What forgiveness is not

This a brief but helpful guide to some distinctions that seem to be important in forgiving. The differentiation from excusing is one that I have already touched on in my own comments and I think does come from CS Lewis, for me. I think that distinguishing it from forgetting is important too; for some people I have dealt with, the idea that forgiving means that we forget has been a big barrier to progress. I think that "avoidnace" is perhaps misleading -it certainly was to me but I agree with the content of that section -minimising or making out that something is not important is not forgiving. And again, in pastoral ministy, I have had to disabuse people of the notion that somehow forgiving means to think that the hurt is not important.

To me the point of forgiving is precisely that there has been a hurt caused -if it's not important then there's nothing [or little] to forgive. It relates to the important consideration that forgiveness is about forgiving wrongs done. Minimising seeks to avoid the whole idea of forgiving by turning the wrong into something less wrong or even heading towards excusing. That's not to say that we shouldn't make appropriate allowances for circumstances and accidents etc. It is often important for people to recognise that a wrong has been done in order to retain a sense of their own integrity and to maintain right beliefs about right and wrong. Minimising the wrongs can be failing to recognise the wrongs and undercut justice and love. Properly to forgive means to look the real wrong in the face, square on, acknowledge its wrongness and to move on. In that way we continue to affirm the truth and the good and don't write them off as somehow irrelevant or not quite right, somehow.