame God for my problems, I am indirectly blaming Him for the problems of the world. I am blaming Him for the gift of free will, so freely given to me to choose to do the good and shun evil. I am refusing to take responsibility for my actions. God’s forgiveness is unconditional. As Henry Nouwen, the spiritual writer rightly observed, “it comes from a heart that does not demand anything for itself, a heart that is completely empty of self-seeking”. Whenever I feel that God is responsible for my brokenness, my hurt and anguish, may be I have not been thankful enough for the many blessings that I have received. Could my hurt be telling me something about myself rather than about what God has done to me?

My thinking that God is responsible for my situation in life challenges me to my need for gratitude and compliments from others. It demands of me to move beyond the wounded part of my heart that feels hurt and wronged and wants to stay in control. It calls on me to put on a new heart and a new way of looking at the world and people around me. I must come to the awareness of who I am and how I have allowed my brokenness to keep me from growing to the full maturity God intended for me.

Forgiving God means accepting who I am as a gift from God. It means climbing over the wall of my smallness or as Nouwen put it, “the wall of arguments and angry feelings that I have erected between myself and all those whom I love but who so often do not return that love. It is a wall of fear of being used or hurt again. It is a wall of pride, and the desire to stay in control. But every time that I can step or climb over that wall, I enter into the house where the Father dwells, and there touch my neighbor with genuine compassionate love”. We cannot go through life without forgiveness. Forgiving self, others and God is a necessary condition to a fulfilled life. Without forgiveness we are a walking time bomb waiting for the appropriate time to explode, the explosion of which will have a disastrous and a monumental effect both on the self and the community at large. How can we not forgive God, the author of forgiveness itself, or do we really need to forgive God? Should we not rather pray that we be forgiven by God who has loved us so much that He gave us his Son to die for our sins so that we may still find our way back to Him. For those who have many reasons not to forgive, look at Christ on the Cross and ask yourself a question did he really deserve that? If not then why did he pray for God “to forgive them for they do not know what they are doing?” If Christ forgave those who killed him on the Cross then why not forgive those who did not kill you but only hurt you?