Or… How Shall We Then Forgive? Part 11
Forgiveness is a non-negotiable. Essential. Dare I say it… required. That doesn’t make it any less of a bitter pill to swallow. One of the things that helped me take the plunge and swallow my forgiveness pill has been coming to know God as my Avenger.
When I forgive a person, I am free, and they are free from me. But that does not mean that they themselves are free yet. Not free of their sin. Only God has the power to forgive sins in that ultimate sense. Unless they get the cure from Jesus, their evil will kill them. That’s what sin does.
And yes, if they are truly sorry and turn away from their evil, He will forgive them. That is His promise to all of us, and He makes good on His promises. Me and my enemy could find ourselves in heaven together; I have to accept that. But it will not be them as they were when they were inflicting harm on me. It will be them without their evil. Them without power to harm me again. Them without lies about what happened.
The interesting thing is that the Bible does not make vengeance categorically wrong; it is wrong for humans to do (Rom. 12:19). Humanity is so fickle that we are incapable of holding that kind of power and not becoming twisted by it in the process. It’s a pair of shoes too big for us to fill. There is only One Person in the universe who can wield vengeance against evil without being corrupted by it Himself. And that is God. And when God forgives, He doesn’t jettison the truth. He forgives King David but He doesn’t airbrush him. God’s love is so vast, and long, and high, and deep… that it can contain the true stories of our lives.
God executes vengeance so we don’t have to. More powerful than all Marvel’s Avengers combined, He will see to it that all villains are vanquished. God can take vengeance on evil without being contaminated by it, but I cannot. If I try, it looks like returning evil for evil. But what does that make me? The Holy Spirit’s questions to me sounded like: Is that what you want to look like, Sara? Do you really want to stoop to their level? Is that who you really want to be? Because revenge and hate will take you there. It will turn you into them.
I and my enemy alike are hurtling toward an inevitable meeting with Someone who can see through any and every lie a person could craft. I can put off coming to terms with it, but at the end of the day it is unavoidable. I tend to think avoidance will only make the collision with reality more painful. It’s a good deal of what motivates me to make amends proactively and voluntarily with others in my life. The truth is, I am not the victim in every relational context. I too commit evil; I too harm. And God will not tolerate me harming others any more than he will tolerate others harming me.
There are no lies allowed in heaven. All the dishonest ways we achieve peace in this world, all the lies we tell ourselves to help us sleep at night, all the narratives we craft to bolster our individual or group identity that require the subjugation of another… none of these are allowed in. They must all be left at the gate. I like to think that when God wipes every tear from our eyes (Rev. 21:4) some of those tears will be due to grief over things we failed to fully tell the truth about in this life.
When I think about the anger and protective instincts of God the Father, I’m reminded a little bit of Molly Weasley from J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter novels. Everything is forgivable. And also, no one’s getting away with anything. And if you try to take out her kids, she’ll kill you.