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Forgiving ourselves

4 February 2007                                                  See also  Healing blog

Forgiving ourselves is both simple and difficult. Forgiveness is just a matter of deciding not to hold blame against someone. It is deciding not be the accuser of someone any more. A consequence of it is that we also stop trying to punish them.

But when it comes to ourselves the problem gets a bit more complex. The reason is that there is a hidden step in forgiveness which involves admitting that the other person has done wrong. This is not usually a problem, although it is often a problem when we want to forgive a parent who has harmed us in some way. Some people have a feeling that if they admit out loud that their parent did wrong, then the parent will never be good to them, love them …etc.

When it comes to forgiving ourselves a serious difficulty is to admit that we did wrong. That is to admit it deep down, because admitting such a thing may go against our desired self-image.  But forgiveness is not possible without admission or confession. People who want to see themselves as good can have great difficulty with this. But denial does not heal the person. Neither does projection (expecting others to be good) nor compensation (making up for the bad), nor the excuses of rationalising.

The reality is that forgiving ourselves involves admitting that at heart we are not good. It involves accepting ourselves as sinners - imperfect, not always good, not as we wish to be. It involves a rejection of our pride and a rejection of our attempt to be, or to appear to be, good people. Actually the same approach is needed with God.

So forgiving ourselves at heart is the abandonment of our desire to be perfect. For those for whom this is a problem, the desire to be perfect, or good, may be associated not only with their own expectations of themselves, but quite likely with the expectations of others.

Our sense of goodness, shame, guilt or innocence is determined by a complex of expectations and demands. The Christian has to gradually allow the Holy Spirit through the scriptures to weed out both the false guilt and the false innocence. Our understanding of what is right and wrong, good and bad, whether we are acceptable or not, must be determined by God, not by parents, teachers, clergy, Christian legalists, peers, fellow sinners, fear of criticism, or our own pride.

The wonderful thing about God’s forgiveness is that it is freely given to sinners whom God knows to be sinners. God’s forgiveness is not reserved for the good. It is only given to the sinner. We have to be sinners to qualify. And God has shown his love for us, in that while we humans were still sinners, Christ died for us.

Dale

Comments

"Forgiving yourself" seems to me to be something of a distraction. Something people might chase but never catch, because it doesn't exist.
A proper understanding of forgiveness, at its best in Gods' forgiveness in Christ's death for those who trust in him, rules out any need to think that a person has to forgive him/herself.
It's a topic that pops up now and again but tangles people up because there is no answer to this way of thinking.
When we sin against other people we can ask their forgiveness, and God's. So, we are either forgiven or not forgiven. That's all we can do in this situation.
When someone sins against us we can forgive them.
As best as I can determine, "forgiving ourselves" doesn't have a place in God's arrangement.
Regards, Murray from the far south.

Posted on Sunday, March 11, 2007 at 13:26:49

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