A Different Perspective Official Podcast

You have a son. He's out walking one night. A car hits him. Leaves him for dead on the freeway so that a few minutes later, the next car on that dark road kills him. Imagine.
This week on a different perspective we've been talking about forgiveness. In a world where we often experience emotional bumps and bruises it turns out that forgiveness is as important to our emotional well being as physical healing is to our bodies. But every now and then in life a tsunami hits, something so incredibly overwhelming that we could have never predicted it or imagined how we would cope.
I always thought that the most incredibly difficult thing would be to bury your own child. To stand by the graveside and look at that wooden box and think, "It should be the other way around."
What if someone killed your child? How would we get on and live life?
I'm joined again today with Lorraine Watson who's going to take us through exactly that, Lorraine, welcome.
Lorraine Watson: It's good to be here, Bernie.
Berni Dymet: So Lorraine, your son died recently. How long ago was that?
Lorraine Watson: Just over 18 months.
Berni Dymet: That's pretty close; it's not that far.
Lorraine Watson: No, it isn't.
Berni Dymet: How did that happen? What happened?
Lorraine Watson: Well, my son was running across a motorway where he shouldn't have been running in the middle of the night and the car hit him. The man left the accident without stopping and left him lying on the ground.
Subsequently some minutes later another big BMW hit him and killed him.
Berni Dymet: Can you remember when you got the phone call when they told you?
Lorraine Watson: Yes, we got the phone call from his wife and I can still remember the absolute horror in her voice as she kept saying, "I'm sorry, I'm sorry" as if it was her fault. When we heard the news it was the worst thing that you could imagine.
Berni Dymet: Yes, it must be a tough thing to try and even get your mind around that.
Lorraine Watson: Well, for quite a period of time we couldn't move, we just sat. It is almost impossible to imagine. He was our eldest son.
Berni Dymet: He had kids himself?
Lorraine Watson: He had two little boys that he left behind.
Berni Dymet: How did they cope?
Lorraine Watson: It was very difficult for them. They were four and five and the little boy particularly, the four year old was very, very angry and he kept saying, "I'm sick of this, I just want my daddy back!"
So that was really hard. And because they look very like him it's very hard to see them as well at that time.
Berni Dymet: What's his name?
Lorraine Watson: Chris.
Berni Dymet: Tell us about him. What was he like?
Lorraine Watson: Chris was a very active person. He was a runner and just enjoyed life really. He was a businessman and a very successful one and he just liked doing all sorts of different things really.
Berni Dymet: So did they catch the guy that knocked him down? What happened there?
Lorraine Watson: Well, the first guy took his car and hid it at a people's place and they saw the crime watch program that featured the accident. They knew that this car had done the damage so they rang into the police.
So he was found almost immediately, but he denied it. And for 12 months we had court case after court case trying to determine what had actually happened.
Berni Dymet: And the outcome has been?
Lorraine Watson: He admitted it at the last moment that he had used the car.
Berni Dymet: So justice has taken its course presumably.
Lorraine Watson: Well, he only got some hours, community service and $10,000 to his children because they couldn't, in fact they didn't prove that he killed him because he didn't. Because the second car actually did that.
Berni Dymet: Wow, how does that feel?
Lorraine Watson: It was really horrific. I think the worst part during it all was the thought of Chris lying on the road in the dark on his own alive waiting.
Berni Dymet: So just the simple act of him having stopped and pulled Chris off the motorway would have saved his life.
Lorraine Watson: The coroner said it was quite within the realms of possibility.
Berni Dymet: Were you angry?
Lorraine Watson: At the time, dreadfully angry. It was a needless sort of a thing for me. And if he had stopped, then he would not have been even charged. And if he could have reached out to us in any way, we would have been very happy to let that incident go. But he couldn't do either of these things.
Berni Dymet: So how do you move on from that? I mean, how do you stay on the track? You obviously have been through a horrendous ride with your husband and your family. Have you done anything to move on from that?
Lorraine Watson: Well, one of the first things we determined was that we were going to grieve loud and long, as we needed to do. And Allan and I both did that.
In the process I thought I would go mad. It was just as if insanity was just a heartbeat away. If I hadn't chosen, I could have just flipped over. And it was a real temptation, I might say.
I forgot all the rest of the children; it was only this darkness in my life really. And then what I talked about on yesterday's program came back to mind. How God had healed me through forgiveness and how He had forgiven on the cross. And it was like a light turned on for me and I knew that I needed to forgive this man, Jeremy. And so I also knew that I could not do that in my own strength.
