Forgiveness

Welcome to De-Commissioned, a place for former members of the Great Commission movement (aka GCM, GCC, GCAC, GCI, the Blitz) to discuss problems they've experienced in the association's practices and theology.

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[Genevieve]

In the healing forum and in the rest of this blog, we’ve talked a lot about forgiveness. We hope that this blog is helping us move towards healing and forgiveness.

But I guess I have to ask: What is forgiveness? How do we know when we’ve forgiven?

I experienced a trauma as a child and spent a lot of time trying to forgive that person. I listened carefully to sermons about forgiveness. I was terrified by verses saying that if you don’t forgive your brothers and sisters, then you won’t be forgiven in Heaven. I knew very clearly that I needed to forgive, but I didn’t know how. I asked trusted parents and teachers for help in forgiving, and they would show me these verses in the Bible that reinforced the importance of truly forgiving. But they couldn’t tell me how to actually do it.

Basically, I came to the conclusion that forgiveness meant the absence of bad feelings and the absence of wanting revenge or even justice. I thought that I shouldn’t feel anything anymore. I shouldn’t feel angry or sad or hurt. I shouldn’t want anything less than a blessed and easy life for the person who hurt me. Instead of processing negative feelings and working through them, I stuffed them deep inside and hoped that in that vacuum of feeling was forgiveness.

To create that vacuum, I tried very hard to minimalize the event and take the blame as much as possible. Because if I was overreacting, and it was my partially my fault anyway, then I couldn’t be angry at anyone else, which meant I had forgiven.

See the thought process? I don’t think this is what God wants for any of us. But what does it mean to truly forgive, and how do we know when we have?

Genevieve Jones

[Samuel Lopez De Victoria]

I don’t mean to minimize your horrible pain suffered. I do think that if you find a psychotherapist/psychologist that uses such modalities as NLP, EFT, EMDR, etc. you can totally neutralize the trauma event and therefore take all the power out of it and out of connected desempowering subsequent events that fed the original trauma.



The whole thing can be done in minutes if done by a competent practitioner.



I humbly submit my two cents on this.



Samuel Lopez De Victoria, Ph.D.

[MamaD]

For us, there are two issues to deal with in leaving GCM.

The first involves the “hurts”. Things like the rebukes from the leadership, feeling misunderstood, sadness at not seeing friends like we used to, trying to find a new church and how hard that is for our kids. That’s where the forgiveness part comes in.

I understand that many have experienced much greater offenses…things like turning down job promotions to be more involved at church and now having a difficult time making ends meet, being so involved at church that it takes a toll on family time, submitting to leaders in areas that leaders should have no say in (like how many children to have or who to “court”), and maybe even worse things.

In saying we weren’t “hurt” that bad, I am not trying to diminish the trauma that others might have experienced. I’m just saying that for us, there is no big hurt to get over.

Our difficulty is with the second issue which is bad doctrine. I have an obligation as a Christian to warn people who ask me about the differences in GCM from a “normal” evangelical church. It is quite different in one main area–leadership and what it means to be a church body, yet, very similar in most others.

I have come to the conclusion that it will be a long time before we are “done” with GCM because we receive calls and e-mails (about 1 per week and often from people we don’t know, or don’t know that well) asking us about things.

In addition, we have in recent months been approached by leadership and accused of division and slander. So, we are still being affected even though we have been gone over a year.

I think about people like Larry Pile and Paul Martin who are still fielding questions about GCM and helping people and they have been gone for 25 or more years.

And, they are still being called divisive, slanderers, and my favorite…part of a “conspiracy theory”. The “conspiracy theory” idea must be the talking points used when people bring up Wellspring because I have heard that phrase from two unrelated sources. It was used at our final meeting by one of the ECC founding pastors to cut off all discussion about Wellspring.

Sorry, I’ve rambled, Genevieve, but I wanted to leave you with this passage from Dr. Martin’s article on the Wellspring site. When I read that it was okay to keep talking about things, I personally felt quite a bit more “free”. I guess just getting permission to not try to hurry through this, in a sense helped me hurry through!

