the importance of Forgiveness…

{ April 17, 2010 @ 10:30 } · { Uncategorized }
{ Tags: eternal life, forgiveness, God's plan, Jesus Christ, love, reason to forgive, salvation, why forgive? }

Am back to writing after quite some time now, dunno what kept me away but was away indeed. Sorry to those who were waiting for me to write (I believe that accounts to countable few ).

Well, now am I back with something stimulating or what, indeed I am and the Lord lead me to write what I feel about “Forgiveness”. It’s one of the things mentioned in the bible that seems very difficult to follow. After all how can I forgive someone if he/she has wronged me, it’s absolutely not possible, is it not, we are humans and we find it difficult to not look at what wrong has been done and feel remorseful about it. It’s our sentiments and no one, absolutely no one has the rights to play with it or harm it, right?

This is how we normally feel when we have been wronged by someone, a close one or a stranger, well some people can even not forgive God because they feel he put them in that particular situation and hence He too deems to fall in the not forgiven radius.

So to carry on with this subject lets break it into pieces to better understand it.

1. How can someone be wronged?
   Well if another person or individual says or does something that breaks my heart or makes me feel bad or uncomfortable, theoretically that person has WRONGED me. Simple isn’t it? Now let’s go on to the next question.
2. Why would anyone try to hurt another person?
   There could be many reasons – an unstable mind, jealousy, pride, ego, fanaticism, and whatever else. I don’t think we humans generally need a reason to hurt our fellow humans; we somehow manage to do it every now and then. But now what constitutes a wrong that is not forgivable in our eyes, again this depends from person to person. Some people forgive easily while some don’t, can we classify wrongs in terms of degrees of intensity? I don’t think we can, because it varies from individual to individual. And it won’t be right saying that this kind of wrong can be forgiven and that kind can’t be, won’t it? A wrong is a wrong and it should not be forgiven, correct? Let’s leave this here and get back to it a lil later and move to the next question.
3. What is forgiveness?
   Forgiveness is that act where you tell the person who wronged you that you have not taken the hurt to heart and are ready to move on with things and not to keep anything against that person. ( This is my explanation, not Wikipedia or co)
4. Why should I forgive?
   At the face of it there is actually no reason to forgive someone as there is no reason for someone to hurt another person. Simple? So far I dealt with this topic from a Human point of view, now moving on to the point of view on what most of my writing is based, The BIBLE.

 

So what does the Bible have to say about the above four aspects? For the How, it’s pretty much the same as in a general parlance, while for the Why, the answer is that the person who does so is obviously not working and doing things according to the Will of God and looks to do things with his/her selfish motives and in the bargain ends up causing a lot of collateral damage and leaves God with a lot of repair work to do. Now you may ask what about a person with an unstable mind, he/she doesn’t even know who God is, but I don’t think that is the case; as an individual soul, he/she certainly knows his/her creator. So their soul being as able as an able looking person’s soul is able to make the choices and chooses to follow God’s will or not. Even the unstable person acts on those same negative emotions – greed, anger, lust, pride, jealousy etc; as is the case with a person with a stable mind. I hope I have proven my point, it’s not what is on the Outside that makes a person who he/she is; it is what is on the Inside. Again I don’t think I can furnish any scientific proof for what I am saying, but after all my writing is based on Faith not Science.  This is how I believe it could be, and surely it doesn’t have to be this way, just my point of view of things in earth.

Coming to what the Bible has to say about Forgiveness, it shows that Forgiveness is the most beautiful act a man can perform towards his fellowmen and is illustrated very perfectly when Jesus, dying on the Cross asks God to forgive man because we did not know what we were doing. Here was this man Jesus, being tried, mocked, grilled and killed for nothing evidently wrong and what does he do in return, he pleads for Forgiveness and doesn’t rebuke or stay in remorse.

So why did Jesus choose to Forgive? You could say he could do that because was God in the form of man and hence had more control on his feelings. But sorry to say, even though he was God incarnate, he was as much a man as you or me. He felt everything we felt, he could think like we think, but what made him different was that he dint choose to feel or think what HE wanted to think, but he chose to feel and think what GOD wanted him to, thereby enabling God to work his magic in the lives of the people around Him. There is also the example of the apostle Stephen who was stoned to death by the radical Jews for proclaiming the Gospel of Jesus, and what were his dying words? “Forgive them Lord because they know not what they do” – even he echoed the same words of Jesus showing how much he loved God. You may argue that Jesus was God so he could forgive easily, but then Stephen was not, he was Human like you and I and he CHOSE to FORGIVE. And there are many examples of normal human beings who have chosen to forgive those who wronged them in turn opening avenues that they wouldn’t have even dreamed of.

This brings us to the question of “Why should we forgive?”, well the reason being that by doing so we allow God to work in our lives and the lives of those who wrong us. See the basic story of the Bible is about the fall of man to his redemption though the blood of Jesus and Un-forgiveness is one of the main stumbling blocks man has to overcome to receive God’s eternal blessing and life. What did Jesus’ act of Forgiving us do? It made God move in our lives and show us the road to Salvation which all of us deserve to receive. Had Jesus rebuked us for killing Him would this have been possible, well of course not and his death on the Cross would have been meaningless. In the same way when we Forgive someone who has wronged us (no matter what the wrong is) we enable God to move in both our lives and weave his magic and make both parties capable of Salvation. On the contrary, if we choose not to Forgive we somehow kinda bind God from doing anything in our lives and both the parties continue to live away from God. Yes, it’s true that if you have un-forgiveness in you, you are blocking the blessings of God to come into your life and the life of your loved ones. So not only the person you don’t forgive will suffer, you and your dear ones too may suffer the consequences.

This might sound very confusing and difficult to understand and follow, but why do you even try to understand, leave these matters in the Hands of God and let Him do what is best, after all he is the Creator and should he know what’s best for his creation instead of his creation trying to analyze things and end up worsening the situation. A good analogy would be that of a Computer Application and a User, if the application is programmed to Save data at regular intervals to avoid any data loss and then one day this User decides to tweak the application and somehow manages to undo that functionality and closes the application without saving it, what would be the result? Obviously he would end up losing all the data he entered. In the same way God has made things to be in a certain way and when we go against that, there would obviously repercussions pertaining to that.

So, LET GO AND LET GOD control your life and chart your path to Salvation.

TO ERR IS HUMAN, TO FORGIVE IS DIVINE!

FORGIVE AND LIVE!!!!

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