THE ART OF FORGIVENESS!!
"Look after each other so that none of you fails to receive the grace of God. Watch out that no poisonous root of bitterness grows up to trouble you, corrupting many." Hebrews 12:15 (NLT)
If you live long enough, someone, somewhere is going to hurt you. It is a fact of life that we are all, to various degrees, both perpetrators and victims of pain. The real question when this happens, however, is what do you do when you have been hurt? do you seek revenge, do you let the authorities or the 'law" handle it if it is a serious offense, and even if you do either of those things, do you eventually choose to forgive? Forgiveness is one of those things that is easy to talk about in spiritual circles until you are the one that has to do the forgiving. Let's face it, when we are hurt, our first instinct is to seek revenge, we use phrases like "Karma is a b%tch" and "what goes around comes around" or "revenge is a dish that is best served cold" because there is a part of us that secretly yearns for those who hurt us to get a taste of their own medicine. The irony about bitterness, however, is that it is like a poison that eats up the soul. Bitterness is like drinking poison and expecting your enemy to die.
Too often we expect people to simply forgive, without realizing that forgiveness is not necessarily an easy process, and besides, asking someone who does not realize the degree to which they have been forgiven to forgive another is putting the cart before the horse and is an act of sheer futility.
I was reminded of this recently after reading a powerful true story, the book, "Picking Cotton" (by Jennifer Thompson-Canino & Ronald Cotton) about a black man, Ronald Cotton who was wrongfully convicted of raping a white woman, Jennifer Thompson, in 1985. I first saw their story in a recent episode of "60-Minutes". The story was basically about how an eye witness can falsely accuse someone of something they did not do because ones memory can easily be flawed when it comes to the way lineups are done in the criminal justice system. Jennifer Thompson was raped by a black man in 1984, while she was a college student. After the authorities asked her to identify her rapist and made a composite diagram of him, she identified Ronald Cotton as her rapist, even though he was completely innocent. But because he initially forgot where he was that night and because she was convinced he was the one who raped her based on her memory, he would be found guilty at his trial and sentenced for a crime that he did not commit. He was able to get a retrial while he was in prison, but after the retrial, he was found guilty of raping not one, but two women (it was believed that the rapist raped two women that night) and given life in prison..It was not until 11 years after his sentence, that DNA evidence found him not-guilty and he was exonerated of all the crimes against him, and the real rapist - a guy named Bobby Poole - finally confessed to raping both women (by that time, he was also already in prison for an unrelated incident, and he had been bragging to another inmate about how he got away with raping those women).
Forgiveness in action: This is where the story gets interesting. After Ronald Cotton is set free, he is given financial compensation by the State, and Jennifer Thompson is ridden with tremendous guilt about putting this man away for so long. At first she is terrified that he may try to harm her in revenge, but she is reassured that this is not the case. Ronald simply wants to move on with his life and start a family. They, Ronald & Jennifer, eventually meet and she tells him that even if she apologized every day for the rest of her life, she could not repay him for taking all those years away. He tells her that he has forgiven her and she experiences some of the healing grace that she not only needs to move on, but to forgive the real perpetrator of the crime. Finding forgiveness that she did not deserve from a person whom she once despised based on her flawed memory helps free her from the prison of bitterness that is eating away at her soul. It is truly an amazing story of forgiveness and redemption and the unlikely friendship that ensues between the two families after years of thinking that the "other side" was the enemy.
What I got from reading that story if that it is practically impossible to forgive until we realize how much we have been forgiven. I know I have done many things that I am not proud of in my life and I am humbled and grateful that God had forgiven me of such deeds. So who am I to hold bitterness against another? It does not mean that harmful actions do not hurt, it simply means that we extend the same compassion that has been shown to us to others. That is something that is sorely lacking in our dog-eat-dog world.
