Everyone says forgiveness is a lovely idea until they have something to forgive, as we had during the war. And then to mention the subject at all is to be greeted with howls of anger. It is not that people think this too high and difficult a virtue: it is that they think it hateful and contemptible. “That sort of talk makes them sick,” they say. And half of you already want to ask me, “I wonder how’d you feel about forgiving the Gestapo if you were a Pole or a Jew?”
So do I. I wonder very much. Just as when Christianity tells me that I must not deny my religion even to save myself from death by torture, 1 wonder very much what 1 should do when it came to the point. I am not trying to tell you … what I could do–I can do precious little–I am telling you what Christianity is. I did not invent it. And there, right in the middle of it, I find “Forgive us our sins as we forgive those that sill against us.” There is no slightest suggestion that we are offered forgiveness on any other terms. It is made perfectly clear that if we do not forgive we shall not be forgiven. There are no two ways about it. What are we to do?
-Mere Christianity, C.S. Lewis
When I read this the first time, I felt warm and tingly and judgmental. The second time I read it, I felt terrible. The third time I read it, I made a mental list of all of the people in my life that I haven't forgiven.
Now I don't feel judgmental at all. I think maybe some of us struggle to forgive people like the Gestapo and the terrorists and maybe the Jews, but I think maybe lots more of us struggle to forgive the people closest to us who have hurt us the most, and maybe even ourselves.
Just something to think about.
