Why is forgiveness so hard?

If we drew a very large circle, and then wrote inside the circle all the things that Christianity is about, all the themes, ideas, concepts, there would be thousands and thousands of words inside the circle. But some of those words would belong near the centre of the circle, some would belong away from the centre and some would belong right on the periphery. As to which word would be at the very centre, the bullseye, that’s a very interesting debate that we need to have. I’m pretty sure that the word ‘ forgiveness’ should be, if not at the very centre pretty close to it. I think all Christians would agree.


Yet we don’t really talk about forgiveness. We don’t really understand forgiveness. And we certainly don’t practice forgiveness


This is what CS Lewis said about forgiveness in 1952


I said in a previous chapter that chastity was the most unpopular of the Christian virtues. But I am not sure I was right. I believe there is one even more unpopular. It is laid down in the Christian rule, ‘Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.’ Because in Christian morals ‘thy neighbour’ includes ‘thy enemy’, and so we come up against this terrible duty of forgiving our enemies

Everyone says forgiveness is a lovely idea, until they have something to forgive, as we had during the war. And then, to mention the subject at all is to be greeted with howls of anger. It is not that people think this too high and difficult a virtue: it is that they think it hateful and contemptible. ‘That sort of talk makes them sick’ they say. And half of you already want to ask me, ‘I wonder how you’d feel about forgiving the Gestapo if you were a Pole or a Jew?’

So do I…I am not trying to tell you in this book what I could do – I can do precious little – I am telling you what Christianity is. I did not invent it. And there, right in the middle of it, I find ‘forgive us our sins as we forgive those that sin against us.’ There is no slightest suggestion that we are offered forgiveness on any other terms. It is made perfectly clear that if we do not forgive we shall not be forgiven.


There are no exceptions to our duty to forgive. We are commanded to forgive Ian Brady and Myra Hindley, Ian Huntley, Roy Whiting, Osama Bin Laden, the September 11th bombers, the July 7 bombers. Whoever is responsible for the disappearance of Madeline McCann, people who murder, mug old people, people who molest and harm children. All of these are due our forgiveness. How can this be? How can this be tolerable?


One reason why we people react with such disgust to the idea of forgiving evil people is that they don’t really understand what forgiveness is, and what it isn’t. Anthony Walker was a young black man living in Liverpool who was murdered in a racially motivated attack with an axe. Speaking after those responsible had been given life sentences his mother said that her Christian faith said that she was to forgive, and so she forgave the men who had murdered her son so brutally. She didn’t claim to be doing anything remarkable, she believed in her religion and so she followed its rules. She did not say that she wanted them to be released from prison. She did not say that she didn’t want them to be punished, and punished severely, for what they had done, but she did say that she forgave them.


People think that forgiveness somehow excludes justice. They assume that forgiving criminals means letting them get away with it. It doesn’t. Forgiveness is to do with our personal feelings of revenge. We must not seek revenge but we must seek justice. Forgiveness and justice go hand in hand. There are many reasons why we must punish criminals – to deter others from doing the same thing, to communicate to the criminal and to society at large how we all feel about certain crimes, sometimes to make restoration through fines or doing community work. But we must never punish out of revenge, Christianity forbids it.


Forgiveness does not exclude justice, and justice should not exclude forgiveness.


So why do we find it so hard to forgive? The truth, if I’m right about this, is not easy to take. Perhaps we don’t forgive because we don’t really believe.


I was the victim of bullying in a previous job. It was possibly the worst year of my life. It affected my health and my happiness and I still get angry when I think about it. It won’t surprise you to hear that I could not find it in my heart to forgive the man responsible.
It occurred to me one day that perhaps I didn’t think that God would be aware how I had been bullied, perhaps he wouldn’t realise that a child has been murdered. Or perhaps I thought that he might be a bit too soft on them, might be fooled by their excuses, perhaps I couldn’t trust him to deal with these people justly. I felt angry with a member of my family and perhaps I thought deep down that we don’t have a reckoning with God – that we aren’t accountable, God doesn’t deal with things, or perhaps he doesn’t even exist.


For that is the shocking conclusion I reached on why I could not forgive. Perhaps, deep down, God was something that I talked about but not something I believed in. If I couldn’t forgive it meant I couldn’t trust God to be just, to resolve all problems, or even to exist. If we believe in a just God why do we feel so cheated of justice when things don’t work out the way we want them in this world?