Anyway, here’s the passage:

He or she may also need to talk out and relive the trauma again and again, as do the victims of other types of crises. Unfortunately, the process of talking about the trauma is sometimes “short-circuited” by well-intended helpers who view such rumination as “unedifying” or “focusing too much on the past.

God bless you, Genevieve.

[AgathaL'Orange]

This is my belief on forgiveness… I am no expert. I am no theologian. This is my own view. It’s a hybrid of my own counseling, books I have read, and my own contemplation and thought on the subject.

I think forgiveness is different than mercy. I think that you can forgive someone and still be in favor of them receiving the consequences of their actions. It’s not a matter of revenge, it’s a matter of protecting future victims. I think of rapists, murderers, child abusers, child predators… the biggies. I personally am against the death penalty simply because I think it dishoners the memory of the one who was killed and leaves no chance of redemption. It makes the situation even more “dirty.” (In my opinion, and my opinion only) God is simultaneously just, merciful and forgiving… so they must not be mutually exclusive!

I think you can pray for someone’s salvation and still secretly hope your mansion isn’t next door to theirs in heaven. Kind of like, “God I forgive, help my unforgiveness!”

I think it’s okay to feel sad about things that happen when you think them over, but I think forgiveness is a change in yourself that refuses to allow that pain to continue to hurt you over and over again. For me, I have had to think of how much the person’s sin has hurt them. And truly, it helps to feel some pity for THAT person. Because they were so lost and so blinded that they hardly even had the power to choose right over wrong. I think of the abuser/wrongdoer as a baby… an infant in their mother’s arms, or a little toddler that sucked his fingers and liked puppies. This is corny, but I even think of them as my child. What if my child made those mistakes when they grew up? How would I feel? I guess in forgiveness, I use my imagination a lot! Kind of corny, but it really helps me. If I can view the perpetrator as a victim of their own decisions and forever trapped by them, I can forgive.

That has helped me. I think of the person that hurt me. I think of what it feels like to be them. I think of what they felt like when they did the bad thing. I can imagine the pain and embarrassment and shame in their hearts even if they hide it.

I don’t think that this is answering your question of how do you know when you forgive but it’s my own personal forgiveness exercise.

So a recap:
1. I acknowledge what they did was wrong and hurt me.
2. I think of how they felt when they did it. I think of why they did it. I think of how they feel about it now. Do they remember? Do they feel justified? Do they feel embarrassed or ashamed?
3. I imagine them as a child. I imagine being his mom. I imagine my hopes and dreams for that child, and how those dreams are dashed by a stupid, selfish, horrible act. I even imagine that child in hell and how I don’t want them to be there.
4. Once I can think of them as a little boy with messed up hair and rocks in his pockets, before he have completely mucked up their lives, it is a lot easier to forgive. I can begin to feel sadness for their lost chance at a pure life. I pray for help to forgive. And then I pray for supernatural help to forgive.
5. This has really helped me. It may not help anyone else. But I just thought I would share. It’s kind of a way for me to invest something in the perp’s life that I would be pulling for and wanting to succeed.
6. Obviously this is ignoring the trauma of the event and the flashback component. The PTSD part. I think for me this dulled over time. I didn’t even recognize it but I had high levels of fear and ate all the time. I would feel numb and then cry at odd times. I really believe that the cycles of grief repeat themselves over time when new elements of the trauma manifest themselves. And if you have the tools then you pull ‘em out again and reapply. I wanted to and to some extent still try to control everything. The truth of the matter is, in some ways, the control freak thing is a recognition that you are responsible for some elements of your own safety. Don’t go places alone at night, don’t allow your children to go places alone, be vigilant. I have always been this way though, when I was a kid, I kept a bag of toys packed by the door in case of fire, until my mom made me put them away.
7. Investment into the perp’s life or family in some way is my favorite tool to use.

