Beyond Fairness: Learning the Logic of Grace Through Forgiveness

We have been talking about love and trying to understand its actionable dimensions. Last time, we discussed community and saw how love and grace shaped the early church as it moved from a pseudocommunity into a true community.

Today I would like to turn to one of the practices without which love and community simply cannot survive: forgiveness.

Dr. Weaver has explored this topic in this class many times and has offered fascinating reflections on why God forgives us, how forgiveness is tied to grace, and how it relates to the unpardonable sin. What I would like to do today is build on that foundation by exploring why forgiveness is so difficult for human beings—and why practicing it may be one of the ways we learn to see the world the way God sees it.

To discuss forgiveness, we first need to understand why is it so hard.

As human beings, we seem to be wired toward fairness. We naturally understand and accept what is fair, and we instinctively react against what is unfair. Research suggests that the capacity for fairness appears very early in human development. Even before being able to speak, toddlers show signs of having a sense of fairness.

In one experiment, infants about 15 months old watched an adult distribute crackers between two children. In one version of the scene, the crackers were divided equally. In another version, one child received most of the crackers while the other received very few.

The babies watched both situations while researchers measured how long they looked at the scene. When the crackers were distributed unfairly, the infants stared much longer, as if something unexpected had happened. The unequal distribution seemed to violate their expectation of how things should be.

The researchers then added another step. After watching the scene, the babies were given the chance to reach toward one of the people involved. Interestingly, many of the infants reached toward the person who had shared the crackers fairly. Even before they can speak, babies appear to expect fairness and show a preference for those who act fairly.

What is striking about these findings is how early they appear. These children are barely able to speak. They have not been taught moral philosophy, and they cannot yet explain the concept of justice. Yet they already respond to fairness and prefer those who act fairly.

This work suggests that fairness is an intrinsic moral aspect of humanity. It is part of our human DNA. It is not something we can easily escape. I brought this insight in order to help us understand why forgiveness is so difficult. If we are naturally oriented toward fairness, then our instinct when we are wronged is to want the scales balanced. Something in us reacts immediately and says, “That is not fair.” We want wrongs acknowledged, harm named, and in some sense repaired. That instinct reflects a deep sense that the world should be ordered rightly. But forgiveness asks us to do something else: it asks us to loosen our grip on strict fairness and to live out of something different than the demand for exact balance.

Jesus made more than three dozen references to forgiveness. Yet despite its central importance in Christianity, forgiveness has only begun to be studied. In the past twenty years alone, hundreds of studies have been published examining the spiritual, psychological, and even physiological effects of forgiveness. The Mayo Clinic even has a web page discussing the health benefits associated with it.

In other words, even secular research is beginning to confirm what the Christian tradition has long insisted on: that forgiveness is not only a private virtue, but something that shapes the health of our bodies, our inner lives, and our relationships. It is good for persons, and it is good for communities.

Forgiveness stands at the heart of both Christian love and authentic Christian community. It is one of the clearest reflections of God’s character and at the same time one of the most difficult practices for human beings to embody. Love cannot sustain itself without forgiveness, and community cannot endure without it. Every relationship we form—friendship, marriage, church, family, and even our relationship with ourselves—will eventually require the courage to release resentment and extend mercy. Jesus treats forgiveness not as an optional virtue but as a defining mark of life in the kingdom of God. He returns to it again and again because he understands something fundamental about human relationships: without forgiveness, love eventually collapses under the weight of injury and disappointment.

One of the clearest places where Jesus explores this is in verses 21-35 of Matthew 18:

Then Peter came and said to Him, “Lord, how often shall my brother sin against me and I forgive him? Up to seven times?” [This was generous of Peter. The Jewish rabbis at the time taught to forgive three times but no more.] Jesus said to him, “I do not say to you, up to seven times, but up to seventy times seven. [In effect, Jesus was saying there is no limit.]

