Forgiveness

Picture from Indexed.

I did finish Unpacking Forgiveness by Chris Brauns on my holiday also. And I just liked this graph from Indexed, so thought I'd tell you that. But it's a good book. I'm not sold on conditional forgiveness (ie, you only forgive those who repent), but I think it's rather obvious that there's a big difference between forgiveness involving repentance, reconciliation and restoration of relationship (if there was a relationship to begin with), and forgiveness that doesn't. (And some of the arguments elsewhere that run the other way do seem to me more like logic arguments than exploration of Scripture.)

I don't have a trailer load of baggage on this one, but there is that one event that comes to mind when people mention "forgiveness", after which the other person never said sorry and never spoke to me again (and there are reasons why it couldn't be me who tried to involve myself in their life) and so after months went by I made something of a tangible act of forgiveness, then soon after left that church (I didn't leave the church over that (I also left the country), though it wasn't encouraging me to stay, and I also didn't deliberately time the tangible act for then either, it was just the way circumstances worked out). And we've never spoken since. So, I do sometimes wonder what it actually means for me to say I've forgiven that person.

But, to set that aside, the book is really practical, as I've already mentioned, and there are chapters in it on How can I conquer bitterness? and How can I stop thinking about it? (and get off the "mental gerbil wheel" and win the battle for the mind) plus a chapter giving you some steps to go through to "go about" forgiveness. These are helpful and worth reading.

(And there are dozens of real reviews of this book on the internet if you want to read more.)