Empathy is not forgiveness. That was a real stumbling block for me, but empathy can be a bit like trying to rationalize away sin. We’re seeking a logical explanation for human behavior, some cause and effect, and trying to walk in someone else’s shoes compassionately. That all sounds very good, very charitable on the surface, but it is not the supernatural grace of forgiveness.
You will wind up extending mercy to everyone but yourself. We’ll call it “self-abuse,” because you’ll be filled with forgiveness, confusion, frustration, while attempting to rationalize away the entire world’s poor behavior.
Battered women do this all the time. He doesn’t mean it, it’s not his fault. People married to alcoholics do it, they rationalize, it’s just the addiction talking. We do it in crime, bad childhood, lousy neighborhood, poor job training. What winds up happening in the end is that you are surrounded by totally irrational people doing stupid things for what seems to be good reasons and all of this somehow becomes your fault. Also, now you’re even more bitter and unforgiving because everyone in the entire world has an excuse for treating you poorly….
Forgiveness is mercy extended without excuses.
My mother taught me that. She was a tough stumbling block because she is a narcissist, she has a disorder. Her intent, her motivation towards me is seldom hostile or meant to be abusive. In fact, I don’t even exist except as an extension of her, a hologram really. It’s not personal, because actually I’m not even really a person. I’m a character, an extra in her own script. So for years I empathized, I spun excuses, I rationalized, I jumped through hoops, I did everything but forgive. This never-ending mantra of it’s not her fault, she doesn’t mean it,she can’t help it. There is nothing to forgive.
If anyone had told me I was not forgiving of my mother, I would have thought they were nuts. I was the most empathetic, compassionate, rationalizing, defense attorney on the planet. She was practically a saint, everything she did was the fault of someone else having made her the way she is or life or some circumstance. She just doesn’t know any better.
Jesus Christ is came to set the captives free. He doesn’t say empathize, rationalize, and make excuses, He says forgive. Unmerited favor. One cannot extend unmerited favor if one is really just trying to assign merit to someone else’s bad behavior.
Forgiveness is unmerited favor.
That was really hard for me. Sever the emotional response and the sentimentality, and you’re left with a life time of wrong doing, harm done without cause, sin without excuse. There is nothing one can do with sin that has no excuse except to see it for what it is and to set it down at the foot of the cross. Why do we need redemption? Because we are without excuse. While empathy is all well and good, it simply cannot wash away the sin of the world like Christ’s blood can.
This is one reason why we need to be very careful when we’re speaking to people about forgiveness, especially victims of whatever life has dealt them. It’s actually not about empathizing with the one who has harmed you, it’s about accepting the human condition which is sin.
In my case Jesus Christ flat-out stepped in and intervened. Thou shall not empathize today. Compassion can kill. It is not love to excuse the behavior of others. To try to track back cause and effect sin, like ripples on a pond, denies other people full agency and prevents your own healing.
Forgiveness is unmerited favor. One cannot extend unmerited favor if one is really just trying to assign merit to someone else’s bad behavior.
Reblogged this on disue.
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Thank you. 🙂
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So true, thank you
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Excellent post! It inspired me to do a little Bible study.
It is a curious thing. Empathy is supposed be a Christian thing, but anyone would be hard put to find the word in the Bible.
Empathy sounds like a great idea. There is that old Indian proverb (=> http://grammarist.com/phrase/walk-a-mile-in-someone-elses-shoes/), but forgiveness and empathy have different purposes. When we walk a mile in someone else’s shoes, we don’t do it to forgive them. We do it to understand them, to perceive what motivates them. When we understand the motives of another, we can react more appropriately.
What is forgiveness? It is not holding a grudge (Leviticus 19:18). It is continuing to love another. As this passage puts it, it is overcoming evil.
The person who cannot forgive cannot give up vengeance, but vengeance does not belong to us. We don’t have the wisdom or the right. Because we belong to God, vengeance belongs to God.
We don’t punish criminals out of vengeance. We punish criminals to discourage crime. Our job is to love each other. If we don’t forgive each other, we cannot love each other.
Because God requires justice, however, He does take vengeance.
We cannot thank God enough for taking upon Himself the full measure of vengeance we deserve.
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A hard truth in this day and age when we like to explain away our faults and failings, when we pay people big bucks to help us track back to the whys and wherefores of our past. A hard truth. But necessary. If we don’t take agency for our actions we can never experience the washing and renewing of forgiveness.