Ways to seek justice and to right wrongs on a global scale:

For example, you can donate to World Vision for a special fund that will go directly to a little girl rescued from the sex trade in Thailand. They take these little girls, sometimes buying them from the brothel. Then they take them to a little house where they live with other little girls and learn all kinds of things that they never knew… that God loves them, native dances of their country, they feed them and clothe them, and counsel them and love them, educate them, teach them skills, and give them people who act as a mom and a dad. This is so beautiful to me that there are people who are willing to enter into the pain of a little girl who has seen more than I can imagine and just give the love of Jesus the best that they can.

With Prison Fellowship you can give the children of serious criminals Christmas gifts on behalf of the parent in the name of Jesus Christ.

You can pray for the person, even if you don’t want them to succeed or be blessed, deep inside.

In my situation, I like to give to disabled children around the world who have no therapy, no wheelchairs, and maybe even no parents, or school, and who may even be rejected completely by society.

This gives me a sense of creating justice in the world. Trying to make restitution on behalf of the evil people who did the bad stuff in the first place. This has given my an incredible sense of peace and justice.

You are not to blame for the trauma. Just as I think salvation is a process, so do I think that forgiveness is a process. You’ll get there.

I pray for your peace and healing in all ways. I pray that before the end of this year, you can experience justice and forgiveness in this situation.

In solidarity with you against evil!

On the side of blessings and peace! Wow maybe we should form our own Justice League. First dibs on Wonder Woman!

[Samuel Lopez De Victoria]

Mamad quoting Paul Martin:



Anyway, here’s the passage:



“He or she may also need to talk out and relive the trauma again and again, as do the victims of other types of crises. Unfortunately, the process of talking about the trauma is sometimes “short-circuited” by well-intended helpers who view such rumination as “unedifying” or “focusing too much on the past.”

___________________________



Paul must be partly from the psychodynamic school. Total Cognitive Behaviorists will typically mention about not dwelling in the past but being in the “here and now.” I believe both are important. It is interesting how CB many Christians really are. They will tell you the equivalent of, “Take two pills and call me in the morning” and hence miss the point.



Samuel Lopez De Victoria, Ph.D.

[Dipping my toes in....]

Agatha - I agree with much of what you said about forgiveness. One thought you expressed sticks out to me. Specifically: “I think it’s okay to feel sad about things that happen when you think them over, but I think forgiveness is a change in yourself that refuses to allow that pain to continue to hurt you over and over again.”



I don’t know absolutely what it means to forgive and if how I forgive is anywhere close to how God forgives, but I believe that eventually I need to no longer allow what happened to hold any power over my emotions and my choices in my life. That I can remember what happened with no emotional upsurges of fear, anger, pain, etc. I think sadness is fine, too, because there is much that happened to be sad about. But I think that I will have forgiven my former pastor when I can see him or think about him without fear and anger.



I think one thing that has helped me get closer to forgiving is recognizing that good came from the bad. I see some profound changes in my life that I think are for the better and they came about because of what happened with my old GCM church. Being able to see and believe that there were some good purposes and reasons for my pain and losses (that didn’t reveal themselves to me for several years after the event) helped me let go of some of my pain and anger. I guess that just boils down to trusting that God allows things to happen for reasons.



Many thanks to all of you for this thoughtful discussion. I’ve not felt like I’ve forgiven my old pastor yet, but getting out some of this pent up journey/story has helped me sort through my thoughts and feelings in a clearer way than I’ve been able to in a long time.

[MamaD]

One other thought about talking things out is that I find it helpful to talk to the same people.

What I mean by this is that I have a dozen or so people in my life who are “in the know” on the situation. It’s just too tiring to get “new” people up to speed on the problem so I limit who I go to for advice or just venting.

Fortunately for me, my friends and family let me talk as much as I need to, offer reassurance in scriptural areas, and don’t mind my going over stuff numerous times.

My nephew Jon, a pastor in Japan who also works with helping people get out of cults in Japan wrote me in early September and said to feel free to talk about it and blog about it as much as I need to and then, when I feel like I am obsessing, to go out to a nice restaurant for dinner and take in a heart warming movie! So, far, that was the best advice anyone has given me personally!