“For this reason the kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who wished to settle accounts with his slaves. When he had begun to settle them, one who owed him ten thousand talents [a huge sum] was brought to him. But since he did not have the means to repay, his lord commanded him to be sold, along with his wife and children and all that he had, and repayment to be made. So the slave fell to the ground and prostrated himself before him, saying, ‘Have patience with me and I will repay you everything.’ And the lord of that slave felt compassion and released him and forgave him the debt. But that slave went out and found one of his fellow slaves who owed him a hundred denarii [a trifling amount]; and he seized him and began to choke him, saying, ‘Pay back what you owe.’ So his fellow slave fell to the ground and began to plead with him, saying, ‘Have patience with me and I will repay you.’ But he was unwilling and went and threw him in prison until he should pay back what was owed. So when his fellow slaves saw what had happened, they were deeply grieved and came and reported to their lord all that had happened. Then summoning him, his lord said to him, ‘You wicked slave, I forgave you all that debt because you pleaded with me. Should you not also have had mercy on your fellow slave, in the same way that I had mercy on you?’ And his lord, moved with anger, handed him over to the torturers until he should repay all that was owed him. My heavenly Father will also do the same to you, if each of you does not forgive his brother from your heart.”

Notice the structure of the parable, because it is important. The king forgives first. The servant’s responsibility to forgive others flows from the grace he himself has already received. In this sense, forgiveness follows the same pattern that we see throughout the gospel: we love because God first loved us (1 John 4:19), and we forgive because we ourselves have first been forgiven. Forgiveness in the Christian life is therefore not simply a moral command; it is a response to grace. It is the extension of what we ourselves have already received.

We all know this, and I’m sure you have heard this before. Forgiveness is not a human rule, it is one of the rules of the kingdom of heaven. It is not natural; it is not getting what you deserve. What I would like to propose is in this sense, forgiveness acts as spiritual training grounds. Think of it as a spiritual bootcamp into God’s grace. It is practice in learning to see reality from God’s side rather than only from the human equation of “who owes what.” Each act of forgiveness, then, is a small rehearsal of the gospel’s logic. We start in the human place—our sense of unfairness—and we consciously step into a different posture that mirrors the grace we have received. Over time this repetition reshapes us. It trains our moral imagination to recognize that there is a reality beyond fairness: the reality of grace.

In that sense, forgiveness is not only a gift we offer to others; it becomes a way of knowing and living in God. When I forgive, I get a tiny taste of what it means for God to bear my wrongs without requiring me to pay. I feel, in my own body, the cost of releasing someone from what they owe me, and that experience opens a window into the heart of God. The more I practice forgiveness; the less abstract grace becomes. It stops being a doctrine and begins to be something I recognize from the inside. So forgiveness is not just obedience to a command; it is a path into a deeper awareness of divine love. Often the hardest person to forgive is myself. We can believe that God has forgiven us in Christ, yet still keep our own inner court in session, rehearsing our failures and insisting that we must stay condemned. Learning to forgive ourselves is also part of this spiritual training. And because forgiveness is always practiced in relationship—in families, friendships, congregations, and even in the relationship we have with our own selves—it also becomes the way Christian communities come to share in that love together. Through the repeated act of forgiving, we come to know grace.

Do you think forgiveness feels so difficult in real life because we are naturally wired toward fairness? Can you recall a situation where your instinct for fairness made it hard to forgive someone? How does Jesus’ teaching in Matthew 18 challenge our natural way of thinking about justice and repayment? In the parable, the king forgives first—what does that suggest about the relationship between God’s grace and our responsibility to forgive others? In what ways might practicing forgiveness actually train us to see people and situations more from God’s perspective rather than our own? We also touched on the idea that forgiving ourselves can sometimes be even harder than forgiving others—why do you think that is, and what might it look like to receive God’s grace toward ourselves more fully? Finally, if forgiveness truly stands at the center of Christian love and community, what would a church or community look like if its members practiced forgiveness deeply and consistently?

C-J: When I was taking care of some kittens recently, if one had more than the other, if there were two bowls, they would push aside the more vulnerable one and get in there. I would have to move them around so the smaller one could get food and be nurtured. They were only about three months old, but even at their mother’s breast it was the same thing: “Would you just give me a chance, please?”

I think this is rooted not in a hierarchy of how much you hurt me or what my needs are, but in survival. I’ve said before that we can’t really forgive anybody until we forgive God, who is in control of everything. In a sense we cannot forgive the perpetrator because that’s part of the paradigm—we have to forgive God, the one who allowed the situation to occur. But it starts with the question: Am I going to survive?

I have to forgive myself because of my unforgiveness toward others. Ultimately, what I want is survival. I may say I care about you, but what I truly care about is survival. You have your food, clothing, and shelter, so you’re not worried. But maybe you took what little I had. All forgiveness, at its deepest level—spiritually, psychologically, and physically—is rooted in survival. At the highest spiritual level and the most basic level of human need, it’s about survival.

