More on Yesterday's 'National Get Over It Day'

Deborah White sent this comment in response to yesterday's post on 'National Get Over It Day,':

What a great idea! I once knew a middle-aged woman still angry at her father, who steadfastly refused to move past her anger. Never married or had children because of it.

Seems to me that at some point in time, one needs to let go of that heavy baggage, and get on with life.

That elicited from me this rumination on the God Who calls us away from the past and into the future:

I thought that it was great idea, too!

The New Testament word for 'I forgive' is 'aphiemi.' It literally means 'I forgive.'

I've always felt that that word perfectly conveys the two-sides of forgiveness: We release those who have done us wrong from the consequences of "their trespasses against us"; we also are released from the debilitating and grace-blocking burden of holding a grudge.

This is exactly why Jesus says, in His explanation of the Lord's Prayer in Matthew 6, that if we refuse to forgive others, God will not forgive us. The person who refuses to forgive erects a fortress around his or her soul through which God's grace won't penetrate. People like that make themselves miserable in prisons they accuse others of making, but that really are their own custom-made hells.

In my dialog with Richard Lawrence Cohen a few days ago, I mentioned the song by Larry Norman, 'Weight of the World.' In the bridge, these lines appear:

It all comes down to who we crucify; We either kiss the future or the past goodbye.

When we refuse to forgive, we may think that we're crucifying others. At least that's the self-righteous buzz we're trying to get. In fact though, we crucify our futures and our very own souls. Christ went to a cross so that doesn't have to happen!

Paul says that our past sins and our sinful selves must be crucified with Christ in order for the new self to rise with Christ. In forgiveness, we put the past in the past and set out to live in reliance on God and His goodness, come what may.

In a sense, it's safer to rely on the known hurts and injuries of the past; we know them (and can catalog them), while the future is a blank screen. But God is always pulling those who surrender to Him to venture into the unknown future.

It turns out that the future isn't so unknown, though. I love the part in [the New Testament book of] Matthew's resurrection account where the risen Jesus instructs Mary to tell Peter and the others to go to Galilee. "There, they will see Me," Jesus says. This is one of many indicators of how Jesus pulls us from the past--along with wallowing and grudge-holding--and into the future where we're with Him. "I am with you always," He told the disciples just before He ascended into heaven. If he's with me as I venture into a future in which I let go of the past, I don't want, like Lot's wife in the Old Testament, to turn back. I want to keep resolutely pointing toward Him. (At least, some of the time I want to follow Him, human sinner that I am!)

Well, I can go on, can't I?

AN UPDATE: In the comments section of my original post on National Get Over It Day, Deborah White has added this comment. It deserves a close reading:

Ron and I have been married for 16 happy years. It's a second marriage for both of us.

My first marriage broke-up after ten years, two children and a boatload of heartbreak and disappointment.

At a well-attended (200= attendees) Divorce Recovery workshop at a local Presbyterian church, I learned the concept of letting go of anger to release myself from its bondage and to move forward....that anger was only hurting me, as well as my relationship with God. The pastor who taught that six-week course was brilliant and touching in his message.

I went on for five years in the 1980s to be a lay counselor in that program, and met Ron there after his divorce.

I wish every church with the resources could offer such a healthy and practical program to hurting people.

By the way, Deborah is a fine writer and a lib Dem activist, as well as a committed evangelical Christian. You can read what she writes here, here, and here.