How have you forgiven yourself for, for instance, hurting others? Making an earnest yet imperfect apology?
I don’t think it’s wise to move past these types of occurrences so quickly. Instances like these, e.g. when you hurt someone else, can be excellent learning opportunities. For instance, what was it inside of us that caused hurt to the other person?
A lot of times, we permit sinful psychological elements to exist within us because we think they’re harmless, and then we don’t see the effect they have until they cause harm to other people. So when those mental tendencies finally reveal themselves for what they are, that gives us new fuel for our meditation in which we work with God to remove them from our mind, out of our sincere desire to avoid hurting others.
It’s important to recognize that we can’t change the past. What’s done is done, and we can’t undo it. Apologies and forgiveness cannot erase history. What we must do is
learn from history (our own personal history) so we do not continue to make the same mistakes.
How do you deal with forgiving others when they don’t think they need forgiveness?
Jesus had the best approach here. He said,
Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do. – Luke 23:34
Many people think He was referring to the fact that the Jews and Romans didn’t know they were crucifying the Son of God.
But as Jesus taught (e.g. Matthew 26:52), it would have been wrong for them to crucify
anyone.
The reason the people were crucifying Jesus is because they didn’t know what they were doing. That is, because their worldview was rooted in delusion and ignorance. They could not see the Truth about Jesus, themselves, the world, or their actions.
Ignorance is fundamentally at the root of all sin. When we get trapped in anger, it perverts our perception so that we believe oppression, tyranny, and pain are justice. When we get trapped in lust, it deceives us into believing desire is love. When we are trapped in envy, we see the empty shadows of the world as having value, when the only real value can be found in God. When we are trapped in fear, we do irrational, often harmful, things to cling to a sense of security even though no real security can be found in this world. And the list goes on, and on, and on.
This is why Jesus said,
Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own: for he is a liar, and the father of it. – John 8:44
When our mind is afflicted by sin, we are trapped inside a lie, a false, disordered version of reality. Jesus recognized that.
So as you learn to recognize that in yourself, compassion and forgiveness will start to emerge naturally, because you will recognize it in other people as well. You will see that those people who are hurting you are doing so because they are trapped in the delusion brought about by their own sin, just like you are, just like all of us.
in the thread… break time