Forgiving Those Who Hurt Us, Part 6

Joseph's Compassion

When Joseph’s brothers came before him with a request to buy grain, he charged: You are spies! You have come to see where our land is unprotected! He informed them that the only way they could prove their innocence was for one of them to stay in prison while the others returned home to bring back their only other brother, Benjamin.

The brothers’ hearts sank. Their father, Jacob, would never permit such a risky trip for his now-favored Benjamin. Standing before Joseph (and not knowing that he knew their language) they agonized: Surely we are being punished because of our brother. We saw how distressed he was when he pleaded with us for his life, but we would not listen; that’s why this distress has come upon us. When Joseph heard this, he turned away from them and wept. Why? He felt compassion for them. He saw the agony and guilt that was still strangling their hearts, 20 years after their evil deed!

We often forget about the agony of the guilty. In South Africa during Apartheid, there were many violent deeds committed. Later when Apartheid ended and formal reconciliation of the longtime enemies began, one of the perpetrators of those horrific deeds was drowning in guilt: “They can give me amnesty a thousand times. Even if God and everyone else forgives me a thousand times—I have to live with this hell. The problem is in my head, my conscience. There’s only one way to be free of it. Blow my own brains out. Because that’s where my hell is.” When Joseph saw the hell his brothers were living in, he promised to help them: I will provide for you because five years of famine are still to come. His compassion lead to kindness.

How can compassion transform our relationships? A wife who is struggling with her husband's neglect of their children, can release her anger by remembering that he had an absent father. A husband who resents the irritability of his wife can forgive when he remembers that she is going through menopause. A worker can forgive his stingy boss when she remembers that he doesn’t know the Good Shepherd.

Compassion enables us to lay the past to rest. (Isn’t this what we desperately want?!) When I am stuck in unforgiveness, I am focusing on what has been done to me; on my pain, my health, my welfare. But compassion shifts my eyes from my own pain to my brother’s needs: Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves.

Forgiving Those Who Hurt Us, Part 5

“Defining Forgiveness”

The primary New Testament word for forgiveness means literally to “release” or “let go”. When Joseph relinquished vengeance toward his brothers, he never picked it up again. In fact, it was his brothers who couldn't let it go. When their father Jacob died years later, they anxiously asked themselves: What if Joseph holds a grudge against us and pays us back or all the wrongs we did to him? They were afraid that Joseph had been plotting revenge, only waiting for Dad’s death. But Joseph still would not condemn them for the sludge of the past, only speaking his enduring conviction that God intended it for good... the saving of many lives. And when they offered themselves as his slaves, Joseph turned them down and graciously promised to care for them in the years to come: Don't be afraid. I will provide for you and your children. His genuine forgiveness demanded no apologies, no reformation, no restitution. Wow!

The ancient Greeks did not praise forgiveness. They believed forgiveness was appropriate if actions were done primarily through ignorance. But for evil deeds, they thought revenge was the appropriate response. And revenge was sweetest if done by the hands of the injured.

Why didn't Joseph get even with his brothers? He believed in a different sort of justice. When his brothers feared retaliation, he asked: Am I in the place of God? When he forgave, he was releasing his brothers to the True Judge, The He-Never-Errs-In-His-Judging Judge who will give to each person what is due him for things done while in the body, whether good or bad. (II Cor.5:10)

Jay Adams has written that when I forgive, I am making three promises:

I will not bring the matter up to you.
I will not bring the matter up to others.
I will not bring the matter up to myself.

The last promise—to not bring the matter up to myself—is the basis of the other two. When I don’t hold onto bitter memories, I won’t act out thoughts which hurt you or your name.

Forgiving Those Who Hurt Us, Part 4

“Forgiveness Doesn’t Minimize Sin”

A true injury should not be sanitized: “Oh, that’s no big deal.” Though Joseph came to understand that God had used his brothers’ sin for good, he still believed their intent was to do evil. (Gen.50:20). As C.S. Lewis has written, “Christianity does not want us to reduce by one atom the hatred we feel for cruelty and treachery. We ought to hate them.” Thus the Bible commands us to be angry and do not sin.

Why is the forgiver’s anger important? First, if I let my anger go too quickly, I may lose the drive to protect myself (and others) from being injured again by this person. The games Joseph played with his grain-seeking brothers—jail time for all, jail time for one, their silver secretly returned in their sacks—may have been designed to answer the questions: Have they changed? Should I seek a relationship with them? A wife whose husband has been abusive must forgive him. But it may not be wise to let him back into the house—not all abusers should get their jobs back.

