Decolonizing Forgiveness
The exploitation of forgiveness is nothing short of spiritual abuse
Over time, forgiveness has become, for me, a freeing spiritual discipline. Without it, the resentment I feel toward those who’ve hurt me holds me captive, while they get to live free. As Lewis B. Smedes says:
“To forgive is to set a prisoner free and discover that the prisoner was you.”
I find forgiveness beautiful because of what it does for me, personally. With it, I’m able to live, breathe, and love in a way I wouldn’t be able to without it. But while the mandate to forgive means freedom for many Christians, for others it’s entrapment.
As I sit with survivors of abuse, assault, and torture in my therapy office each week, I’ve come to realize that the church’s messaging around forgiveness is incomplete. Like any other biblical mandate, forgiveness was given to us for the primary purpose of drawing us closer to God and to each other. However, like many biblical mandates, over time it was twisted into a tool to judge others who we deem are falling short of our own expectations. Worse than that, though, is that forgiveness is sometimes used as a weapon to keep people stuck in unhealthy relationships.
For many survivors of trauma, the suggestion to forgive comes with its own pain…