Becky
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“There is nothing one can do with sin that has no excuse except to see it for what it is and to set it down at the foot of the cross.” This is so good. And if there had been anything else, God would have already done it, so there would still be nothing else we could do except place it at the cross! An awesome, awesome God! 😀
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Pingback: Empathy is Not Forgiveness — Reblogged – Citizen Tom
Reblogged this on Smart Christian.net.
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Thank you, as someone who has unresolved mommy issues, this is something I needed to read.
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Thank you for reading and for the reblog. Much appreciated.
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setting the captive free—that is the forgiveness bought for us on the cross—freedom—freedom from sin…but most keenly important…it is freedom found in the ability to forgive those who have harmed us—be it physically and or emotionally.
I never empathized necessarily over my dad’s inability to “protect” mother and I and our family from my brother’s mental illness but I did harbor tremendous resentment—that only intensified when mother died at age 53 thirty years ago, miserable…and then when my brother committed suicide 25 years ago, my dad mourned my brother and enshrined him until the day dad recently died…I was the “good” child who was there caring for Dad since mother’s death and the child who did everything possible to assuage dad’s broken heart and misguided obsessive guilt over my brother…
but when I finally found the ability to truly forgive dad, verses my harboring resentment– I was the one who was finally free.
Wonderful words as always IB
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I’m so sorry, julie. Such a big load you had to carry, so much grief and loss. I’m so glad you have found some peace and freedom in Jesus Christ. He’s good at that, He can hand us real beauty for our ashes and give us genuine freedom.
And He never stops working on us either, that’s the best part. The best is always yet to come.
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Truly IB—you’ve had your load, I’ve had mine—as just being human pretty much means there will be some sort of load—dealing with this recent craziness of now settling dad’s life—what with a stepmother who has wished outloud that she had not married dad, along with her crazy family who now wants us to pay for all the care for their mom–it’s hard as once again I find myself grieving while being so aggravated with things about dad…I got into bed last night and thought about God moulding us—working and reworking—as there are things we all need to learn and glean from our ordeals. We can be bitter and resentful, or… we can lean unto our faith–resting in knowing that Jesus has already bore our ordeals—and it is for us now to learn how to heal!!!
Your life’s ordeals have given you the insight you’ve needed in order to share with others—so our ordeals are never for naught…as long as one other can hear, see, read, learn and in turn…heal… through the blood of the Lamb
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👍
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I think the growth in empathy tracks the prohibition against making judgments. To feel wronged is necessarily to make a judgment about another’s behavior and since this is forbidden and we must accept everything the sense of wrong must go underground and we have to find another way to cope so as not to be destroyed by bitterness. It is easier to let things go (forgive) if we can truly understand that “there but for the grace of God go I”, but it’s not healthy to pretend that those who cut a wide swath through other people just need empathy, not for us and certainly not for them.
The ability to make judgments is a component of our God-image and we couldn’t function without doing so, but it’s often presented as the greatest sin and “not Christian.”
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Reblogged this on Live 4 Him and commented:
A great look at true forgiveness
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Thank you 🙂
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Very good point, IB. It’s empathy used in the wrong way. I think of forgiveness as letting go of our right to judge the other. But it never excuses what they’ve done or minimizes the hurt they’ve caused. Showing empathy, in this case, only mitigates against them ever realizing the damage they’ve caused which would hopefully motivate them to change their behavior.
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What are your thoughts on forgiving a convicted sex offender, specifically one whom you befriended, but then used that friendship to gain access to your young daughter? What does forgiveness look like in this case?
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What does forgiveness look like in that case? Supernatural, beyond our ability to rationalize it.
I think something to keep in mind, forgiveness isn’t forgetting, it isn’t placing yourself back in the line of fire. Forgiveness is about setting yourself free, severing what ties us to people, it removes someone’s power over you.
When the enemy steals something from us, like trust, to remain in a state of unforgiveness is like letting him steal another little piece of us everyday. Forgiving someone ends their power to hurt you anymore and it shuts down the enemy.
Sometimes it helps me to remember I don’t “owe” anyone forgiveness, I’m not the one who offers redemption, that’s between them and God. So my forgiveness isn’t really about them at all, it’s about me and God, my well being, my restoration over what ever was stolen or damaged.
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Hypothetical questions, all. Intended to trigger internal thinking, not responses here.