[Linda]

Sorry for all the comments all of a sudden. We were out of town for a few days and I came back with a lot to say, I guess!

In keeping with your post on forgiveness, I went to the desiringgod.org web site and searched for John Piper sermons on forgiveness and found this in a sermon:

“Here is forgiveness: when you feel that someone is your enemy or when you simply feel that you or someone you care about has been wronged forgiveness means,

1. resisting revenge,

2. not returning evil for evil,

3. wishing them well,

4. grieving at their calamities,

5. praying for their welfare,

6. seeking reconciliation so far as it depends on you,

7. and coming to their aid in distress.

All these point to a forgiving heart. And the heart is all important Jesus said in Matthew 18:35—”unless you forgive your brother from your heart.”

He offers biblical reasons for each of these. Then, he goes on to say:

1. Forgiveness is not the absence of anger at sin. It is not feeling good about what was bad.

2. Forgiveness is not the absence of serious consequences for sin. In other words, sending a person to jail does not mean you are unforgiving to him.

3. One last observation remains: forgiveness of an unrepentant person doesn’t look the same as forgiveness of a repentant person.

In fact I am not sure that in the Bible the term forgiveness is ever applied to an unrepentant person. Jesus said in Luke 17:3-4 “Be on your guard! If your brother sins, rebuke him; and if he repents, forgive him. And if he sins against you seven times a day, and returns to you seven times, saying, ‘I repent,’ forgive him.” So there’s a sense in which full forgiveness is only possible in response to repentance.

But even when a person does not repent (cf. Matt. 18:17) we are commanded to love our enemy and pray for those who persecute us and do good to those who hate us (Luke 6:27).

The difference is that when a person who wronged us does not repent with contrition and confession and conversion (turning from sin to righteousness), he cuts off the full work of forgiveness. We can still lay down our ill will; we can hand over our anger to God; we can seek to do him good; but we cannot carry through reconciliation or intimacy.

Thomas Watson said something very jolting:

“We are not bound to trust an enemy; but we are bound to forgive him.” (Body of Divinity, p. 581)

You can actually look someone in the face and say: I forgive you, but I don’t trust you.

I skipped through the sermon to get those quotes, but it is worth reading.

[Adam Hirschhorn]

I respect the effort and the heart behind this thread, but I so totally cannot identify with it. I got as far as “the absence of bad feelings and the absence of wanting revenge or even justice” and thought, wow, justice is my only hope. I’m not sure I can create any justice for myself, but the more word gets out and people have a good sense of what risks are involved, the better I feel. I don’t have to damage GC specifically to raise awareness about the problems that can come up, but I’m sure not forgetting what GC did! Especially at local churches. So I want to keep talking about warning signs and concerns, no matter whether or not experts think that I might be impeding my own healing by continuing to talk. Those same experts failed to protect us, and failed prevent GC’s recidivism.



So it does present a quandary. I find myself in social situations in church where I want to make new friends. Somehow I always get back to where I’ve been, and I always run the risk of icing a good conversation. Do I need a script to get me through these first contact situations? Is it okay to talk about where I’ve been? Do I tell them to stay away from my old church? Invariably people want to know. Last time I clammed up completely. I think I’m afraid of expressing my true feelings in my new church because, yes, they’re dark and no, I don’t want to leave a damaging impression of my new church home. “Should have seen that psycho we met today. Whoa!” Yeah, that’s how I feel.



I am also incredibly aversive to the word “emergent”. I could use some good cult jokes. I can kind of feel sorry for GC, not understanding how terribly they routinely mess up lives, but I don’t think that’s the same thing as forgiveness. Pretty sure it ain’t. When someone finally made the wikipedia article on GCAC stick, I felt some degree of relaxed that resembled forgiveness, like, that’s one less thing that needs taking care of. I guess I kind of have to let the work and the healing take care of the forgiveness. Sounds pretty backwards but that’s my plan.