Forgive And Forget Or Hold On And Go Nowhere

Angie wrote about forgiveness a while back.

She tied the topic in with the theme of personal development, and moving on.

The fact is that without forgiveness, and letting go of the past, there is little hope of moving on.

We need to forgive ourselves, as well as those around us, or we can carry our baggage around for a lifetime.

After we have forgiven, we need to walk on and leave things behind.

Sometimes, it can be hard to face the fact that a lot of our problems are our own doing, and that rather than blame everyone from parents, siblings and spouses to the family cat, we need to address our own part in it.

As Ange notes in her post, it is only natural to remember our version of events, or our story, in isolation to what went on in the lives of others at the time.

The Bible’s account of Jesus’ ressurection includes the fact that he forgave those that were responsible, because ‘they knew not what they were doing’.

Could it be that the people who have hurt us in the past did so without realizing the fact?

Could it also be that we have done the same thing ourselves, and because we didn’t mean to do it, thought nothing of it?

Being human, the natural tendency is to judge others by their actions, while we judge ourselves by our intentions.

If I hold on to an offense, and refuse to forgive someone, then I am denying them the chance to change, or to make good in my eyes.

Further, chances are that they have moved on, and are enjoying life while I wrestle in a morass of bitterness and hurt, largely brought on by my own stubbornness.

Left unchecked, bitterness and unforgiveness can manifest itself in both physical and mental illness.

Making a new start is impossible because we keep seeing others through the lens that we have created, and are expecting the same things to happen again, regardless of who the people are around us.

Our lives become a prison, rather than an adventure, or a time of growth and development.

In the parable of the unforgiving servant, the king was owed an amount so large the servant could never repay.

Having ordered that the man be thrown into prison and his family and possessions sold to clear the debt, the king relented and released the man when he begged for mercy.

No sooner had he done this than the servant had one of his peers thrown into jail because he owed him a small amount of money.

When the king heard about this, he had the servant thrown behind bars again!

Reference: Matt 18:21-35

What was the outcome?

There is no record of the servant’s associate being released.

To me, this says that they were both imprisoned, and neither could pay the debt that they owed.

Furthermore, the passage goes further and says that the unforgiving servant was tortured.

Unforgiveness brings hurt, bitterness and sickness, as well as preventing us from moving on. Torture….

We need a paradigm shift

The above scenario becomes a self fulfilling prophecy, and a Catch 22 situation.

A Paradigm is something that serves as a serves as a pattern or a model.

So in this sense I am talking about a mindset, or how one sees the world.

Keeping short accounts, forgiving and forgetting, and moving on in life is far better than hanging on to real or imagined hurts, and expecting the next person to do us wrong like the last person did.

Hanging on to the past and its regrets will only lead us to cut off the family members and friends who love us, and even poison our relationship with our own children.

Today is the day for change, why not seize the moment!

Regardless of whether you feel justified in holding on to your hurt or not, time is marching on, and it is going to beat you in the long run if you don’t change.

It may be your parents, or your sibling, or spouse, or all of them that hurt you.

The fact is though that by holding on to unforgiveness, you are only hurting yourself.