What Do You Think?

From Luggage--#007 in the NOOMA short film series featuring Rob Bell, founding pastor of Mars Hill Bible Church in Michigan:

"Maybe a friend turned their back on you. Maybe someone you loved betrayed you...It isn’t always easy to forgive these people and after a while these hurts can get really heavy...Maybe forgiving isn’t something you do for someone else to let them off the hook. Maybe forgiveness is about you. God didn’t create you to carry these wounds around. God created you to be free.

What we want is to be free from this (hurt).
We want to be alive and healthy and whole.

I don’t want what somebody else did to determine what my life is gonna be like. Sometimes it’s big things, sometimes it’s small things. You try not to think about it, but then you just end up thinking about it more than ever.

We want to put it behind us, but how?

You think you’re over it. You think you’re okay. You think it’s in the past.

Then you run in to the person or you run in to something that makes you think of the person, and it all comes back worse than ever.

You thought you were over it, but now you’re more into it than ever, and the wound is re-opened and it hurts more than ever.

Then it becomes a day, a week, or ten years later and now it’s become a part of you. It’s like you can’t shake it and leave it behind.

Many, including Rob Bell, say that you know you’ve truly forgiven when you wish the person well and you no longer want revenge. What do you think about that? I'm not so sure.

For me, the whole situation was hurtful; however, there were many parts to the whole. Some were just inevitable heartaches, that’s the way it goes. Couldn't be helped. I can deal with that. But some of the wrong was not necessary. It could have been avoided. The person could have made a conscious choice not to cause such terrible pain and make the whole situation worse. Instead, the dagger-twisting option was chosen. I still don't know why. That’s the kind of hurt that is so hard to get over and hard to let go. You may truly wish the other person well, and you may never have ever wanted revenge, but forgiving still might not happen so easily.

Until the pain stops, you can’t let go. So have you forgiven the person? Can you if the pain still cuts so deeply? Even if you want the person to be happy and you don’t want revenge and you do want to forgive, if you still feel so badly, have you forgiven?

You pray for the pain to stop. You pray for the other person. You pray to forgive. God's the only one who can help you make it happen. How will I know when I've really forgiven?

"Whatever it was...God saw it. God was right there."

I don't need to hang on to this. I don't want to. I want it to be over. I want to forgive so I can be forgiven. I want to be free of this.