Berni Dymet: It's a big ask, isn't it?
Lorraine Watson: It was huge and so I just had to ask God and the Holy Spirit to give me that forgiveness for him. And He did. And it was such a release; such a freedom came in my spirit, when I could not worry about that man's sentence or lack of sentence. That man Jeremy; he's not that man to me anymore. He's Jeremy.
That I could see the pain that he was in and the fear that was in him. And so I said to God, "I would like this man as a son to replace the son that has been taken, in a spiritual sense, not in a physical sense because we have no contact with him. He does not want that.
And so I pray for him and I believe the Lord will save him and bring him into the family really.
Berni Dymet: There was something that you said, that when you forgave him you no longer were worrying about the sentence that he got. It's interesting to me that as we forgive someone our sense of justice, our sense of this person should be punished for leaving my son on the road to be killed by someone else. We do have a deep sense of justice, don't we? It's probably one of the biggest pains you went through; I hear you saying.
Lorraine Watson: Yes, it definitely was.
Berni Dymet: And yet this act of forgiveness takes away our need for retribution.
Lorraine Watson: It's true. And that surprises me too. It still surprises me that I don't have that need to keep poking around and complaining about and pulling this man down really.
Berni Dymet: If you could say anything to Jeremy today, what would you say to him?
Lorraine Watson: I would say to him, "I care about you. I care about your life and I will go on praying for you until such time as you find the peace that you need. "
Berni Dymet: Wow! Do you think praying for Jeremy has changed you?
Lorraine Watson: I think so, because when I pray now it's with a sense of almost anticipation and an excitement that God will do something that I can't possibly do. And that leads me on to a sense of victory over something that I couldn't possibly have managed myself.
And the scripture that has always been mine is that "All things work together for good." And God has proved himself yet again.
Berni Dymet: Amen. Lorraine thank you so much for sharing that with me; it can't have been easy. It's only 18 months ago but it's a testimony to the amazing healing that God brings when we let go of something and we just open our hearts to this whole thing of forgiveness. As we forgive others the way that Christ forgave us on the cross.
Lorraine thank you so much.
Lorraine Watson: Thanks Berni.

How do you get over the hurts of the past? You know, really let go so they don't hurt anymore. Well, today, we're going to meet an amazing woman – Lorraine Watson – who has a real story to tell.
These days psychologists and psychiatrists talk about the fact that the act of forgiving someone often results in healing.
On Monday I talked about some research with some incest survivors. Fifty percent of them were asked to participate in some workshops on forgiveness. The psychologists who conducted the research concluded that the forgiveness resulted in dramatically reduced anxiety and depression. I quote, "We've never seen such strong results."
Abuse, sexual, physical, mental, emotional is actually much more common than we think. You probably don't know Lorraine Watson, but as someone who's traveled down that road I was interested in talking about this whole forgiveness thing through with her. Lorraine, welcome.
Lorraine Watson: It's good to be here Bernie.
Berni Dymet: Now tell us a bit about your earlier years. You had a tough time of it.
Lorraine Watson: Yes, I was born the sixth child in a family of nine.
Berni Dymet: Obviously New Zealand.
Lorraine Watson: Yes, the first daughter after five sons. So that in itself was a problem. But it was an extremely dysfunctional family as well.
Berni Dymet: In what ways?
Lorraine Watson: We had no money and we had no emotional things going on in the family. We had no support and there was also sexual dysfunction, as well.
Bernie Dymet: Now you are saying that you went through some abuse. What form did that abuse take?
Lorraine Watson: It was sexual; it was within the family and without. There were people like my father's friends and other people in the area. It was a very small area and it was a very, I would say, incestuous area.
Berni Dymet: How did that feel when you were growing up? I guess as a kid you don't know any different. Can you remember the sort of emotions and the feelings you were going through with all of that?
Lorraine Watson: I did know it was different. I did know it wasn't safe to bring my friends home and when I went to any other person's house it was like I lived on a different level to them. There was just no recognition for me, that I was a person in my own right really.
Berni Dymet: So, you grew up and you came out of that. What impact did that have on you as an adult?
Lorraine Watson: Well, the first thing I think was that it was being sexually dysfunctional myself. I did not know how to relate to people on the level that was healthy. I didn't know how to form relationships. I longed for them, but what I really found was that I wanted to be loved in the way that I knew love, it was definitely sexual and nothing else.
Berni Dymet: Ok, so you got married, had a husband, you had kids. Did this affect your relationship with him?
