Charles M. Blow shared a bold piece of literature this week in a New York Times op-ed. The article drew from Blow’s new memoir Fire Shut Up in My Bones in which he processes the weighty issues of his past and present including sexual abuse, the bonds of family, stereotypes, and human sexuality. Regular readers of this blog should know that many of my own values and convictions take a departure from those held by Mr. Blow, and yet, there is a substantial amount of truth to be gleaned from his writing.

In particular, Blow provides a powerful model and illustration for what it means to truly forgive. So often our definitions of forgiveness fall short of the biblical meaning of the term. We tell people that the act of forgiveness is more for the victim then the perpetrator, or that forgiveness must include the associated act of forgetting. Both of which are inadequate, and incomplete. 

In his book Reason for God Tim Keller offers a much fuller picture of forgiveness that centers on the reality that for every violation enacted, a debt is incurred that must be paid. We recognize this instinctively which is why we speak of “getting even” or “paying someone back” when we have been wronged. Keller proposes another path that neither ignores the offence nor dismisses the debt - absorb the debt yourself.    

“There is another option” Keller writes, “You can forgive. Forgiveness means refusing to make them pay for what they did. However, to refrain from lashing out at someone when you want to do so with all your being is agony. It is a form of suffering. You not only suffer the original loss of happiness, reputation, and opportunity, but now you forgo the consolation of inflicting the same on them. You are absorbing the debt, taking the cost of it completely on yourself instead of taking it out of the other person. It hurts terribly. Many people would say it feels like a kind of death. Yes, but it is a death that leads to resurrection instead of the lifelong living death of bitterness and cynicism.”

This is the forgiveness Blow introduces and illustrates for us in his memoir. Having been sexually abused by an older cousin, Blow is tempted later in life to murder him. With a gun in his car, racing towards his mother's house to confront his offender, Blow has a life-altering epiphany. He writes,

“Then I thought about who I was now, and who I could be. Seeing him in a pool of his own blood might finally liberate me from my past, but it would also destroy my future. I had to make a choice: drive forward on the broad road toward the unspeakable or take the narrow highway exit. I don’t know which chose, my head or my hand, but I exited and drove through my college campus, thinking about all that I had accomplished. Me. With my own mind and grit. I had reinvented and improved myself. I was a man — a man with a future. I couldn’t continue to live my life through the eyes of a 7-year-old boy.”

This is far deeper than mere “forgive and forget” theology; this is debt absorption, this is forgiveness. Blow does not minimize his pain, nor does he ignore the fact that injustice has occurred. His way forward is not through some Pollyanna vision of the past but a heroic willingness to the pay the penalty himself. The offender is off the hook, but only because the victim is willing to die in their place.

The rest of Blow’s story spells out the implications of his actions including his ongoing struggle with male attraction and his stigmatized existence as a black bi-sexual.[1] Through his act of forgiveness, Blow absorbed a debt that in many ways, he will never fully pay off.

This is the kind of forgiveness Jesus speaks of when he teaches us to pray, “Forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors” or more bluntly just two verse later, “For if you forgive men when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you.  But if you do not forgive men their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins” (Matt. 6:12, 14-16)

When we teach that forgiveness is a gift given to us freely we skew the deeper truth that forgiveness always comes at a tremendous cost. When we forgive “as we have been forgiven” victims are crucified for the sins of the criminals, the innocent bear the wrath intended for the guilty, and the abused steer their cars off of the highway and take the bullet their abuser deserves.

When we dare to engage in this kind of Kingdom-defined forgiveness, we will find that in the great paradox-ridden economy of God, this kind of death leads to life, new life, a resurrected life. Life that is able to finally move on from the nightmares of a seven-year-old boy into the glorious potential for a new chapter, written by the Father who endured the full weight of the penalty of all of our sin, all of my sin, all of Charles Blow’s sin, so that we too might have the painful joy of taking up our own crosses, and following him.   

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[1] Studies have shown that boys who are sexually abused are four to seven times more likely to develop same sex attraction. Bolton,  F. G., Morris, L. A., and MacEachron, A. E. Males at Risk: The Other Side of Child Sexual Abuse, Sage Publications, Newbury Park, CA, 1989, p. 86 and “Victimization of Boys,” Journal of Adolescent Health Care, vol. 6, pp. 372–376.

My son Andrew is eight years old. He is the same age as Martin William Richard, the young victim of the pressure cooker bombs that exploded during the Boston Marathon earlier this week. Bombs that tore into the crowds who gathered to cheer on family and friends. Bombs that have left us, once again, searching for answers and counting up victims. It was a race that started with a moment of silence for the victims of the Sandyhook Elementary School shooting, and ended in another massacre that requires memorializing of its own. Like you, I am exhausted by the darkness. I am tired of the violence. I am emotionally and spiritually drained. And many days I am simply angry.

I am angry at senseless crimes and unspeakable evil leveled at the innocent and unarmed. And I am angry that in the midst of many peoples’ pain, the ones they have loved the most often become political pawns for agendas, laws, and policies. It is hard at times for me to remember these victims are human beings, not causes or statements. Their lives are not serendipitous tools in the hands of religious apologists who want to argue about evil and morality. They are not lobbyists for gun control. Martin Richard was an eight year old boy. He was a son, and a brother. He was a child, who is now famous for his creation of a handmade sign that reads, “No more hurting people.”

