Old hurts can replay in your mind making you feel trapped. God can liberate you from old hurts, so that you can leave that past behind and move into a better future. Forgiveness is the key to liberation and freedom.
On one of my birthdays almost thirty years ago I got into big trouble. My friend and I were throwing rocks and beetles outside in a parking lot. They were rhinoceros beetles. One rock bounced of the sidewalk and broke a window. We ran for it. After a few paces it was obvious that running wouldn’t work. My parents’ car was parked right in front of the window. We were busted. I had work off half of the cost of the door even thought I was pretty sure I hadn’t thrown the rock that broke the window. I couldn’t stop thinking about how unfair it was.
Old Hurts Replay in Your Mind
You are stuck dealing with pain from the past over and over again. Your mind and body remember painful things that happen as a survival mechanism. Your memory is a good thing because it helps you to avoid dangerous people and situations so that you are not hurt again. The problem is that a memory may be so strong that you keep reliving a painful experience. It is unresolved in your mind. You think about and analyze why it happened and what you could do differently to protect yourself. You feel trapped in a past hurt.
A painful and traumatic memory may be so terrible that you repress it, and do not allow yourself to think about it. But it is still there inside of your, perhaps in your subconscious. You are still “trapped” by suppressed memories because they influence how you live your life, who you spend time with, and basically every choice you make. Your choices aren’t free but are influenced by your collective past experiences.
You are like the indebted slave in Jesus’ parable from Matthew 18. In this story the slave seems to be forgiven an absurdly large debt by his owner. However, he squanders this new opportunity because he fixates on a relatively small debt he is owed by a fellow slave of about three months wages. Because he demanded payment from his fellow slave, the owner finds out, and makes him pay the millions and millions of dollars he would have been forgiven. Jesus says that the slave is tortured until he could pay back every cent. It is torture to relive in your mind over and over again a past wrong that was done to you, or one that you yourself have done. This is your guilty conscience.
Joseph was sold into slavery. He was almost murdered.
The good news is that it doesn’t have to be this way. Consider Joseph and his brothers, the sons of Jacob. They had done an unthinkable thing to their brother. They beat him up, almost killed him, and sold him into slavery lying to their father that he had died. This pain and shame haunted them and Joseph for many decades. Finally when Jacob died, who was the patriarch and held the family together, there was a moment of great uncertainty. Joseph had the power to punish them for all they had done. When the brothers approach Joseph they all cry, because they all still felt the pain of this horrible incident.
Joseph chooses to forgive. He says:
Even though you intended to do harm to me, God intended it for good, in order to preserve a numerous people, as he is doing today.
Genesis 50:20
Joseph accepts God’s free gift of salvation and forgiveness in his own life, when he shows forgiveness to his brothers.
There are times in my life when I might think about a wrong that has been done to me. I might feel tortured by the injustice and impunity of the actions of others. I find that when I pray for such people who have harmed me, God heals me of the pain I received because of the person. Forgiving the offender helps to heal the pain that they inflicted.
Peter’s question about how many times to forgive. Peter was thinking about forgiveness as a half to rather than a get too. He thought of it as taking your vitamins; as an aspirational thing you ought to do. Jesus’ response: 70 times seven would equal 490 times, or an amount so great you’d lose count anyway so don’t bother. It’s more like a good painkiller or antibiotic. It saves your life and relieves terrible suffering.
Learning to Forgive
After some time had passed I hadn’t made much progress paying off the debt I owed for smashing the glass door. I also harbored resentment believing that I wasn’t the one who actually smashed the door. Then one day my father forgave my debt. He said, “accidents happen.” That was the end of that. So what did I do? I forgave my friend too. Forgiveness was modeled for me, so I could live it out on my own too.
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