forgiveness

One morning I said to my father, “Dad tell me from your experience about forgiveness all through your walk with people…” And he smiled and said forgiveness is much more than what we all think it is. “To err is human but forgiveness is divine”, is a popular quote used by most people who don’t really understand what it means. First let me tell you a little about the divinity of forgiveness. True love is the foundation of forgiveness and this main ingredient is responsible for the divinity of forgiveness. Most times when we encourage people to forgive, we do so, not understanding that love is the main factor responsible for that. As humans we forgive but are limited by the consequence of the crime committed against us, we can forgive when the hurt is not too deep or the repercussion of the crime against us is not too devastating. Forgiveness is what it is regardless of the nature of the crime committed against us. Son, I have from experience discovered that almost every human being by nature has successfully classified offenses relative to forgiveness into two main classes; forgivable offences and unforgivableoffences and this classification most time is not done deliberately but subconsciously, because I can’t think of anyone who would sit down and write or take out time to plan for him/herself crimes or offenses to forgive or not, this classification come as a result of the world we are grown in, thepatterns of the systems, what crime is pardonable and which is punishable, the people we have around us and how they forgive etc. Most times we fail to realize that we are not meant to conform to the patterns of this world. The world system has its own view about everything just to suit its own system even if it is not really what it is. That’s why most people truly don’t understand what it means to forgive. When you come to the true reality of forgiveness you could have people call you a fool. just like a story told of a man who made a quick business trip, this man was known to be a pastor in his neighborhood not necessarily because he was ordained, he was called a pastor in his neighborhood because of how he prays, you know he prays quiet loud… this man travelled and another man known for trouble to an extent, came to his house and engaged in a serious and heated misunderstanding with his wife, the entire neighborhood came out to separate the fight it was really serious. When the man returned so many people though regarding him as a pastor expected him to go and do something about the whole matter and when I say something I meant he should go and confront this man for fighting his wife and maybe have him arrested or beaten properly, but he didn’t and for a while people in the entire neighborhood couldn’t help but fantasize how they would have handled the case if they were in his shoes. You must understand that the first foundation of the divinity of forgiveness is love, that’s why Jesus commanded that we love our neighbors as he as loved the church, for out of the abundance of his love he laid down his life for us (freely forgave us even before we were born and our despicable crimes not committed). The next most misunderstood concept about forgiveness, son, is that aspect of forgetting we sometimes say we have forgiven but never forgotten, people say “how can I forget what this person has done to me, how can I erase it from my mind?” The truth is you don’t and forgetting doesn’t entail erasing the offense or crime committed against you from your mind, it means your ability not to count or regard it as a crime or offense against the person anymore. when you forgive someone you must have to let it go and not carry the same school of thought most people carry, they just place the offense somewhere in the archives of their mind and when the person unfortunately offends them again the simply bring back those documents and build an enormous case there by trying to remind themselves and the individual or people involved “you are already in my black book”. When we forgive, we must do it with the whole of our hearts, the right way, as little children. When little children have any form of misunderstanding, they could fight themselves but just give them a few more minutes they come back together and completely forget they ever had any misunderstanding. You know, son, one question we should ask ourselves is this; as children we forgive better, love better, forget crimes easily, but as we grow things begin to change and we gradually forget that this is not so from the beginning. You know I have never seen a young child keeping malice before, it’s not in their nature to do so. Sometimes it is great wisdom to consider the ways of a child than that of an adult because children by nature have better applied understanding of forgiveness, love, obedience, trust so many other noble traits.