Last night at bible study, one of the questions was, “Who do you find is the most difficult to forgive?”
I immediately said, “Ooo,” which of course got everyone’s attention. “I find it hardest to forgive people who won’t forgive me.”
I say this because most of the time, I get the impression that most people like me. And if they don’t like me, they at least are neutral about me. I don’t know how many people actively hate me. I’m not saying that there aren’t people, but perhaps I’m just too naive to notice or for some reason people don’t express their anger to me.
So with this belief, I find that people seem to forgive me a lot. I will make plenty of ridiculous requests, even more absurd gestures, and flat-out offensive comments, and somehow, most people seem to forgive me. Often, I have struggled to forgive these people for their own human blunders, and yet, somehow I do a pretty good job at eventually forgiving them — Emotional Self-Defense is surely helping me in that.
Where I seem to get stuck, and I mean stuck, is when I have to forgive someone who I believe needs to forgive me. “Well if he forgives me first, then I will forgive him.” Conditional forgiveness. The problem with this type of forgiveness, from my experience, is that nobody ever starts. If I will only forgive the other person if they forgive me first, and the other person will only forgive me if I forgive them first, then we are stuck in a never-ending waiting game of resentment.
So anytime that I catch myself saying, “This person needs to forgive me,” or asking, “Why won’t this person forgive me?” I want to remember, “Ah, how can I forgive this person first?”
When I forgive someone, I re-open my heart to loving them. When I treat someone with resentment, they often respond with resentment. When I treat someone with love, they often respond with love.
Emotions are contagious, incredibly deft things. If I want someone to forgive me, I need to forgive them first.