Based on everything you know about God’s plan of salvation, can there be forgivness in the absence of repentence?
Forgiveness is unmerited mercy. Yes. The Bible says that God created the plan of salvation before he ever created Adam and Eve. Therefore, neither they nor we have done anything to facilitate that plan. It existed before we did.
But does that plan of salvation, that act of forgiveness, extend to one who has not repented? The Bible says that it does not. Forgiveness may be unmerited mercy, but it is not free. Christ’s forgiveness may be effective for all, but it is available only to those who do something – therefore, not free. And that something is repent and point to the shed blood of Jesus as that blood which God requires for the forgiveness of sin (Hebrews 9:22). (Pointing to the shed blood of Jesus is the “believe” part that is required for salvation).
All of these things are tied up in the concept of forgiveness from sin. They don’t readily transfer to the concept of forgiving others for their trespasses against us. Unless we again accept what the Bible says: “If your brother or sister sins against you, rebuke them; and if they repent, forgive them (Luke 17:3 NIV). Rebuke first; repentance second; forgiveness third. That actually makes sense, because how can I know to repent and ask forgiveness for offending you if I don’t know that I have. And how can I know that I have if you don’t first tell me. Plus, requiring you to educate me about my offence toward you forces you to let it go once I have repented, rather than luxuriating in your contempt toward me based on the way I treated you. So – as the point was made that sin harms us, so also does refusing to rebuke as a first step on the path to repentance and forgiveness. A lot of us get more pleasure out of holding on to the hurt, but relationships get damaged because of that.
In light of the above, can we forgive those who trespass against us if there has not first been repentance? Or do we need to use another word or phrase – something on the order of “not holding it against them”, or “letting it go”. Understanding why the improperly cured concrete failed allows us to correct the error. But I don’t think we would ever think of empathizing with the concrete. So, I think that understanding why someone behaves the way they do (and thereby “letting it go”), and empathizing with that person, are also two different activities. They are not the same mindset.
The mind sets of “not holding it against them” or “letting it go” don’t require repentance from the offender. And neither does empathy. But, according to the Bible, forgiveness does.
Happy Easter.
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Well said. I appreciate your thoughts on this.
I totally believe we cannot receive Salvation without repentance. But in people relationships we are not Christ, we are not able to offer anyone redemption. We are however, called to forgive, and I believe we are called to do that with or without repentance. “While we were yet sinners Christ died for us.” So we who follow Him must lead the way and reflect that same kind of forgiveness that does not depend on the repentance of another person.
So, “If your brother or sister sins against you, rebuke them; and if they repent, forgive them ,” applies very well to healthy interpersonal relationships between brothers and sisters, perhaps within the church. It doesn’t work so well when say for instance, a drunk driver kills someone you love. Or perhaps the one you need to forgive has gone and died.
When we insist that forgiveness cannot happen without repentance, we really cut our own selves off from potential healing.
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Forgot to put this in my post above. I think the contrast is useful.
“Happy is the man that … getteth understanding.” (Proverbs 3:13 KJV) and “… with all thy getting, get understanding.” (Proverbs 4:7)
Understanding / wisdom allows us to have an idea of the reason why, which allows us to “let it go”, or “not hold it against them”. In life, sh*t happens, and some problems can’t ever be fixed. Understanding the issues involved can help lead us to some level of contentment, if not outright happiness.
On the other hand, “If your brother or sister sins against you, rebuke them; and if they repent, forgive them.” (Luke 17:3 NIV) is an entirely different dynamic. As I alluded to above, this can be part of the process of “getting understanding” – if you bring something to my attention and I explain that it was not intentional, when you thought it was. That “understanding” could never happen if you just “forgave” me in your mind – but forever after thought I had done it intentionally.
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Amen IB! There are 2 prayers which echo the Father’s heart of love for each of His children He has mercifully given life to, one is Stephen’s as he is in the process of being stoned in sight of the not-quite-yet-redeemed-Pharisee Saul, the other Jesus bleeding and bruised and dying nailed between 2 genuine criminals:
“Father, forgive them for they do not know what they are doing… hold not this sin against them…” (Luke 23:34; Acts 7:60)
God’s mercy continually wrecks the walls of my human reasoning, yet what joy to witness a soul offer their wounded heart to the One who really does understand what is behind every tear, every outrageous offense, every unjust act and heals them whole, You are right as to what a supernatural work this is. Not impossible!
Blessings IB!
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