Let me give you another example. A young man on our street put our window through a few months ago. But the police caught him, he spent a night in the cells, his parents know all about it and he’s going before a magistrate shortly. When it happened we felt a great deal of anger towards him, but as soon as we were told that he’d been apprehended, had confessed and was in a lot of trouble we felt fine. Not vengeful, just fine. Because we knew that justice would prevail.


Very often the police don’t catch the perpetrator, or they do but the court can’t touch them. That makes us angry and vengeful. We waste our energy wishing bad things on them. That’s because we think we can’t trust anyone else to do this for us, we must take the burden of revenge on ourselves. But on this happy occasion I know that it’s all taken care of, and I haven’t wasted any energy or time on holding a grudge.



Is the magistrate’s court more real to me than God? Is it more just than God? I hope, I pray, that the answer is no. I do believe in God. I believe that He is all knowing, that He is all-powerful and that he is loving. He loves me, he has shown this through the resurrection of Christ, and although I’ve done nothing to deserve this he will not fail me. We live by and in the certain hope of God’s forgiveness. It’s the centre of our faith, we don’t have the option to say ‘I know I should forgive but I can’t’. If we don’t believe in God maybe we should admit this to ourselves. But if we do, if we really do believe in God then it’s not that we can forgive, it’s that we will forgive. Forgiveness is what we do if we believe in God. God knows how hard it is but if we believe in him we will forgive. And if we won’t forgive we must ask ourselves if we do truly believe. Because if we truly believe then we know that there will be justice and so forgiveness is not the ordeal that it is when we think that the only justice is that which we humans are able to dispense.



But what about God’s annoying habit of forgiving humans? Of course we’re very glad that God will forgive ourselves and our friends and family. But God forgives our enemies as well. Does this mean that there will not be justice after all? Is God going to forgive as though the sin never happened?



Our reading from Psalm 130 has the enigmatic lines ‘but with you there is forgiveness therefore you are feared.’ How is it that we might fear one who forgives us? The only answer I can think of is that the forgiveness being spoken of here, God’s forgiveness, is very special and very powerful and it brings with it true and terrible understanding of what it is that is being forgiven.
What angers us so much, and makes it so hard for us to forgive evil murderers and abusers is that they don’t even think they’ve done anything wrong. They have no conscience about it. But God is just and God is mighty and while he may forgive the most appalling sins I don’t believe that he allows the perpetrators to continue in blissful ignorance of their sin. Just imagine if you or I suddenly realised that we had committed an abominable murder. Could we endure it? If forgiveness comes with a real awareness of why we need forgiving, if the serial murderer is made to feel what he has done, is given clarity and conscience of his sin along with forgiveness then that would be a very fearful thing indeed. The novel Crime and Punishment deals with this very idea, how intolerable it is to have committed a great sin. If everyone is made aware of their sin then we should not say that a merciful God is not just.


And do we not stand in need of forgiveness ourselves? Very often we think that we do not. We agree in a formal, abstract sort of way that of course we are very far from perfect but if pressed we struggle to come up with anything that we do, or think, that is wrong. It’s unfashionable to say that we are all sinners but the evidence says that we are. Every economic and political system founded on an optimistic view of human nature has collapsed. The world runs on the assumption that people will do what they can get away with. Maybe you never steal, cheat or lie. Maybe your outward behaviour is exemplary. What about our thoughts when we are alone with ourselves. Are we never jealous? Never proud? There are those among us who, even in their inner most thoughts are always good. But I think they manage it by being aware of their own potential for badness. And they do it by the Grace of God.



It is in our sinful, fallen nature to think that we are not sinful or fallen. But we must resist this thought constantly, and that’s why Christian worship never does, or rather never should exclude a prayer of confession. The Bible is very clear that we all stand in need of forgiveness.


In 1 John 1:9-10 we read:


If we confess our sins, he is faithful and righteous to forgive us the sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.


If we say that we haven't sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us
God does not lie, God is truth. And the truth is that we need to forgive and we need to be forgiven


God does exist, he does see all, he is just and there will be justice. He is merciful but his mercy may, for a time, be more fearful for us than his wrath. We need very much to be forgiven and we have no choice but to forgive.


We ask for God’s forgiveness as we forgive others. Here belief and action are inseparable but the belief is prior. We are unable to forgive without faith, our faith makes us unable not to forgive. It’s an old theological argument about what comes first, faith or deeds. Our reformed, protestant tradition has always taken the view that faith comes first, it’s faith that saves not deeds. We’re not saved because we forgive. We forgive because we are saved.