Jesus, in that parable, is really talking about survival—not just physical survival, but surviving in the kingdom, being among peace and love and prosperity that come only from the hand of God, even within our limited understanding.

David: I must say I’m troubled by the parable. It seems to me remarkably un–Jesus-like, because it almost reads as a threat: forgive, or else. If you don’t forgive, God’s going to get you. We are told that there should be no limit to our forgiveness of others, yet God’s forgiveness in that parable seems to be on a very short leash. That’s very concerning to me. I don’t really understand it.

Carolyn: I still go back to the whole aspect of forgiving, but there is also an element of forgetting. Your mind is willing, your heart is willing, and you make the effort to forgive and move forward. But later it all comes back to you. You remember the whole scenario of who owes whom and what happened.

To me it seems that it is only by the grace of God that we are able to forgive. Through His forgiveness we learn how we should act. He has shown us the way. And Michael, thank you—this is very meaningful to me. I appreciate the research you’ve done on this, because forgiveness is such a profound element of life. Most of us can remember something that hurt us very deeply. You may have forgiven verbally and even felt in your heart that you had forgiven, but five years later you still haven’t forgotten.

So I wonder whether that means we are still holding on in some way, or whether it is simply part of the natural healing process.

C-J: I think people who have experienced trauma follow a different pathway to forgiveness, and the intensity of forgiveness is different as well. Part of forgiveness—climbing that ladder, so to speak—is trying to understand what would motivate someone to behave the way they did. You might think, I did nothing to deserve this. I tried to be kind to this person, and they simply weren’t going to be kind back.

But sometimes, if you wait long enough for the merry-go-round to come around into the sunlight, you begin to see things differently. You might think, If I had grown up in that home, maybe it would be hard for me to trust too. Maybe I would want to steal food and hide it in my desk because I wasn’t sure there would be food when I got home.

When we begin to understand the motivation or the roots of the harm done by the perpetrator, forgiveness can start to become possible. So yes, Carolyn, I believe you’re right—it is a process. Even with God there was a process. Through the propitiation of Christ there was a process. That beautiful baby had to grow up into a man and experience terrible things. The revelations themselves were also part of that unfolding.

So the process is just as important as the harm itself, because through it we come to understand the harm we cause when we betray another person’s trust—even in small things. You might hold the door open for someone, or you might let it slam in their face. All of this becomes part of learning and growing in the spirit and within the cultural norms that shape us.

Reinhard: In the Bible Jesus speaks about forgiveness many times. When he was on the cross he prayed to the Father, “Forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.” He also taught that we should forgive seventy-seven times, as Michael mentioned earlier.

But in terms of spiritual life, that is one aspect. In our daily encounters with other people, the Bible also tells us to make peace with our accuser before going to court. So forgiveness has different dimensions.

In our spiritual life, repentance and confession of sin are important. When someone repents and confesses, forgiveness can be accepted. As human beings we try not to repeat our mistakes, but sometimes we do. There may be a difference between minor offenses and major ones.

God knows our weaknesses. We can come to Him again and again with our mistakes, and His grace accepts us. But major violations—such as killing someone or committing a serious injustice against another person—may be judged differently. For example, Judas betrayed Jesus. We do not know all the consequences of that act.

In daily life, when someone hurts us or we hurt someone else, forgiveness should still be possible. Sometimes people forgive but cannot forget. As Christians we follow the principle taught in the Lord’s Prayer: we forgive others as God forgives us. That principle becomes the foundation of Christian life.

Whenever we have the opportunity to forgive someone—especially for small offenses such as words that hurt our feelings—we should try to do it. Many times we say things without realizing they may hurt someone else. As we grow in our spiritual journey we become more aware of this. Sometimes we make mistakes without realizing it, and those may be minor offenses. But when we talk about rebellion against God or serious wrongdoing, that becomes more significant because it relates to our salvation.

In the end, God will be the judge. But in our relationships with others we must seek wisdom about how to deal with different situations.

Kiran: I’m thinking about the question why God would be so gracious and yet, in this parable, appear to give only one chance to the unmerciful servant. Perhaps there is another way to think about it. Maybe this test of generosity exposes whether a person has truly been transformed by grace or not. Without God’s grace transforming our hearts, I truly believe we are incapable of forgiving someone.