Lorraine Watson: We married very young and for all the wrong reasons, but we did love each other and because of my faith, that my mother had passed on to me really, I knew that my marriage was forever. And so we worked very hard on our marriage. But we had six children very quickly and I definitely was not a good mother. I did not know how to relate to them either. I just did not have relationships skills at all. So that was very hard for me. But I worked very hard. It was what I thought that you did to get on was to work hard.
Berni Dymet: So how does all this come to a head? I mean you sit here and talk about it very calmly now. What happened to you?
Lorraine Watson: Well, I was always a churchgoer and my husband also had joined the church. I had a belief in God, not a personal belief, but I knew He was there. But during the pregnancy of my sixth child my body started to really dysfunction physically. So my back started to act up, I could not sit down often. They had me in a surgical corset.
Berni Dymet: It must be hard when you're pregnant.
Lorraine Watson: It was very hard when I was pregnant and there was a lot of pain. But if I stopped it would be worse so I pushed myself very hard. But during the later stages of that pregnancy my back stopped functioning altogether.
Berni Dymet: What does that mean?
Lorraine Watson: I just sat down one day and couldn't get up. And the pain was horrific but then I lost all feeling from my waist down. At this point I had cried out to God. If you are there God, and I knew He was, but it was certainly desperation, if you are there somewhere there must be something more than this.
Berni Dymet: It's kind of a difference between knowing in your head and knowing in your heart, isn't it?
Lorraine Watson: It was really. So when I lost the feeling in my body they took me off to the hospital in an ambulance with oxygen and all the bells and whistles. And when I did arrive there they found that I was having labor pains.
Berni Dymet: It must have been pretty scary; you're losing the function of your legs and your feet. You've got five kids, one on the way. That would be exciting.
Lorraine Watson: It was really bad because that's the only thing I remember about David's birth was that, how on earth am I going to look after six children from a wheelchair.
Berni Dymet: OK, so you cry out to God. What happens? The baby is born…
Lorraine Watson: I'm not sure of the timing really, but somewhere among that God heard my prayer and I found Him in a new way through a pray group, through a Pentecostal prayer group. And I gave my life to Him in a new way and I was baptized in the Spirit.
Now that brought a lot of joy. I was very excited about that and thought that life was never going to be difficult again. But six weeks down the track everything fell apart and the first thing the Lord did with me was through His word showed me the power of forgiveness; that I needed to forgive every person in my life.
Berni Dymet: How do you do that?
Lorraine Watson: Well, really it was a decision to start with. But I was very sure that this was God's word and that somehow I needed to do it. So, I really, in my head really, made that decision and sat down and went through every single thing that I had gone through and consciously forgave. I said the words that "I forgave these people."
Berni Dymet: What happened next?
Lorraine Watson: Then I had a real sense of God saying to me that if I was willing to forgive totally my father then he would find God, which subsequently he did forty years later. But it wasn't an emotional decision really, but there was a lightness in myself after I had done that. But then the unexpected happened that my body healed. My back was totally healed. I have had no problem with the back since then.
Berni Dymet: So you forgave, how long after that forgiveness, active forgiveness did you become well?
Lorraine Watson: After the forgiveness it took a long period of time because it kept on coming up, other incidents kept coming up. And so I guess the process took a few months really; gradually my back just got better and better. And then I realized I didn't wear my corset and there was nothing wrong with my body. Not only my physical body but there was something happening emotionally for me.
Berni Dymet: People say, "Oh Ok, she had a sore back and it got better. Is that a real healing?"
Lorraine Watson: I know it was a real healing because there was no pain at all and I can't remember not having pain in my back from a teenager. The only time I might get a twinge is when I know my stress levels are high and I need to deal with something. And it's just tiny, not an ongoing problem at all.
Berni Dymet: That's really great! Thanks so much for that. I'd love to catch up with you again tomorrow. We're going to talk about a different sort of forgiveness to do with the death of you son just not that long ago. So it will be really great to catch up tomorrow. Thanks so much for that.
Lorraine Watson: Thanks Bernie.

We all know that we need to forgive people. That's the theory, But let's now put the shoe on the other foot and talk about God's forgiveness. Does He really need to forgive us?  Really?
Forgiveness is one of those fluffy words that quite often we pay very little attention to. But when you think about it, it's pretty obvious that without forgiveness, we can't have effective relationships. Without forgiveness on a daily basis between husband and wife a marriage falls apart. And they do in epidemic proportion.
