Joseph, Forgiveness, Burdens, Perplexities

As I've mentioned here before, forgiveness figures prominently in my Lent this year. The deeper I go into this, the more amorphous becomes my definition of forgiveness. One of the dictionary definitions I like says that to forgive is : To renounce anger or resentment against.

That I understand -- to detach from something bad. Anger is as strong a glue as love, just not nearly as satisfying.

Here is what I know so far: Forgiveness does not have to be a "pardon" -- no one has to yell "Olly Olly Oxen Free" at the end of a forgiveness. The largest benefit of forgiveness accrues to the forgiver. And forgiveness and reconciliation are two different things.


In Genesis, Joseph, a man horribly abused by his brothers, describes his forgiveness of them and his reconciliation with them when they repent to him. They sold him into slavery. They apologize much later, and he forgives them.

He says " 'Don't be afraid. Am I in the place of God? You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives. So then, don't be afraid. I will provide for you and your children.' And he reassured them and spoke kindly to them."

Joseph is a better person than I am.

And luckier, in that all his abusers were repentant.

But that aside, what he accepted as part of his reconciliation is that every wrong done to him gave him strength in some way -- that his life and his ability to help others was fired in the furnace of adversity. If he had not had his life's misfortunes, he would not have had his eventual life's fortunes.

I stand in perplexed awe. I am not certain I could ever have that much grace.

But what I do understand is, reconciled or not, how important it was for Joseph to see God's intent as larger than his evil brothers' intent.

That I can do! I can understand the proportions of things.

Still, I find I can define forgiveness more by its absence than by its presence.

Signs of the absence of forgiveness (and the consequent spiritual pain) seem to be:

When we get tied up in the muck of other people's past wrongdoings.
When we do not seek justice, but rather revenge.
When we see the world through the eyes of our pain.
When something someone said or did to us limits the freedom we have to experience any good thing.
When we find ourselves telling the story of a past injustice over and over and over.

Here is how I spoke about forgiveness in a recent email to a dear friend:

Imagine that we all look at the world through a lens. Whenever anyone in our lives abuses us, or hurts us in some way that lingers in our thoughts, it is like they smear some Vaseline on a bit of the lens -- so that as we look at the world we sometimes see it through the aftermath of our pain or abuse. What was done to us colors how we see the world. It colors what we see and how we see it, what we believe, what we do. Everybody gets hurt in life. Some of the pains we have are so big, so deep, so scarring that they can't all be shaken. But many can be.

I believe I can surrender my attachments to a lot of my old pain - and that I can stop living through the results of those pains - and clean off some of the Vaseline that is on the lens through which I see my world. I cannot do that just by ignoring things that happened. Or by being angry about them years after the fact. Or by feeling resentment, ongoing woundedness, or any of those things that attach me like glue to old hurts.

Let's use the trivial example of the kids I mentioned in a prior blogpost - while it is not a big deal at all, even today I know that a tiny part of me watches people's faces when I tell them I am Polish, waiting to see if they say something unkind or make a joke. I know that tracks back to those kids (and some other stuff) -- but at least in part to those kids. If, through forgiveness, I can let go of my attachment to that event, to any piece of the fear that still lingers as part of that -- then I no longer have to live out of the wound, or incorporate it in the way I see others, or worry about their opinion.

Forgiveness (at least in part, the part I understand) is the putting down of a burden of bad feeling. It is a Great and Holy Unraveling. It is saying "I will no longer see the world through this piece of pain." It is, for me, a way to freedom. Generally, I just want a lot of it to be over. I want to walk free of a bunch of old crap. I want to lay down those burdens.

Tell me please, those of you who read this -- what do you know for certain about forgiveness - and what do you wonder? More even than the what of forgiveness, let us talk about the how of forgiveness.