Why forgiveness matters

I would suggest seven reasons why forgiveness matters, most of all to the one who gives it, but also to those to whom it is offered. Five are mainly negative, two are positive.

1. Unforgiveness will hurt no one more than myself

R. V. G. Tasker said:

Probably more characters are spoiled by the nursing of grudges and the harbouring of grievances than by anything else.

Harbouring resentment has been linked to many physical and mental complaints. We can become locked in the straightjacket of our own resentment. It has been described as "a videotape in the mind playing its tormenting reruns, shackling us to the unremitting pain of a raging memory."

Some of the most difficult and painful traumas many people have to cope with result from hurtful experiences that happened in childhood. This may be especially difficult, both to diagnose and deal with. This is because we were so vulnerable when they happened and lacked the maturity to deal with them, and also because such things get buried deep in the subconscious. But, here again, forgiveness must at least become part of the process if healing is to occur. Maxine Hancock and Karen Mains, in their book Child Sex Abuse, write:

If we think of the illustration of the household of the mind with rooms double boarded, then we will have a good visual picture of the effect of sin on a human soul. Into those closed rooms we have shoved the guilt of our own sins, our bitterness, our hate, our vengeful spirits as well as the memory of the pain of grievous acts against us. Until we take the key of forgiveness and tentatively push it into one of those locks and (however reluctantly) open those doors, God's love is often unable to reach our most inward, wounded selves. His light cannot shine through the dusty, shuttered windows with the shades pulled and the curtains drawn tight. All his Holy Spirit needs is one little crack, a closed thing pushed ever so slightly open, a faint cry - I forgive.

Gracilla Martinez tells how she learned to forgive when her 15-year-old son, recently having become a Christian, was executed under Cuba's Batista regime. "Don't hate them," the boy had urged that morning as they huddled in their last embrace. "Forgive them, Mamacita. Forgive them, or they will be the victors." But she could not. "In my heart," she recalls, "I vowed revenge. I would get even with his assailants."

For 10 years, Graciella Martinez carried the burden of that hatred, fuelling it with plots and plans for retaliation. At a workshop on forgiveness, she said:

I only forgave when I saw how destructive my hate was, how it consumed my energies, crippled my friendships and disabled any good that I wanted to do. I wanted to be freed from the prison I had erected in my life. I saw, finally, the truth of my son's last words, that when we return hatred to those who hate us, we fall into playing their game according to their rules - and do them the great favour of hurting ourselves.

Edith Buxton, in her book Reluctant Missionary, says:

I wish I had learned earlier about forgiveness, both giving it and receiving it and the freedom of spirit it can bring. You cannot have a happy old age without it. My daughter once wrote these words, "When a situation has broken down in hurt and bitterness, and disagreement is so deep there seems no solution on earth - there remains forgiveness."

2. Unforgiveness will often hurt others

Too often unforgiveness will affect those around us and may well be passed on to the next generation. This can happen in families and on a larger scale in countries. The terrible toll of unforgiveness has been all too obvious in countries such as Northern Ireland, Yugoslavia and East Africa today. The innocent are often involved. As Ghandi said, if everyone were to follow the "eye for an eye" principle of justice, the whole world would go blind.

When King Alfred the Great finally conquered the Danes who had raped and pillaged England for years, he took pity on his enemies, fed them and offered peace, instead of doing what kings normally did to their conquered foes. His act led to the conversion of the Danish king, with Alfred participating in his baptism, and brought lasting peace to those islands. Historian Arthur Bryant concludes, "No greater act of statesmanship was ever performed by an English king."

It has been said that forgiveness is the only way in which the power of sin in the world can be absorbed, neutralised and brought to nothing.