There is a kind of forgiveness where we simply say, “There’s nothing I can do about this, so I’ll let it go.” That is one way of forgiving. But true forgiveness is different. It is when we know someone has wronged us and we struggle with it, yet eventually come to a place of love and truly forgive them. I think that kind of forgiveness is the work of grace.

So in this parable, the test of generosity may reveal that the king has truly been transformed by grace, but the unmerciful servant has not. In that sense, he never truly received grace, which is why he is incapable of forgiving the next person. When someone has not received grace, the ultimate judgment of God is not arbitrary. As Jesus says elsewhere, the light has come into the world, and those who receive it live, while those who reject it remain in darkness.

That’s why I wonder whether we are really capable of forgiving someone purely on our own. I would be kidding myself if I said yes. Forgiveness is not something human—it is divine. Only the Holy Spirit, the inner light transforming the heart, can truly enable a person to forgive. I’m just thinking out loud here.

Carolyn: I see what you are saying, in a sense. To me there is a kind of forgiveness I would call “lip service,” and then there is “heart service.” I really believe that only God gives us the ability to do the heart service. That is the cleansing power, and it teaches us something about grace—perhaps only a small glimpse, but still something very real.

David: We’ve talked about grace for so long, and I think we’ve all agreed that grace is totally unconditional. That’s why this parable confuses me. It seems to make grace conditional: either you forgive, or you don’t receive grace. In fact, you receive the opposite of grace—you receive wrath. That’s what troubles me about it.

Kiran: Yes, it feels like an inconsistency, and that’s what I’m trying to resolve. How can we understand a God who is gracious—who says on the cross, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing”—and yet the same Jesus tells this parable that sounds conditional?

Perhaps grace itself is unconditional. It appears before any preconditions. It is simply there for us. But maybe we still have the option of accepting it or rejecting it. Rejecting grace is extremely difficult, as we’ve discussed before, but perhaps it is still possible.

If someone never accepts grace or continually resists it, maybe that explains the situation in the parable. But honestly, I’m not sure. I still struggle with it too.

C-J: And remember it no more—people often quote that phrase. But I think it’s important that we do remember. The point is not to erase the memory, but not to harbor it in our hearts. We release it, yet we remember it in honor of the harm that was done.

We also have a binary brain. Memory is essential for how we function. If I see myself as belonging to this earthly domain while God belongs to a different domain, then remembering becomes part of our growth. It helps us understand our relationship with God.

This is really about that relationship—why we are here in this reality, what lessons we need to learn that we did not learn at a purely spiritual level. We are born into this world, into these bodies, into families and histories and choices, and we live through all of that.

You cannot undo what has happened. Time moves forward—tick tock. But if the same patterns keep cycling back through different people and situations, that suggests the lesson has not yet been learned. The next time something similar confronts you, perhaps your response will be different. You might say, “It’s okay, sir. It’s not a problem. Take it. I want you to have it. God would want you to have it. It doesn’t belong to me anyway.”

That’s grace—the understanding that whatever comes to me ultimately comes by God’s hand. Forgiveness then isn’t just an event. It goes beyond the process and becomes like oxygen. You cannot survive without it.

Don: There is a sense in the parable that the grace is infinite. The scale of the forgiven debt is so overwhelming that it clearly functions as a metaphor for an unlimited forgiveness.

But there is another element that we do not talk about very much, and Kiran mentioned it earlier. We have to accept grace. In that sense there is a condition—not a condition that earns grace, but one that allows us to receive it. Grace cannot be forced upon someone against their will. There must be acceptance.

In the book we’ve written on grace we talk about an epoxy analogy. You have the base substance and then a conditioning agent that must be mixed with it. That conditioning agent is faith. As Ephesians says, “By grace you are saved through faith.” So there is an element of acceptance that allows grace to become operative.

But accepting grace is not easy. It runs counter to everything we naturally believe about justice and fairness. We struggle with the idea that we might receive something for nothing, that justice is not always carried out in the way we expect.

David: What I find interesting, from my Daoist perspective, is that in Christianity forgiveness is treated as an active thing. You must actively forgive for it to have value. That relates somewhat to what Carolyn was saying about forgiveness from the heart versus forgiveness from the lips.

Forgiveness from the lips is almost Daoist to me. It still has value because it means letting it go. That is the Daoist approach to forgiveness—not necessarily an active declaration, but simply allowing it to pass, letting it become water under the bridge. You go with the flow and don’t hold on to it.

