Or… How Shall We Then Forgive? Part 2

Maybe you’ve had this experience before: you’re consuming familiar content (a book, movie, soundtrack), and it suddenly hits you in a completely different way than it ever has before. That happened to me once with a story Jesus told.

Jesus was famous for his stories, one of which is commonly called: The Tale of the Two Debtors.* One guy owes a massive debt and is unable to make his payments. He pleads for leniency and a payment plan, and the guy he owes–shockingly–cancels the entire debt. Shortly thereafter, our forgiven debtor runs into another fella who owes him a much smaller-but-unpayable amount. Even though his own massive debt had just been forgiven, he decides to take punitive measures against the man who is unable to pay him back a much smaller sum. Back on stage comes the forgiving money lender who is enraged at the first debtor’s punitiveness and so un-cancels his previously cancelled enormous debt and sends him to jail. Jesus ends his story with, “So also my Heavenly Father will do to everyone of you, if you do not forgive your brother from your heart.”

I vividly remember the sofa I was sitting on. I felt sucker punched. There was no question which character I was playing in the story of my life. So also my Heavenly Father will do to everyone of you…. What did that mean?? I’m still not entirely sure. Scholars argue about it. Whatever it meant, it sounded bad. Like God was somehow tying my experience of His forgiveness to my choice to extend forgiveness to others. I couldn’t have it both ways. If I wanted in on the currency of grace, then I had to be willing to deal in that currency with my neighbor too.

Therein lay my difficulty: I was unwilling. Not the tiniest part of me was doing anything other than pulling as hard as I desperately could in the opposite direction of forgiveness. I felt totally screwed, because I couldn’t even honestly pray: God help me to forgive. God sees right through our dishonesty, so who would I be fooling? But I was also afraid. Jesus’ words were so absolute. I was scared to wait and find out whatever it was he meant by them. I don’t know how long I sat there, but eventually I settled on the only prayer I could honestly make: God, help me to want to forgive.

It was a prayer I would pray daily for months. I might have been pushing a year, I don’t know, before I could graduate to: God, help me to forgive. I don’t remember how many months of praying that second prayer before I started to actually feel lighter.

Some of you may be thinking: But Sara, forgiveness isn’t a feeling. And you would be right. We’ll get to that.

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*You can read the full story in Matthew 18.