Stephen O. Akinduro
"Look after each other so that none of you fails to receive the grace of God. Watch out that no poisonous root of bitterness grows up to trouble you, corrupting many." Hebrews 12:15 (NLT)
If you live long enough, someone, somewhere is going to hurt you. It is a fact of life that we are all, to various degrees, both perpetrators and victims of pain. The real question when this happens, however, is what do you do when you have been hurt? do you seek revenge, do you let the authorities or the 'law" handle it if it is a serious offense, and even if you do either of those things, do you eventually choose to forgive? Forgiveness is one of those things that is easy to talk about in spiritual circles until you are the one that has to do the forgiving. Let's face it, when we are hurt, our first instinct is to seek revenge, we use phrases like "Karma is a b%tch" and "what goes around comes around" or "revenge is a dish that is best served cold" because there is a part of us that secretly yearns for those who hurt us to get a taste of their own medicine. The irony about bitterness, however, is that it is like a poison that eats up the soul. Bitterness is like drinking poison and expecting your enemy to die.
Too often we expect people to simply forgive, without realizing that forgiveness is not necessarily an easy process, and besides, asking someone who does not realize the degree to which they have been forgiven to forgive another is putting the cart before the horse and is an act of sheer futility.
I was reminded of this recently after reading a powerful true story, the book, "Picking Cotton" (by Jennifer Thompson-Canino & Ronald Cotton) about a black man, Ronald Cotton who was wrongfully convicted of raping a white woman, Jennifer Thompson, in 1985. I first saw their story in a recent episode of "60-Minutes". The story was basically about how an eye witness can falsely accuse someone of something they did not do because ones memory can easily be flawed when it comes to the way lineups are done in the criminal justice system. Jennifer Thompson was raped by a black man in 1984, while she was a college student. After the authorities asked her to identify her rapist and made a composite diagram of him, she identified Ronald Cotton as her rapist, even though he was completely innocent. But because he initially forgot where he was that night and because she was convinced he was the one who raped her based on her memory, he would be found guilty at his trial and sentenced for a crime that he did not commit. He was able to get a retrial while he was in prison, but after the retrial, he was found guilty of raping not one, but two women (it was believed that the rapist raped two women that night) and given life in prison..It was not until 11 years after his sentence, that DNA evidence found him not-guilty and he was exonerated of all the crimes against him, and the real rapist - a guy named Bobby Poole - finally confessed to raping both women (by that time, he was also already in prison for an unrelated incident, and he had been bragging to another inmate about how he got away with raping those women).
Forgiveness in action: This is where the story gets interesting. After Ronald Cotton is set free, he is given financial compensation by the State, and Jennifer Thompson is ridden with tremendous guilt about putting this man away for so long. At first she is terrified that he may try to harm her in revenge, but she is reassured that this is not the case. Ronald simply wants to move on with his life and start a family. They, Ronald & Jennifer, eventually meet and she tells him that even if she apologized every day for the rest of her life, she could not repay him for taking all those years away. He tells her that he has forgiven her and she experiences some of the healing grace that she not only needs to move on, but to forgive the real perpetrator of the crime. Finding forgiveness that she did not deserve from a person whom she once despised based on her flawed memory helps free her from the prison of bitterness that is eating away at her soul. It is truly an amazing story of forgiveness and redemption and the unlikely friendship that ensues between the two families after years of thinking that the "other side" was the enemy.
What I got from reading that story if that it is practically impossible to forgive until we realize how much we have been forgiven. I know I have done many things that I am not proud of in my life and I am humbled and grateful that God had forgiven me of such deeds. So who am I to hold bitterness against another? It does not mean that harmful actions do not hurt, it simply means that we extend the same compassion that has been shown to us to others. That is something that is sorely lacking in our dog-eat-dog world.
Stephen O. Akinduro
posted by Stephen O. | 10:50 AM
2 Comments:
Thank you for this post--it is exactly what I needed to hear. :)
you're welcome
Post a Comment
Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]
<< Home