Without forgiving our work colleagues for their shortcomings and failures, workplaces become a sieving bed of politics and strife. And you know, they are. We can't do anything really effective in a relationship when there's resentment and strife. Forgiveness is the first and only real step towards really dealing with issues. But what about God? I mean, if God's God, why is forgiveness really such a big deal for him? Surely none of us is really that bad.
For me this whole issue of God forgiving us is one of the toughest issues I've ever had to get my mind around. Now I'm the first to admit I have faults and mistakes. Absolutely. And you can too. We all say, "None of us is perfect." But if there is a God. If God is God, all powerful, all loving. Why doesn't He just look at me and say, "Well there's a guy who's trying to live a good life. He's not perfect, but hey, who is? He's in. Heaven, eternal life. This guy is trying to live a good life. He's good enough." Have you ever wondered that? I mean, come on God, if you make the rules, if you can do whatever you want, why don't you just accept me for who I am.
And yet, we turn around and we watch the evening news. You know, the latest drunk driver who's killed a young kid. The latest sex abuse scandal, the latest corporate executive who's taken a short-term unauthorised loan and neglected to pay it back. And something rises up inside us . You know, they should be punished. That drunk driver who walked out of the pub and got in his car and ran over that kid. He deserves to be locked up for life.
That's our reaction isn't it? Are you with me so far? On the one hand, we all have in-built innate sense of justice when it comes to other people. On the other hand, when it comes to us, to you and me, we want to rationalise our mistakes, explain away our selfishness, ignore some of the destruction that's left in our wake.
I remember thinking, well that's all well and good. I'm not a drunk driver who's killed a kid. I'm not a murderer or rapist. I'm not any of those things, so why should God have to forgive me? I'm just human. Hmm. But imagine. Imagine if His standard is one of perfect love. A love that never fails. A love that never stops searching for, caring for us. What if this God has a love so wide, so wide, so deep for us that we can never fathom it.
Just imagine you go outside at night away from the smog and the light of the city and you look up at the sky and you see all the stars of heaven lighted above, and God says to you, "Compared to the vastness of the universe that I've created for you, you are so much more important. Those things are just a drop in the ocean in my heart. I love you. I love you with a perfect love." Imagine if that's the standard that God applies.
Now let's apply the same innate sense of justice that we feel when we're watching the evening news set against this standard of perfect love. And anything short of that perfect love, well, it just falls short in this deep and mighty Father-heart of God.
There are two things. There is love and there's justice. Both need to be satisfied. It's in our nature. So why wouldn't it be in God's nature?
If we really, truly love someone, we won't sweep their selfishness, their failures, their rejections, their alienations, their addictions, their anger, their resentment, their hatred – we won't sweep those things under the carpet. If we really love someone, we'll do whatever it costs.
You know when we look at God and we say, "Well why doesn't God just accept me the way I am? Why doesn't He just accept me and give me eternal life and say, 'Hey, this person is human?'"
When we look at God like that, we're judging God by the wrong standard. We really need to judge God, if I can use that term, by the standard of His perfect love. A love so great that He would send His Son Jesus Christ, the most valuable person in His life, and allow Him to be beaten, to be spat on, to be abused, to be nailed to a cross to die for you and me. God is a just God, and justice needs to be satisfied. But God is a God of grace, a God of love. And when He looks at you, when He looks at me, His heart just overflows with love.
There are no words to describe this. And so He sent Jesus His Son to die on a cross for me so He can look at me, He can look at you and say, "There's a person who has placed their faith in my Son. There is person who has said, 'I fall short of the glory of God. I fall short of God's standard of perfect love. Nothing I can ever do will ever bring me up to that standard. And I know that God has to judge by the standard of perfect love, and so what I'm going to do is this. I'm going to look at this Jesus who died for me on the cross, and I'm going to place my faith in Him.'"
What the world says is, "Hey, I'm beautiful. Hey, I've got some mistakes, but go out there and have fun. Go out there and enjoy life. Do what feels good." That's fine, until you look at Jesus hanging on the cross. That's fine until you encounter a love so tender, so beautiful, so high, so wide, so deep, that we just can't fathom it. And as we walk through that love, as we look at God, as we look at the pain that Jesus suffered for us on the cross, we can do nothing but come to the realisation that we fall short of that love.
And more than that, Jesus went to the cross. God sent His Son to die on a cross for you and me, knowing full well that when you and I came into this world, we'd reject that perfect love on a daily basis. While we were still out there rejecting Him, in a sense, Christ died for us.
