Two things that may make "Forgiveness" easier:
A. Start with the simpler stuff.
"When you start mathematics you do not begin with the calculus; you begin with simple addition. In the same way, if we really want (but all depends on really wanting) to learn how to forgive, perhaps we had better start with something easier than the Gestapo. One might start with forgiving one's husband or wife, or parents or children... for something they have done or said in the last week. That will probably keep us busy for the moment." |
"I remember Christian teachers telling me long ago that I must hate a bad man's actions, but not hate the bad man: or, as they would say, hate the sin but not the sinner. For a long time I used to think this a silly, straw-splitting distinction: how could you hate what a man did and not hate the man? But years later it occurred to me that there was one man to whom I had been doing this all my life - namely myself. However much I might dislike my own cowardice or conceit or greed, I went on loving myself. There had never been the slightest difficulty about it. In fact the very reason why I hated the things was that I loved the man. Just because I loved myself, I was sorry to find that I was the sort of man who did those things."
- So loving our enemies does not mean we are required to think fondly of them or minimize the bad things they have done. We ought to hate the evil that they do while all along, we keep hoping that the person, their soul, might be changed and redeemed and made good.
- Loving our enemies also does not mean that they automatically escape punishment for their wrongs. "We may punish if necessary, but we must not enjoy it. In other words, something inside us, the feeling of resentment, the feeling that wants to get one's own back, must be simply killed. I do not mean that anyone can decide this moment that he will never feel it any more. That is not how things happen. I mean that every time it bobs its head up, day after day, year after year, all our lives long, we must hit it on the head. It is hard work, but the attempt is not impossible. Even while we kill and punish we must try to feel about the enemy as we feel about ourselves - to wish that he were not bad, to hope that he may, in this world or another, be cured: in fact, to wish his good. That is what is meant in the Bible by loving him: wishing his good, not feeling fond of him nor saying he is nice when he is not."
Loving your neighbor as yourself, forgiving your enemies - these may sometimes seem impossible or too difficult to bear. How does one love the unlovable? How does one forgive the unforgivable? How do we let go of hate and bitterness toward the people who wrong us?