In honor of Martin Richard, I wanted to share a unique, and I trust, much needed reminder that the light shines in the darkness, can still shone in the darkness and, try as it may, the darkness has not overcome it. Nor will it ever. With so much talk about vengeance, revenge, and justice swelling in my own heart, I took some time to re-read the following story today.  Whenever I need to be reminded about the power of the gospel, I turn to a wise friend and mentor who has taught me countless truths in the last few years. This is the story of Corrie ten Boom, holocaust survivor, Christian, and victim who learned how to forgive. I trust it might do your own heart well this morning too.

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“It was in a church in Munich that I saw him—a balding, heavyset man in a gray overcoat, a brown felt hat clutched between his hands. People were filing out of the basement room where I had just spoken, moving along the rows of wooden chairs to the door at the rear. It was 1947 and I had come from Holland to defeated Germany with the message that God forgives. It was the truth they needed most to hear in that bitter, bombed-out land, and I gave them my favorite mental picture. Maybe because the sea is never far from a Hollander’s mind, I liked to think that that’s where forgiven sins were thrown. ‘When we confess our sins,’ I said, ‘God casts them into the deepest ocean, gone forever. …’

“The solemn faces stared back at me, not quite daring to believe. There were never questions after a talk in Germany in 1947. People stood up in silence, in silence collected their wraps, in silence left the room. And that’s when I saw him, working his way forward against the others. One moment I saw the overcoat and the brown hat; the next, a blue uniform and a visored cap with its skull and crossbones. It came back with a rush: the huge room with its harsh overhead lights; the pathetic pile of dresses and shoes in the center of the floor; the shame of walking naked past this man. I could see my sister’s frail form ahead of me, ribs sharp beneath the parchment skin. Betsie, how thin you were!

[Betsie and I had been arrested for concealing Jews in our home during the Nazi occupation of Holland; this man had been a guard at Ravensbruck concentration camp where we were sent.]

“Now he was in front of me, hand thrust out: ‘A fine message, Fräulein! How good it is to know that, as you say, all our sins are at the bottom of the sea!’

“And I, who had spoken so glibly of forgiveness, fumbled in my pocketbook rather than take that hand. He would not remember me, of course—how could he remember one prisoner among those thousands of women?

“But I remembered him and the leather crop swinging from his belt. I was face-to-face with one of my captors and my blood seemed to freeze.

You mentioned Ravensbruck in your talk,’ he was saying, ‘I was a guard there.’ No, he did not remember me.

‘But since that time,’ he went on, ‘I have become a Christian. I know that God has forgiven me for the cruel things I did there, but I would like to hear it from your lips as well. Fräulein,’ again the hand came out—’will you forgive me?’

“And I stood there—I whose sins had again and again to be forgiven—and could not forgive. Betsie had died in that place—could he erase her slow terrible death simply for the asking?

“It could not have been many seconds that he stood there—hand held out—but to me it seemed hours as I wrestled with the most difficult thing I had ever had to do.

“For I had to do it—I knew that. The message that God forgives has a prior condition: that we forgive those who have injured us. ‘If you do not forgive men their trespasses,’ Jesus says, ‘neither will your Father in heaven forgive your trespasses.’

“I knew it not only as a commandment of God, but as a daily experience. Since the end of the war I had had a home in Holland for victims of Nazi brutality. Those who were able to forgive their former enemies were able also to return to the outside world and rebuild their lives, no matter what the physical scars. Those who nursed their bitterness remained invalids. It was as simple and as horrible as that.

“And still I stood there with the coldness clutching my heart. But forgiveness is not an emotion—I knew that too. Forgiveness is an act of the will, and the will can function regardless of the temperature of the heart. ‘… Help!’ I prayed silently. ‘I can lift my hand. I can do that much. You supply the feeling.’

“And so woodenly, mechanically, I thrust my hand into the one stretched out to me. And as I did, an incredible thing took place. The current started in my shoulder, raced down my arm, sprang into our joined hands. And then this healing warmth seemed to flood my whole being, bringing tears to my eyes.

“ ‘I forgive you, brother!’ I cried. ‘With all my heart!’

“For a long moment we grasped each other’s hands, the former guard and the former prisoner. I had never known God’s love so intensely, as I did then”

Excerpted from “I’m Still Learning to Forgive” by Corrie ten Boom.

I have shared the following story with a number of students throughout my career. It is about stealing loads of money from Mrs. Tonry.

I worked for a couple years on the Tonry Tree Farm throughout some frigid NH winters during the busy holiday season. I worked with several of my high-school friends who enjoyed competing with each other on a weekly basis to see who could steal the most money through our, unregulated, cash transactions. It was not long before I had joined the party.

