As my two year old and I were driving home from the beach one day, she sadly recanted to me that “the boy took my shell, mummy”. This little incident had taken place about 10 months ago when a little boy had accidentally taken a shell that she had already found and claimed for herself.
“I know honey, but he didn’t realise it was your shell. He didn’t mean to hurt you, and it’s good to forgive him” I replied in a hushed tone. I was hearing this story for the umpteenth time.
“No!” she retorted “I won’t forgive him because it was my shell”. Defeated, having tried in vain to get her to forgive him for said 10 months, I replied,
“Honey, you’ll never be happy in life until you learn to forgive people”.
God commands us to forgive others, and in doing so, promises that we will receive forgiveness from Him also (Matt. 6:14). I love this part of Scripture, because it sounds like God is asking us to do something hard with the promise of a reward, when really forgiving others, while hard, is its own reward. Forgiveness is a practice that we need to develop well in order to have the full and joyous lives that God wants for us. The difficult thing about forgiveness is that often our heads might know that it’s the right thing to do, but our hearts do not feel the same way.
It’s okay to fake it. When others hurt us by saying unkind things, crossing our boundaries or not acting respectfully towards us, it can be hard to feel warm and forgiving feelings toward them at first. Like my three year old, I know what it’s like to not feel like forgiving someone who has hurt me, even long ago. Somehow the memory of our hearts can be so great that we can feel the pains of injuries years on as profoundly as the day they occurred. This mechanism is normal and even good, as it can help to protect us from future injuries and even abuses. But if we can discern that forgiving our injurers is the right thing to do, and that in a perfect world, we would like to always strive to do the right thing, then it’s okay to say the words “I forgive you” without really feeling it right away.
Among other faculties, God gave us the gifts of Emotion and the Will. He ordained that good can primarily exist within the Will, but not always within the faculty of Emotion. Emotions are great and wonderful things, but they sometimes can be misaligned from the good, and sometimes our emotions take a little time to come around. But if we can choose to forgive people in our minds first (an exercise of the will), and then begin to act in a way that is consistent with this forgiveness (another exercise of the will), our emotions will follow (sometimes quickly and sometimes slowly, depending on how deeply we have been hurt). Sometimes these acts of the will might be praying for the person who has hurt us, and sometimes it might be making an effort to spend time with them.
By faithfully behaving in ways that are consistent with the desire to forgive, we can achieve the forgiveness of heart that Christ asks of us in St Matthew’s gospel (18:35), transforming our “faking it” into heartfelt forgiveness. For me, this has worked time and time again, and I’m so happy that the power of forgiveness has brought some beautiful people into my life.
Finally, as catchy as the title of “faking it” might sound, this kind of forgiveness is not fake at all. There’s nothing fake about behaving in forgiving ways when we do not yet feel it in our hearts. In fact, these are great acts of charity that draw us closer to Christ.
Originally posted 2020-11-17 13:41:58.