Lewis Smedes explains the gulf between forgiveness and reconciliation:

It takes one person to forgive.
It takes two to be reunited.

We can forgive a person who never says he is sorry.
We cannot be truly reunited unless he is honestly sorry.

Forgiving has no strings attached.
Reunion has several strings attached.

Rightful anger is also important because the sinner needs to see his sin through the eyes of a righteous God. Joseph’s brothers needed God’s forgiveness even more than their brother’s. Though it may have been easier for Joseph to suffer in silence, calling his brother’s actions evil may have helped them face their guilt before a holy God. Otherwise, they may have concluded that no real change was needed.

Though the forgiver’s anger must never turn to vengeance, it doesn’t have to abandon justice. (Admittedly, the line between vengeance and justice is faint and unsteady). Or as Lewis has written, “we may punish, if necessary, but we must not enjoy it.” A forgiving Joseph would have been justified in throwing his wicked brothers in prison.

Forgiveness, reconciliation and justice are separate issues.

Forgiving Those Who Hurt Us, Part 3

“God’s Work”

Joseph was enslaved, slandered, and shackled because of the jealous hatred of his brothers. What had he done to deserve such cruelty? At worst, he was a puffed up brat.

But now (20 years later) when Joseph’s grain-desperate brothers stood before their unrecognized brother, Joseph had the authority to avenge their wickedness. Instead, he forgave them. Why? When Joseph finally revealed himself as the long-lost brother, three times (Gen.45:4-8) he trumpeted God’s baffling control over these evil events:

• It was to save lives that God sent me ahead of you.
• God sent me ahead of you to preserve a remnant for you.
• It was not you who sent me here, but God.

God sent me.... God sent me.... God sent me--is there a theme here?! Though his brothers were sub-agents, Joseph believed that God was the ultimate agent of his hardships. Sinful human will combined mysteriously with divine will to save Jacob’s family from a greater tragedy.

Were Joseph’s brothers, then, dangling on the strings of an omnipotent puppeteer? The Bible doesn’t answer this question in either/or terms. Man is free and God is in control. How can both be true? I don’t know. But Joseph could forgive because he saw God craft good from his brothers’ evil.

As with Joseph, we may wait decades before we see God’s fingerprints in our suffering. We might be tempted to whisper in God’s ear, “Couldn’t you make it a little more obvious that You are in charge?!” Joseph had suffered in the dark all those years. But when he saw his brothers bow before him, he recalled his childhood dreams of his brothers’ obeisance. He now knew that this whole experience was somehow a part of God’s greater, life-saving plans.

God asks us to forgive before we discern the good that He will spawn. It is the promise that in all things God works for the good of those who love him which sustains us. If you were ignored by a self-absorbed father, forgive your father and trust God to bring good out of that evil. If you lost your job because a co-worker fraudulently undermined you, forgive your co-worker and trust God to bring good out of his malice. If your brother swindled you out of your inheritance, forgive your brother and trust God to care for your genuine needs. If you were sexually abused as a child, forgive the abuser and trust God to bring good out of that wickedness.

We serve a God who dwarfs and can transform any sin—remember the victory of the cross!

Forgiving Those Who Hurt Us: Part 2

“Why We Don’t Forgive”

A famine in Canaan forced Jacob to send ten of his sons to Egypt to buy life-sustaining grain. (Benjamin, dad’s new favorite, stayed home.) When they arrived, they were given an audience with the architect of Egypt’s grain surplus. What a twist of fate! The man was none other than Joseph, though his brothers didn’t recognize an older, Eyptianized Joseph. But Joseph recognized them immediately.

Put yourself in Joseph’s shoes. Standing before you are the brothers who conspired to destroy you. Their cruelty caused you incredible suffering--sold to slave traders, re-sold to an Egyptian official, falsely accused of rape, imprisoned, and more. But now your day has come. Though you buried the hatchet years ago, you now have an unexpected opportunity to dig it up and hack your brothers down to size. What will you do?

Joseph didn’t seem to know what to do with them so he remained a stranger and spoke harshly to them: You are spies! You have come to see where our land is unprotected. He then threw them all in prison. Then on second thought, he released all but Simeon who would only be released if they returned with their brother Benjamin (Joseph’s only full brother). Was Joseph toying with them? punishing them?

