It’s not going back after you’ve escaped your abusers, is it? Jesus forgave His abusers– his torturers, the people who tortured Him to death. We know that He forgave them. We have that from His own lips– He forgave them immediately, while they were torturing Him, and prayed for the Father to do the same.
But Christ didn’t go back to them, when it was all over. He didn’t let them torture Him twice. He accepted execution and He forgave them, and then He gave up the ghost. He came back from the dead– truly risen, His dead body physically alive again. If it were necessary to go back in order to forgive, He could have walked out of the tomb and into Jerusalem, to the temple, and presented Himself to the high priests for another round of punishment. He could have walked into the Praetorium and accepted another sentence from Pilate. They certainly would have tried to kill Him again. If He was dangerous to them before, He’d be a thousand times more dangerous now that He had proof of everything He preached. After they got over their terror, they would certainly have tried to torture Him to death, again. That’s what wicked men do to God. That’s what abusers do to the image of God in their victims. They torture again and again.
But Jesus didn’t go back into Jerusalem, to the High Priests or to Pilate. He went to the myrrh-bearing women and to the disciples. He went to His friends. He opened their hearts to the Scriptures and He gave them the gift of the Holy Ghost. Then He returned to His father.
God is perfect. If forgiveness meant returning to your abuser in order to be tortured again, God would have done so, but He didn’t. If forgiveness meant going back seventy times seven times, the symbol for infinity, then I suppose He wouldn’t have returned to His father. So, going back for more abuse isn’t part of forgiveness.
What is forgiveness?
This is where I like the archaic language I’ve found in my Eastern prayerbook. It doesn’t say “forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us,” in there. It says “forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.” Maybe that’s the clue I need. What is a debt?
A debt is something that is owed. Debt is when a creditor is owed something that the debtor has to pay. And, in some sense, when we’re sinned against, we’re owed vengeance. God doesn’t like vengeance, but it does seem to exist. When Cain said that he deserved to die, God didn’t say that Cain did not; He just declined to kill him. There are examples like that all through salvation history. So, debt exists and vengeance exists, but if I am to be like my Father, I have to decline to take vengeance.
As a Christian, I am commanded to cancel debts wherever I’m a creditor. There may be a sense in which I’m owed vengeance. There might be some justice written into the fabric of the universe, that says I get to torture her for every time she tortured me. But I am called to be perfect, as my Heavenly Father is perfect, so I am called to decline to torture. And if I decline to torture, I will become open to my Father, and my Father will be free to come into me and make me more and more like Himself.
So, I forgive. I don’t go back, because going back is not part of forgiveness. But I cancel the debt. I cancel it again and again, whenever it comes up, whenever I flash back, whenever I feel that scourge in my soul. I forgive her debt. I don’t go back and and permit her to rack up more debt for me to forgive. I honor my mother by not allowing myself to be an occasion of sin for her anymore. I honor her by reminding myself that I don’t have to get back at her. I can move on, farther and farther away, because I cancel her debt.
I honor her by trying to be willing that, if there were ever a time or place where she was healed of her madness and able to see me as a child of God rather than a mistake, we could have a relationship. In this life, we can’t. But in the next, when she and I are both transformed by the Father’s love, we might. And I try to be willing for that to happen, since it is my Father’s will.
I’m not good at this. I’m downright terrible at it. But I try, with God’s help, to forgive her seventy times seven times– sometimes seventy times seven times a night, when I can’t sleep and the memories are terrible. Sometimes seventy times seven times a day, when I’m trying to figure out how to be a mother to my own daughter. Sometimes it feels like seventy times seven times every hour. Seventy times seven– infinity times ten, squared– at every moment. And through this, God heals the trauma, little by little, seventy times seven times at every moment.
But I don’t go back, and I won’t go back.
And if there are any abuse survivors who try to follow Christ reading this right now: be at peace. God knows what you’ve suffered and just how you feel. Your cross is heavy enough and you are not required to go back to someone who will make it worse. The Father does not expect you to go back and take more abuse. He only wants you to let Christ carry the cross with you, and let the Father heal you, and go forward into His love.
May we all go forward into His love which is infinite, seventy times seven times.
(image via pixabay)
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