I do not know exactly how much money I stuffed into my frozen jean pockets over the years, but I do know that being a thief haunted me. During my first year of seminary a professor shared a story about a friend of his that burned his car because he couldn’t make payments, and then took the insurance money. He wasn’t able to pray again without seeing the burning car in his mind. The madness ended when he finally confessed and wrote a check to the insurance company. This wise seminary prof challenged us to deal with the “burning cars” in our own lives as we prepared to entered ministry. 

So I wrote to Mrs. Tonry.

I confessed, I apologized, I asked for forgiveness and I included a check for $500.00. She was less than impressed with my conversion experience, my repentance, or my new life in Christ. But, it was well with my own soul.

But after the news from some smart folks in Australia, my new question is, did I really need to put myself through all that?

Tyler Okimoto, who's a researcher at the University of Queensland in Australia, along with his colleagues Michael Wenzel and Kyli Hedrick say, I absolutely did not. In fact, their recent research seems to demonstrate that NOT apologizing has as many positive outcomes, maybe even more, as apologizing. They write,  

“Results showed that the act of refusing to apologize resulted in greater self-esteem than not refusing to apologize. Moreover, apology refusal also resulted in increased feelings of power/control and value integrity.”

Shocker. We feel better when we do what we want, not what we should. My kids could have written this paper. 

To me, this was a classic example of the dangers of divorcing faith and science. Faith without science leaves the church burning people at the stake when they suggest that the world might be round, or that the Sun is at the center of the solar system. When science goes it alone, we find psychologists suggesting that it is just as healthy for people to never apologize. A world without the word sorry?

A question that wasn’t raised by the research, and desperately needs to be, is whether or not apologizing, or refusing to do so, has any effect on the victim. Can you imagine for a moment what kind of world it would be if bullies of every stripe, rapists, dictators, abusive parents, rebellious children, murders, tyrant bosses, thieves, cheaters, adulterers, absent fathers…sinners of every kind imaginable, believed that it might be best for their own self esteem if they didn’t look someone in the eye, someone whose life they have crushed in a myriad of ways, and tell them they are sorry?

There are many people I counsel with every week, and many more that I have counseled throughout my life, who have waited a lifetime to hear those words. They would tell these researches that no amount of neurological scientific research would be able to ever quantify what sort of difference it would make to hear the word sorry form their perpetrators. It would mean freedom, it would mean resolve, it would mean moving on, finally. It would mean God is good, He is there, and he has heard their prayers.

For victims everywhere, this time, the researches have it wrong. 

And for those who might be celebrating this news, for the victims you have left in your wake, deal with your burning car today.      

Confession: someone hurt me last year, and I don’t want to forgive him. In fact, I want him to pay dearly. Jesus asked his followers to do plenty of outlandish things. If they were to be true followers, he told them, “eat my flesh and drink my blood” (John 6:53), “hate your mother and father” (Luke 14:26), “sell everything and give to the poor” (Luke 18:22). But no matter how insane any of them sounded, or sound today even, nothing Jesus said has ever been as difficult for me to follow than his command to forgive. Theologically I get it. From a purely Biblical perspective I can tell you that I cognitively understand that we forgive because we are forgiven. That whatever wrongs someone has committed against me pale in comparison to the sins I have committed against my Creator. From the comfort of my counseling chair in my office I frequently wax eloquently about the dangers of bitterness and the fact that the real person who is set free in the process of forgiveness is “you.” I know. I know. I know. But in the real world where you and I live the command for me to forgive sounds as ancient and impossible as Jesus’ suggestion that I can move a mountain off of its foundation with nothing but my faith. Absolutely impossible. Nothing takes more humility and nothing demands more of me. Hearing Jesus’ command to forgive makes me anxious. It makes me defensive. It makes my heart pump a bit harder and my chest compress a little tighter. Forgiving feels more like an invisible hand is reaching into the depth of my soul and ripping away something that feels so essential to my life and existence. Which is exactly what the process of forgiveness is. I harbor grudges, and you harbor grudges, because they bring us some semblance of control. If I can hold something over someone else it gives me power, it gives me a sense of superiority. It feels good to be angry. We can grow very accustomed to the poison of hatred coursing through our veins, and we can become addicted to being the victim. Nothing feels quite as good as feeling sorry for yourself. When we choose to forgive, it has been said, we relinquish our right to punish whoever hurt us. That is why forgiveness is so difficult. I want revenge. I want someone to pay. Even this very day I carry with me a wound given to me by someone that I want to destroy. It’s killing me, but not nearly as much as the kind of death I have convinced myself that I would experience by forgiving and letting go. Today I am reading Jesus’ famous exhortation to forgive someone “seventy times seven” (Matthew 18:22) and I am doing the math. 490 times. Today that sounds about right. That totals almost a year and a half of forgiving this same person every single day. Maybe that is what Jesus intended us to see. Forgiveness is not easy and it takes naming your wound and naming the tormentor every day, maybe for over a year, and asking for freedom, begging for the spirit to come and help you to unclench your fist. Forgiveness is NOT saying that someone does not deserve punishment; it is surrendering your right to deliver it to them. It will cost you to do this, but rest assured that as you pass through the process, when Jesus says, “I totally understand,” he means it. Freedom is waiting. 489 days left to go.