If we are suposed to forgive and forget, like how God forgives us, is it Ok to always allow people to walk over us? Ex. If someone takes advantage of someone, asks for forgiveness, that someone is supposed to forgive and forget. How many times is this suposed to happen where we take what we have learnt to forgive, but not forget?
Further explanation:
It is my understanding that we are supposed to forgive and forget. The forgiveness part is easy, the forget part, much harder. We tend to remember and learn lessons from the event which caused the need for the appology.
My problem is, if we were to completely do this, in theory, abusive relationships could continue forever. Where by the abused would continue to forgive and forget the abuser and the cycle would never end. At what point are we allow to stop forgetting and just forgive?
In God's eyes, is this OK?
I welcome any comments on this.
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1 comment:
Have you read the boundaries book? Because that provides a really good explanation for this: they provide a difference between forgiveness (which is something that happens in your heart) and reconciliation.
"The Bible is clear on two principles: 1) We always need to forgive, but 2) we don't always achieve reconciliation. Forgiveness is something that we do in our hearts: we release someone from a debt that they owe us. We write off the person's debt, and she no longer owes us. We no longer condemn her.... Only one party is needed for forgiveness: me....
...we do not always achieve reconciliation. God forgave the world, but the whole world is not reconciled to Him. Although he may have forgiven all people, all people have not owned their sin and appropriated his forgiveness. That would be reconciliation....
We do not open ourselves up to the other party until we have seen that she has truly owned her part of the problem. So many times Scripture talks about keeping boundaries with someone until she owns what she has done and produces 'fruit in keeping with repentance.' True repentance is much more than saying 'I'm sorry'; it is changing direction."
Does that make sense? God absolutely does not want us continually allowing for such sin as abuse. And He wants us to be wise in our dealings with people. You absolutely can forgive a person for the ways in which they've hurt you, and also let them go, or establish yourself space to protect yourself.
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