To me that approach is just as valid a way for life to continue in harmony as any other. If the kingdom of heaven is ultimately a place of harmony, then perhaps you don’t always need the active act of forgiveness. Sometimes simply letting it go can restore balance.

In fact, even if someone says the words “I forgive you” without fully feeling them, it can still have an effect. It helps calm the waters and allows relationships to move back toward a more harmonious future.

Don: Do you think that there is also a personality aspect to this? That some people are naturally more gentle or accommodating, and therefore more able to forgive easily than others?

David: Yes, absolutely. The ideal many sages point toward is total compassion and humility. If someone truly embodies compassion and humility, then forgiveness follows naturally. There would be nothing anyone could do that such a person would not forgive. That is the example we see in Jesus on the cross. But it raises a deeper question for me: Did that moment require an active act of forgiveness? Or was it simply the natural expression of who he was?

And that leads into another question I still wrestle with: Was the cross itself necessary? For me, Jesus’ life and his teachings already carry enormous meaning. I’m still not entirely sure that I understand why the sacrifice of the cross was required.

Don: I was referring to the moment where Jesus says, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.” That seems to show exactly the kind of compassionate personality you were just describing—something you said you sometimes struggle with.

David: I think to some extent all of us as human beings struggle with that failure. That is really what Jesus is pointing out. We are all imperfect.

Carolyn: If you forgive someone with your lips and at that moment you feel that you truly have forgiven them, but the next morning the same feeling comes back inside you, what does that mean? It feels like a journey to me. Perhaps we are always in a state of forgiveness as part of our daily walk with God. Every day we ask for forgiveness ourselves.

I believe that grace works in this way: we accept grace, we offer grace, and that grace gradually leads us toward forgiveness.

We want to forgive. We want to move through the hurt, to heal, and to be finished with it. But sometimes the feelings still return.

C-J: Here is the black-and-white side of the issue. Jesus also had righteous anger. I don’t think he was going to apologize for overturning the tables of the money changers in the temple. That was righteous anger. There are also things in the world—genocide, oppression, barbarism—where people cut off heads and place them on poles along the Roman road as a warning. You can have righteous anger about those things.

I’m not going to apologize for caring about social justice or for having conviction in the spiritual realm. Religion itself is often intertwined with politics. We like to think of it as purely spiritual, but if you look at the first five books of the Bible, they are deeply political as well. Sacrifice and blood were central in that worldview because the ultimate sacrifice is life itself.

All of this—forgiveness, restoration, transformation—is tied together. You cannot easily separate one part from the others, because the whole process is meant to transform us. The first time you take a punch you might not see the bruise for three days, but the injury has already happened psychologically and emotionally. Perhaps it happened in front of other people, which makes it even more painful. Of all the things someone said to you, that particular moment hurt the most.

So forgiveness cannot be untangled so easily. Maybe God is working on us through our ego, our pride, our sense of justice, which might not always be accurate. It is a process. (That is what I hear David saying as well.) The end result is becoming aware of where we fall short, so that when we act we begin to understand our motivations and correct them consciously—not only when the Holy Spirit prompts us, but also when we reflect on our own behavior.

A parent might say, “What were you thinking?” A boss might say, “You’ve lost your job.” A moment of anger can carry many other emotions braided into it. Forgiveness involves becoming aware of who we are and where we are at a particular moment in time.

If your wife has yelled at you, the children are screaming in the house, and you are stuck in traffic, your tolerance is going to diminish. But if you are sitting on the porch on a beautiful day and someone approaches you and says, “Do you have a moment? I want to talk about something,” your response will likely be very different. You might say, “I’m sorry you interpreted it that way. I may have been out of place, but I hope you can see that I had a lot going on at the time.” That is grace. You are acknowledging the situation without trying to win the argument. You are simply saying, “I care about you enough to clear the air.”

We are human beings having a human experience while searching for God in a spiritual way. There is much that must be let go. But there is also a deep sense within us that says we must forgive—though that forgiveness must be tempered by understanding. It is not about forgetting. It is about understanding what happened so that we can release it.

Reinhard: Yes, I agree that it is a process for us. We live in a world where we are constantly relating to other people. I think of this in terms of horizontal relationships—our relationships with other human beings. Among those relationships there are many kinds of personalities. Some people are very arrogant, and we encounter them in our daily lives. Others are very humble and easy to get along with, and those people often find it easier to forgive.

