Or… How Shall We Then Forgive? Part 10

If I were to recommend one book on forgiveness, it would hands down be The Book of Forgiving, by Desmond and Mpho Tutu. They do not theorize about forgiveness as spectators. Having traversed forgiveness of profound evils themselves, they are steady and compassionate guides. Each chapter includes reflection questions and exercises to guide you in your forgiveness journey.

They identify the fourth and final stage of forgiveness as choosing whether to renew or release the relationship with the one you are forgiving. Where evil has occurred, it is not possible or even necessarily desirable to go back to the way things were before. If a healthy relationship is to remain, it must be a new relationship that can bear the truth of the relationships’ history. They liken forgiveness to clearing away the debris of what evil has destroyed so that something new can grow. And yet they recognize that sometimes it isn’t wise or safe to plant. Sometimes wisdom would have us let fallow ground lie. Renew or release… such perfect terms to capture the choice before us.

Sometimes people get stuck because they imagine the choice to be one between polarities: to be close to a person or completely cut them out of their lives. Both can be valid options on the other side of forgiveness. However, the truth is that there are a variety of options along a continuum between those two.

Relationships exist along a continuum of intimacy. Sometimes we release a relationship on one end of the intimacy spectrum and renew it closer to a different end. There is knowing your best friend, and knowing your barista, and a whole host of gradations in between. Wisdom would have you move some people you have forgiven toward the barista end. (Apologies baristas, I realized that most of you are wonderful people of integrity and superb best friends.)

Other times people are stuck because of a false message that there is not a choice; that they must stay. But let’s think about that for a minute. True reconciliation is always grounded in truth. God, the greatest of all reconcilers, does not air brush his saints or revise history. If the Bible were made into a movie, it would be rated R. Truth can be uncomfortable though, and consequently humans often work pretty hard to avoid it. God doesn’t force people to be in relationship with Him, and not all His relationships are reconciled.

Jesus told his disciples that there is a time and place for shaking the dust off your feet and leaving town (Matt. 10:12-14). There is biblical legitimacy to the exodus of black Christians from white evangelical spaces, documented by the New York Times. If someone is requiring you to stay in a relationship where you are not allowed to tell the truth, there is something deeply wrong with that relationship. Even if people are trying to call it reconciliation.