Thoughts on Forgiveness: Part 1: The Background

I have been having some new thoughts on forgiveness. I am coming from a Christian context but I think the topic is universal regardless of your faith or lack thereof so I thought I would put it out there.

First of all, I should explain how I got to this point (this isn't necessary to know but possibly helpful to fully understand where I am coming from).

I help to facilitate an adult discussion group at my church and for the past few months, we have been discussing the topic of giving. The way it works is I, and the person I facilitate with, frame a topic, the group starts to run with it and we see where it leads. So on the topic of giving, we started with the simplest, most mundane type of giving and tried to move the topic towards more complex and spiritual forms over the months that we discussed.

Here are the bullet points:

1) We need to give. We are created to be givers. When we don't give, we lose a part of our humanity. Giving is part of our spiritual DNA. We must give - not because others need our help but because WE NEED to give to become fully human.

2) We should all be giving something to our house of worship and be trying to figure out a way to give more

3) We should all be prepared to give to the poor whom we encounter on the street in our day-to-day lives and be trying to figure out a way to give more (for me, this takes the shape of having a gift card to a grocery store or McD's in my wallet that I can hand out as well as trying to take the time to acknowledge the person's humanity, spend time, treat them as the equal that they are)

4) We should be giving to the poor through organizations as well as following our calling to give through organizations (secular and sacred) that energize us (past blog post here) and trying to figure out how to give more

5) We should give of our time

A) Voluntarily (house of worship, the poor, organization of your choice etc)

B) Involuntarily in the now (these are the constant interruptions, the unplanned demands of others, the person that takes your turn in traffic, the person in the checkout lane with 47 coupons)

C) Involuntarily in the not yet (people and situations who are not changing according to our timetable, the relative with an addiction, the friend in a corrosive relationship etc)

This involuntary giving of time in the now and the not yet led us to the discussion of Grace. We are called to be fountains of grace in a fallen world. To constantly extend grace - constantly spread grace. A good but incomplete synonym for grace is "patience". So much of our impatience comes from defending the "rights" of our egos. "How DARE you merge in front of ME!!!" etc.

We are called to lay aside our egos - to extend patience, to extend grace, constantly, all the time - not because the world needs it but because WE need to extend it. We are created to give grace. We are made in the image of our creator and the farther away from that image, the more of our true humanity we lose. Our creator is a giver of grace and so must we be - not because we "should" but because we "must". Our giving of grace to those around us brings us life. Giving grace to others resurrects us.

So we are built to be givers: of our treasure, of our time (voluntary and involuntary) and of grace. We regain our humanity when we do this.

That led us to the discussion of forgiveness . . .

To be continued . . .