Like a computer with a large operating memory and without a hard disk to store the data, God forgives and forgets. For Him who lives in the eternal present, the past has no value. Along the path of life, both good and evil contributed to what we are today -- good works that shaped our good characters and bad choices that we made which dealt us invaluable life lessons because oftentimes we learn more from what we did wrong than what we did right. God is not interested in the particulars, however, but only in what we turned out to be today at this present moment.
“Up stream mills are not turned by passed waters”
Not to forgive is to choose to remain in a cell of bitterness, serving the sentence for the crime of another person. Mahatma Gandhi
God forgives, forgets, and turns the page. Just like the water that always flows freely and does not adhere to anything, so is God who does not hold any grudges. “Up stream mills are not turned by passed waters” says a proverb, but unfortunately, unlike God, the human mind defies this natural law. Many disturbances of the past keep turning inside of our hearts and minds in the present. Like an old scratched vinyl disc, the past is replayed over and over again in our head and is manifested in our behaviour.
A traumatic past is continuously and obsessively projected into the present, thus forcing the people in our present relations to play the roles of the monsters who have hurt us in the past, and making us react in the very same way we did then.
It is only by forgiving the people who have hurt us in the past that we are freed from the prison of resentment and other harmful emotions that are running loose inside of us -- and because we are not even aware of them, they control us instead of us controlling them. It is only when we truly forgive that we are completely set free from our past and all that went wrong with it. Furthermore, it is only by forgiving that the grip which otherwise they have on us is released.
It has been told that in Heaven Cain used to avoid the company of Abel until one day the latter not understanding the reason for his brother’s behaviour decided to confront him. “Hear me out, why are you running away from me? After all, aren’t we brothers?” Downcast and ashamed, Cain uneasily asked his brother, “Don’t you remember what happened down below on earth between you and me?” “I have a vague idea,” said Abel. “Was it you who killed me or was it I who killed you?”
For as long as the remorse lasts, the guilt also lasts. Cain had not yet forgiven himself… If God forgives and forgets, and turns the page, then for our own good and mental well-being we are called to do the same, forgive others as well as forgive ourselves.
It is true that the facts are not entirely forgotten from the cognitive point of view because God has endowed us with memory, but if we really succeed in forgiving then the hurtful facts are recalled in a different way, without emotion. They no longer cause us stress or anxiety, nor hate or resentment because they truly remain in the past and in some cases are even forgotten cognitively like Abel showed in the story.
Sin is a debt owed
…erasing the record that stood against us with its legal demands. He set this aside, nailing it to the cross. (Colossians 2:14)
“Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors”, this verse comes from the Gospel of Matthew’s version of the Our Father. In the commonly recited form of this prayer, the word ‘trespass’ which replaces ‘debt’ does not confer the real biblical meaning of what is a sin or an offense.When we sin, we incur a debt against the one we have sinned; our relation with this person, that is, the order, the equilibrium and the harmony of this relationship are not restored until this debt is paid. This idea to satisfy, compensate or reward the one we have injured arises from the fact that we feel indebted to that person.
We need to regard sin as a debt owed in order to truly understand what St. Paul was telling the Christians in Colossus. He spoke to them in fact of an extensive invoice listing in great detail both the sins of mankind and their own sins. This bill which he described is a document of our debts, which by itself speaks against us because it reports all the evil that we have done.
In Christ, however, God the Father eliminated or cancelled this debt; in the original Greek text St. Paul does not use the term chiastrein which means to cancel by placing an X over the entire body of the invoice. He does not use this term because even after we cancel a bill, we can still read it again and afterwards maybe regret having forgiven the debt. Rather, the term that St. Paul uses is exalaifein, which means to delete.
In those days there were no papers, instead, they used and reused papyri and animal skins again and again. For this reason, they wrote with an ink that was easily erasable like we did until recently with chalk and blackboard. Once deleted, the bill can no longer be re-read. But so that there is not a single trace of such a bill left, God crucified it,that is, destroyed it completely as if it had been incinerated. It can no longer be re-read not only because it was deleted, but also because it simply no longer exists.
He himself bore our sins in his body on the cross, so that, free from sins,we might live for righteousness; by his wounds you have been healed.(1 Peter 2:24)
In taking on our sins, Jesus somehow embodied, that is, turned himself into the old Bill that contained all the sins or debts that mankind owed to God; by dying on the cross, he destroyed this bill forever. If in Jesus God forgives and forgets our sins,then we are also called to forgive and forget the sins of others as well as forgive ourselves for all the evil that we have brought onto ourselves.
Fr. Jorge Amaro, IMC
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