Is There Someone You Can't Forgive?

Roger stares at his phone.  Each time it buzzes, it scoots eerily across the granite counter-top in  front of him.  His eyes glaze over.  His teeth grit with anger.  He doesn't need to see the screen to know what it says.  A couple more times it buzzes, then stops.  In the corner of his blurred vision, he can see the screen on his phone dim.  A couple more seconds pass before he can muster the will to walk over and look at it.  He was right.  Just before the screen goes black, he sees, "Daniel Jones (16) missed calls."

He balls up his fist, and slams it down on the counter.  He cringes so hard he waits for the sound of his teeth cracking.  He doesn't care.  So deep is his anger.  "How could someone who says they loved me, someone close to me, have hurt me so badly?"  The question has poisoned his mind.  

"You need to forgive Daniel."  That's what his mother said just an hour ago over the phone.  Not only did her words not heal, but now his anger had spread from Daniel, to her, and now to the Bible.  Again and again his mother had taken him through the word.  She showed him every verse she could think of.

Matthew 6:14-15  

14 For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you,  

15 but if you do not forgive others their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.

1 John 4:18-21

18 There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love.  

19 We love because he first loved us. 

20 If anyone says, "I love God," and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen.  

21 And this commandment we have from him: whoever loves God must also love his brother.  

These she read to him, but it didn't matter. Daniel had never felt so far from God.  How could he feel close to God when God apparently had no idea what was going on.  The Bible always had answer, it seemed, for everything.  This was different.  How could God not see this wrong?  How could God allow it to happen?  On top of that, how could God possibly expect, no, COMMAND, that Daniel be forgiven?  It was cruel.  "I have dedicated my life to God, and this is what I get?  Wronged beyond belief, and I am supposed to swallow it?"  Roger thinks.  "How can that be?"


2008, Murlough Beach, Northern Ireland

I am sitting down next to my wife Kathleen, looking out over the ocean.  My surroundings could hardly be more beautiful.  My wife could hardly be more beautiful.  My life could hardly be better on the outside.  Yet, there I sat, burning with anger to the point of weeping.  Depression had ravaged my soul for a decade, and its lingering effects had finally driven me to the point of admitting a long lasting truth.  I was furious at God.  I was absolutely furious with Him.  For the first time, I fully admitted to myself, and I cried out.  In my chest, I shook my fist up at the sky.  I cried out the clinched teeth, "How could you?!  All I ever wanted was to serve you, and this is how you treat me?"  

As has happened so many times throughout history, God answered.  It was not an audible word, simply, a truth was made known that came from nowhere in my heart.  I knew what a second earlier was not there.  His tone was gentle but firm.  This is the truth I heard.  He said, "Nicholas, you have taken credit for MY goodness your whole life.  You are not going to to do so for one more second."  In that moment, my eyes were shown that I really did think I was good.  I had said the opposite a thousand times.  I had preached my brokenness, but I did not believe it.  I clung to my goodness.  I had compared myself to my fellow man, and felt that, in comparison, I was pretty dang awesome.  

Arrogant, stupid fool!!!!  Idiot!!!  Is it not God's standard we are judged by?  And what is His standard?  Is it not perfection?  Have I not fallen short of that?  I have.  Oh, I have.  Where I once saw no fault, now, when I preach of man's fallen , terrible nature, I have all the evidence staring at me in the mirror.  I would be lying if I told you that I understood it fully then, or understand it fully now.  Yet, I can say that my life has changed as the truth of my deserving hell has saturated me.  

Contrary to belief, it has been the most liberating thing ever.  No longer am I held captive by guilt.  I was saved, and I had nothing to do with it.  I can know God loves me, now, not later, because He did what He did without me doing anything to incline Him to do so.  He just did it.  Bitterness, hatred, unforgiving spirit, they have all been vanquished.  How can I judge a brother or sister when I have been forgiven everything.  How can I complain, even about pain, in light of the pain I have been brought out of?  I cannot.  

Roger holds to his anger because he feels entitled to it.  He feels he has some RIGHT to be angry.  Truth is, he doesn't.  It doesn't matter what Daniel did to him.  Nothing Daniel did surpasses the grace already given to Roger.  Lasting anger, bitterness, can only survive through judgement, through thinking you are better than the person you are angry at.  Hopefully, Roger will come to understand that he is fact... not good... period.  Any goodness he has in him, he cannot claim, for that too is a gift.  Hopefully he will pick up that phone and forgive Daniel.  There friendship may never be the same.  Friends are a choice, are a delight, and the trust has been broken.   Yet, if it ends, hopefully it will not be because Roger feels like he is better than Daniel.  That anger he once felt will melt and be gone. 

May we keep Jesus in our sight always.  When we feel we are entitled to something, when we begin to think we are good enough, let us see those hands, those feet.  May we see them and remember.