Worthington (2014) relayed that the objective of decreasing the injustice
breach would be to forgive by choice willingly and not by force. I can
recall, as an adolescent, being made to apologize to someone if I hurt
their feelings. The question was then and still, today, was I apologizing
because I was being made to or was I genuinely sorry for my actions. I did
not think at any moment if someone had hurt me, whether I would want
them to apologize for it or not. That said, we wake up daily with brand
new mercies from our heavenly Father. He does not hold what we did two
years ago against us, nor should we to our fellow man. Forgiving someone
who has wronged you is challenging, but if we think about God, he died on
the cross for our sins because he had committed no wrongs. While on the
cross, he begged his Father to forgive those who persecuted him, for they
did not know what they were doing. Consciously and subconsciously, we
make ponder on forgiveness. Because there is so much emotionally at
stake, we can misconstrue the emotion for the best reaction in our efforts
to forgive. After making amends with someone, we should use God as our
guide and cast it into a sea of forgetfulness. The biggest issue facing us
today is we say that we can forgive and forget until the next time that
person hurts us again, and then all bets are off!
/
References
The Table | Biola CCT (2014, June 24). Why you should forgive and how to
do
it [Everett Worthington, Jr. on Forgiveness] [Video]. YouTube.
https://youtu.be/5Or9OuxuYKw
