Perspective: The Hard Work of Forgiveness

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The Hard Work of Forgiveness

Then Peter said to Jesus, "Lord, how many times should I forgive my brother or sister who sins against me?  Should I forgive as many as seven times?"

Jesus said, "Not just seven times, but rather as many as seventy-seven times."

Matthew 18:21-22 (CEB)

Oh, Father, give me grace to forgive them

'Cause I feel like the one losin'

From "Losing" by Tenth Avenue North

When one of the Disciples asked Jesus a question about forgiveness, Jesus responded with a parable.¹  One day, a king wanted to collect some debts.  One of the king's servants had racked up a debt of ten thousand talents, an amount he could never hope to repay.  The king ordered that the servant, his wife, his children, and all his property be sold as payment for the debt.  The servant then fell to his knees and begged the king for an extension.  Out of compassion for the servant, the king had a change of heart and decided to forgive the debt.

The servant then went out, found a fellow servant who owed him a mere one hundred denarii, grabbed him by the throat, and demanded repayment.  The debtor begged his creditor to be patient with him, but the servant who had just been forgiven of his own debt had him thrown into debtor's prison.

Word reached the king that the servant he had just forgiven refused to forgive his colleague of his debt.  Angered by his servant's pettiness and unwillingness to treat others as he had been treated, he decided to reverse his decision, and he had the servant tortured until he could repay everything he originally owed.

It is generally accepted that the king who forgave the servant's debt represents God and that the servant who was expected to forgive his fellow servant's debt represents each of us.  That said, the parable offers us a rather straightforward lesson.  If God has forgiven us for our wrongdoings, then who are we not to forgive others for their wrongdoings against us?  If we refuse to forgive others, we should not expect God to forgive us.

What more is there to say?

The amounts mentioned in the parable are worth noting.  Since the words denarii and talents, when used as monetary units, don't mean very much to us nowadays, it might be helpful to translate them into modern dollar amounts.

The servant was owed 100 denarii.  A denarius was the typical amount a laborer was paid for a day.  If a worker was paid the current minimum wage in the United States and worked a typical eight-hour day, he would have been paid fifty-eight dollars per day.  If the servant was owed one hundred days' wages in our day, he would have been owed $5800.00.²

The servant owed the king ten thousand talents.  A talent was the amount of money a laborer would have made in fifteen years.  If a laborer worked five days per week and fifty weeks per year for the daily wage established above, he would make $217,500 over the course of fifteen years.  If the servant owed the king ten thousand times this amount, he would have been over two billion dollars in debt!³

The amount the servant refused to forgive wasn't exactly chump change, but it was nothing compared to the ridiculous amount the amount the king forgave.  From the king's perspective, the servant's unwillingness to forgive what was owed to him probably seemed rather petty.

I wonder if maybe this parable is meant to give us a God's-eye view on the topic of forgiveness.  Any good parent would agree that a crime committed against a child is a crime committed against the parent.  Since we are all beloved children of God, a sin against any of us is also a sin against God.  That said, the number of sins committed against God is no less than the sum total of all sins committed against all human beings throughout history.  At this time, there are approximately 7.6 billion people on the planet,⁴ but the Population Reference Bureau has estimated that more than 107 billion people have walked the earth since Homo sapiens first appeared on the planet.⁵

Every one of us has suffered wrongdoings at the hands of other people, but God has uncountably many more sins to forgive than any one of us will ever have to forgive individually.  If God is indeed willing to forgive all of these sins, then any unwillingness to forgive on our part must seem petty from a divine point of view.

I've recently noticed that, whenever Jesus taught the Disciples about prayer, He would often broach the subject of forgiveness.  When He taught them how to pray, He gave them a prayer that includes the following: "Forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors."⁶  Perhaps He was teaching them to make a commitment to forgive others whenever they asked God for forgiveness, or maybe He was teaching them to pray that God would forgive them to the extent that they have forgiven others.  Jesus went on to teach the Disciples what He would later teach them in the parable, that God will only forgive the sins of those who forgive other people.⁷

On another occasion, Jesus taught the Disciples about the power of praying without doubt.⁸  He also said, "Whenever you stand praying, forgive, if you have anything against anyone; so that your Father in heaven may also forgive you your trespasses."⁹

God is more than willing to forgive us for all our wrongdoings, but we must also be willing to forgive others for their wrongdoings against us.  Though I speculate that our unwillingness to forgive might seem petty from a divine perspective, I would not say that forgiveness is easy from a human perspective.  I would never want to make light of the great suffering people have endured at the hands of others.  Forgiving a wrongdoing can be quite difficult if the nature of the wrongdoing is especially heinous.

I think that sometimes we confuse forgiveness with repressing our anger.  Some wounds require treatment beyond the normal healing process, and simply putting bandages on them and forgetting about them will only cause them to become infected.  Likewise, bottling up our anger will only cause us problems later on.

St. Paul writes in one of his letters, "Be angry but do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger, and do not make room for the devil."¹⁰  Before you zero in on his instructions not to sin and not to "let the sun go down" on our anger, realize that he says that we have permission to be angry.  We must acknowledge our anger and allow ourselves to experience it so that we can work through it in healthy, constructive ways, or else our anger will fester and work itself out in us destructively.  We must work through our anger so that we can forgive, or else we will "make room for the devil," so to speak.

The hard work of forgiveness might involve seeking professional help from a therapist or a counselor.  It might mean setting boundaries between oneself and a repeat offender, for it is very difficult, if not impossible, for a person to forgive someone who refuses to stop hurting her.  The hard work might involve working to prevent oneself and others from being wronged in the same way again.

Forgiveness can be difficult, but it is necessary if we are to live the lives of love, peace, freedom, and wholeness God wants for us.  May God help us to do the hard work of forgiveness.


Notes:

1. Matthew 18:21-35
2. $7.25/hour x 8 hours/day x 100 days = $5800.00
3. $7.25/hour x 8 hours/day x 5 days/week x 50 weeks/year x 15 years x 10,000 = $2,175,000,000.00
4. Wikipedia: "World Population" (retrieved October 2017)
5. Wesley Stephenson.  "Do the Dead Outnumber the Living?"  BBC News, 02/04/2012.
6. Matthew 6:12 (NRSV)
7. Matthew 6:14-15
8. Mark 11:20-24
9. Mark 11:25 (NRSV)
10. Ephesians 4:26-27 (NRSV)

Parable of the Wicked Servant was painted by Domenico Fetti in the early 1600s.