Biblical stores are not fairy tales which offer simple problems and simple solutions. Forgiveness for deep hurts is seldom quick or easy—and it wasn’t for Joseph. Why is it hard? Forgiveness often feels like we are letting people get away with something. Joseph didn’t want his brothers “to admit [they] made a mistake, flip an apology in [his] direction, and go on as if [they] had done nothing worse than burping before dessert.”

Like Joseph, we may want to deliver some pain to our abusers--a wife who bitterly complains to her husband about his work schedule, knowing that her nagging wounds him; the employee who sharpens his dagger of bitterness so that he can slash his lazy workmate; a brother who frequently broadcasts the cruel deeds of an older brother, hoping to shame the brother who caused him so much agony as a child.

Though we may enjoy tormenting those who have tormented us, this is not God’s solution to our pain.

Joseph: Dad's Favorite

Imagine growing up with eleven brothers and your Dad had an obvious favorite—and it’s not you! On one occasion your festive father came home with a brand new, top-of-the-line leather coat for the favorite. But then Dad herded the rest of you to Goodwill to choose one of their second-hand coats. Now Jacob loved Joseph more than any of his other sons, ... and he made him a richly ornamented robe for him. In time, your animosity toward this brother consumed you. When his brothers saw that their father loved him more than any of them, they hated him and could not speak a kind word to him. But your brother wasn’t content to accept his special standing with humility. Listen to this dream I had: We were binding sheaves of grain out in the field when suddenly my sheaf rose and stood upright, while your sheaves gathered around mine and bowed down to it. Your brother’s arrogance inflamed your swelling anger. And they hated him all the more because of his dream and what he had said.

Many of us have been deeply wounded by the sins of others. Some of those painful memories hit us with the “blunt impact of a sledgehammer, with enough force to knock [us] loose from the present.” As a result, we would be willing to trade almost anything for a delete key on the keyboard of time. The only way to remove this “nettle in our memory” is through “a surgical procedure called forgiveness. It is not as though forgiving were the remedy of choice among other options. It is the only remedy.”

Over the next several posts I plan to use the story of Joseph and his brothers to discuss forgiveness. As the story of Joseph reveals, the abuses in relationships are seldom one-sided. Dad committed the sin of favoritism (which he learned at his mother’s knee) and the sin of indifference (he made feeble attempts to resolve these filial conflicts). Joseph sinned by flaunting his role as the favorite. Joseph’s brothers sinned by nursing a hatred of their brother.

All these sins produced a cauldron of animosity and bitterness which boiled over into violence. Joseph, who was the most privileged, became the most abused. Thus, this is primarily a story about how he came to forgive his brothers.

The Prodigal Son: Coming Home

An anxious prodigal journeyed home, practicing his speech: “Father, I have sinned ...” His thoughts raced with the possible conclusions to this painful ordeal. “Will dad take me back? Will he speak to me? Will he allow me to be one of his hired servants?” But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion for him; he ran to his son, threw his arms around him and kissed him. Norman Cox imagined this scene from the perspective of the Prodigal when he saw his home in the distance: “He became aware that a man had left the house and was running to meet him. ‘Who can it be, and why is he running?’ He did not remember any servant who ran like this one, and he knew it was not his elder brother. The one who ran was like his father. He remembered his father’s running when they played games together when he was a boy. It could not be his father, however, because his father was too old to run like that. Thus he speculated until the father was near enough to recognize beyond all doubt. He was astounded that his father ran so fast. But he was more amazed at the radiance of his father’s countenance.”

The son began his memorized speech but his overjoyed father didn’t let him finish. Robe and ring and sandals were quickly brought for the disheveled son: Let’s have a feast and celebrate. For this son of mine who was dead is alive again; he was lost and is found. So they began to celebrate. It was time to party!

Jesus meant this story to be a picture of God and us. It is a story of “our self-willed breaking away from (God) into adventures far from God. In it he has shown us the inescapable consequences of sin.” But in the story we also find that God, with an indescribable longing and yearning (he runs toward repentant sinners!), waits for a Prodigal to come to himself because only “then will he become conscious of his need and his guilt, and be moved to abhor and confess his sin.”

God isn’t looking for endless apologies or explanations. He only wants a confession: I have sinned against heaven and against you. Then he can restore you to your rightful place as one of God’s loved and blessed sons.