Dr. Weaver mentioned personality, and I think that is important. It depends on the personality of the individual. When people grow up in a Christian environment, they learn certain ways of responding to others. That shapes the horizontal relationships we have with people around us.

But there is also the vertical relationship—the relationship between us and God. In that relationship we are always the ones who fall short. God is the true righteousness. When we speak about spiritual life and our future with God, we as human beings are often like a roller coaster. Sometimes we do things that offend God, even if they are minor.

Paul spoke about this in Romans 7:15 when he said that he does what he does not want to do, and the things he hates are the things he ends up doing. Even Paul struggled in his relationship with God. So there are really two dimensions here: our relationships with other people and our relationship with God. Between human beings, God teaches us to forgive others, just as God forgives us. When we come to God in repentance and try not to repeat the same mistakes, we experience His forgiveness.

Another important point is whether forgiveness comes only from the lips or from the heart. When we truly forgive someone, it also releases the burden within us. When we refuse to forgive, the resentment remains in our hearts and continues to trouble us. But when we let it go, that burden is lifted. As Christians, we ask God to guide our lives. Through the Holy Spirit we can learn how to deal with others. Some problems may be difficult, and some may be easier, but when we release them to God the burden becomes lighter.

C-J: When you think about Jesus and his humanity, he traveled with the disciples, and there were moments when he must have felt frustrated with them. Imagine that moment when he asks, “Who do you say that I am?” Some people say Elijah, others say a prophet. Then Peter speaks up and says, through revelation, that he is the Messiah. 

But think about how frustrating it must have been for Jesus at times. You have seen miracles. You have seen the dead raised. You have seen the sea calmed. You have experienced personal revelation—and yet you still do not understand. Still, Jesus had grace for them. He knew that eventually things would be revealed. They had not yet received the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. They had to grow. They would grow, then slip back, then grow again.

And in the end we often criticize Judas the betrayer, but he was part of the story too. He stood there side by side with the others in that narrative. Many people would have wanted to stone him. Prison would not have been enough punishment. People might have wanted to make an example of him.

Yet think about what forgiveness would mean in that context. Jesus turned to the criminals beside him—one a murderer, one a thief—and said, “Today you will be with me in paradise.” That is forgiveness without condition. Jesus understood that he was about to die a horrible death, and he accepted that moment because of his relationship with God. “Thy will be done.” I can say those words easily, but I cannot imagine standing there in that moment, surrounded by people mocking me, the Romans gambling for my clothes while I hung there exposed and humiliated.

And what if it had all been wrong? What if he had not risen on the third day? Then he would have been remembered as a false prophet. The stakes were incredibly high.

It takes a long time to grow spiritually. It takes a long time to learn to hear the voice of God. Sometimes we hold on slowly; sometimes we let go quickly. The difference between someone losing faith and someone saying they have no faith at all can be enormous. One person walks away entirely. Another person keeps holding on, hoping.

Someone might say, “I value you. I’m sorry for what has happened. I cannot change it, but I accept who you are.” That kind of response is transformational. Only God can truly bring that about, because it involves letting go of shame, blame, and the need to win. 

That is how God works.

Kiran: What Reinhard said regarding horizontal relationships may actually be the real test. John talks about this a lot: how can you claim to love God, whom you have not seen, if you do not love your brother whom you can see? If God truly lives within us, then the evidence should be that we love one another.

The argument Michael made today is that forgiveness flows out of grace. But I keep thinking about David’s idea of simply letting things go, like water flowing under a bridge. I have friends who get angry quickly but forget about it an hour later. For me it is very different. If I become angry, the feeling stays with me for weeks. I replay the situation again and again in my mind. It takes a lot of emotional energy for me to forgive someone. I struggle with it. I cannot easily treat it as something that simply flows away.

One of my friends seems able to do that very naturally. Perhaps he is simply a better person than I am, because he lets things go so easily. For me, forgiveness requires reasoning through the situation. Eventually I reach the conclusion that God has forgiven me, so I should forgive others. But it is difficult. Right now the world is full of turmoil and injustice. We feel anger about those things. So what does forgiveness mean in that context? Does it mean allowing people to continue doing whatever they want?

That is where the struggle comes in. The ideal sounds beautiful, but living it out in real life is complicated. Sometimes God’s silence also makes it difficult. When God seems silent in the face of injustice, it can make us cynical.

So forgiveness, for me, is always a struggle. I wish it were easier. 

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