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.