Sin is such an old-fashioned word. We talk about low self-esteem. We talk about selfishness or poor choices or whatever we use. Whatever term we use, we fall short of that perfect love, a love so great that it's not in the business of sweeping those things under the carpet. It's a love so great that it's in the business of dealing with our failures to set us free, to live a life eternal, free from those things.
We need to call those things in our life exactly what they are; wherever we are, whatever our circumstances, whether we've never believed in Jesus, whether we've been walking in faith with Him for 50 years, let's call sin, sin. Let's name it and let's judge it by the perfect love that God has for us. And then let's say, "Hey, I can't do anything. I can't please God because I know that I have sinned in my bones." But what I can do is look at this Jesus hanging on the cross for me and say:
Father I believe. I believe in this Jesus. I accept this Jesus as my Savior. And I want to experience and taste the perfect love that you have for me today tomorrow, and next week, forever.

Every person we will ever meet, is going to annoy us at some point. Something in their personality will grate, something they do will hurt … so what's the secret of having a great relationship anyway?
It seems that there are really only two types of people in this world: those who love getting up early in the morning and those who don't, those who love cats and those who hate them. Or, you know what I mean. It seems that different people just come out of different moulds. We have different likes and dislikes, different strengths and weaknesses. And as much as those differences make life interesting, they make life fun. They can also just plain get on our nerves.
So how do we make sure that for our part, the differences between us and other people become a source of pleasure instead of pain, richness instead of resentment?
As I've watched people over the years I've come to the conclusion that with every strength in a person, there's an equal and opposite weakness.
It's like Newton's Law of Physics. You know, you meet someone with really good insights. You know they see things so clearly; they articulate a situation so well. And you go, wow, you know that person's clever. But often on the down side, they can be judgmental and blunt; they can be intolerant of other people's opinions that differ from their own.
When you meet a person with a real servant heart. My wife's like this. They're the sort of person that always gets up to get the coffees. When you're out at dinner, they always get up and help the hostess and say, "Let me help you clean up." They're always the first to volunteer for something. It's wonderful being around someone like that.
But on the flip-side, people like that can be critical of others who don't help as much as they do. They can be pushy or interfering in their eagerness to help.
Or when you meet a strong and capable leader. You know, someone with real vision and that gift and ability to get other people just to follow them. But on the down side leaders like that can become upset with people who don't share the same goals and visions. They can regress into using people to accomplish their goals and visions.
And have you ever met the sort of person that's got what I call a pastoral gifting? You know they're just the sort of person that will pull alongside someone else who's struggling with whatever. And they'll just spend whatever time is needed talking, having coffee, visiting them in hospital. Have you met those people when you think if I was ever stranded on a desert island, that's the sort of person I'd like to be stranded on an island with.
The flip-side though is that people like that are really good managers of their time. They're rarely people who can force a whole bunch of things into a given time because the whole point of their gift and ability is that they don't worry about time as much as they worry about relationships.
There's a pattern isn't there? Every strength seems to come with a corresponding weakness. I wonder if any of those ring a bell for you. For me, absolutely. My gig is insights and teaching and leadership. That's, I guess, what I do. And as I came as a businessman, someone who'd worked in business and commerce for sixteen or seventeen years, into Christian ministries, people saw some skills and abilities and thought, well gee I could use that skill in my ministry. I could use that ability that Berni has in my ministry. And they asked me to do a whole bunch of things like pastor a church.
Can I tell you something? I think I would be hopeless at pastoring a church because I don't have the heart to do it. I don't have the sort of pastoral giftings, the gift to want to sit with people for a long time. That's just not me.
And so it's really easy to look at someone and only want to harvest the things that are good about them. And yet, when you interact with them on a day-to-day basis, it's the other side of the coin. It's the weaknesses. It's their failures that hurt us, that grate on us, that ultimately drive us nuts.
Reality? You and I are a package of strengths and weaknesses. I know I am and it's very true of me. I have some strengths but I also have some weaknesses. And the person that knows most about my weaknesses is obviously my wife. She could sit here for quite a long time and share with you all of my weaknesses. You wonder why I never have my wife on the program! And you know if it's true of me it's true of you too.
But the funny thing is, we are so quick to justify our own weaknesses. Well you know, it's just how I am. I just can't change that thing about me. But then we look at other people. And even though it's true about them too. Even though every other person that you and I will ever meet is a package deal of strengths and weaknesses, what we want them to do is we want them to be only strengths. We don't want to accept the package deal that comes with every person that we meet. And as we get to know their weaknesses and limitations just that little bit better, we go from boy what a wonderful person with all these strengths, to a state of mild annoyment, to a state of anger, to a state of resentment as we get to know their weaknesses better and better.
Question: Who right now do you resent? I mean who's driving you just crazy in life right now, grating on you? If you look at that person, my hunch is that you would be able to come and sit here behind this microphone and list their weaknesses down to the 'nth detail with at least three case examples of each weakness. But probably at the same time if I asked you, "Well list their strengths as well," maybe the way that you describe their strengths wouldn't be as full and complete and with quite as many case examples as their weaknesses. Because when someone's driving us nuts, we focus on their weaknesses. We don't focus on their strength.
Yesterday we talked about forgiveness as something that we do after the event. You know when someone's hurt us or someone's done something wrong, we know we need to forgive them in order to still have a relationship with them. In order for us to get on with it, to get over the pain, and to be able to live our lives free of the hurts from the past.
But there's another form of forgiveness that happens before the event. And that forgiveness is called acceptance. It's saying, this person whom I know is a package deal. And you know something? Just like I accept everything I like about them, I am also going to accept their weaknesses.
Maybe it's someone at work, and before you walk into the room and have the meeting, you know exactly how they're going to react. You know exactly what weaknesses are going to emerge. You just know because you've seen the pattern over and over again. And you decide to forgive them before you walk into the meeting, so that when they happen, you can let it wash straight past you. We grow and we become mature when we are able to apply the same excuses to someone else's weaknesses that we apply only too readily to our own.
Maybe wives it's when your husband comes home, and he just doesn't want to talk, and he sits down in front of the television, and you get so angry with him because he doesn't communicate. And right then there's a decision to make. You can either nag him. You can give him the silent treatment on the one hand. Or you can say, hang on, this is just the way that my husband copes with stress. And he needs my help. I might just show him some love, some affection. I might just give him a bit of space and then come and just stroke his cheek. You know how many husbands would die to have their wives do that for them.
And husbands and maybe, you know, when your wife is scratchier, and she's got PMT, and it really hurts because she's ignoring you. And you feel like she's emotionally not there. Well, is it her fault? Or can you say, well that's something that I just have to love her through, and I will accept her as a package deal with that included because she's my wife and I love her.
The Apostle Paul, two thousand years ago, wrote a letter to a church in Corinth and he said:
Look, we're like a body. And a body has a foot and hand. If the foot said, 'well the hand's not like me. The hand can't make the body walk around.' And the foot said, 'I don't want the hand.' And if the ear said, 'well I don't need the eye. Let's make the whole body an ear.' Where would we be?
It's a good picture isn't it? I can point back to some clear decisions of accepting people in my life as a package deal. Can I tell you something? The people whom I have accepted as a package deal, I have a great relationship with. Because when the weaknesses surface that I know are going to surface. You know something? I can smile to myself inside and say, "I'm going to love them anyway".

When someone does something wrong – something that hurts us, it's easy to say, "I forgive you". But actually living out that forgiveness – what does that look like?
In a recent edition, the magazine, Psychology Today, carried an article on forgiveness. In part, the article reports that until recently psychologists regarded forgiveness as the business of the clergy and theologians. But now, mental health experts are subjecting forgiveness to the microscope of scientific scrutiny with no apologies.
It goes on to tell of 2 psychologists, Drs. Robert Enright and Suzanne Freedman, working with people who have been sexually abused, found that none expressed any desire to forgive their perpetrator. So in a controlled study, they selected 50 percent of the group to participate in a series of workshops on forgiveness. So, 12 months down the track, what were the findings of the study?
What happened with the 50 percent who attended the forgiveness workshops? Not only did all eventually forgive, but a year later they reported far less anxiety and depression than the non forgiving control group. Researchers concluded that they had never seen such a strong result with incest survivors. They go on to say that "forgiving is giving up the resentment that you are entitled to." "The paradox," says psychologists Enright, Friedman, "is that by giving this gift to the other, it's the gift giver who ends up being healed."
You know, I wonder whether in our society today whether for too long we've treated forgiveness as something that's fluff. It's one of those "touchy-feely" emotions. Oh well, yeah, I should forgive someone, but it's not really important. But in reality, forgiveness is a really hard thing to do.
For those who dare to take that high path, I wonder whether there's something better along that path, something that we could maybe never imagine. It doesn't matter how we look at life. Everyday, everywhere people do things that either hurt us or offend us or threaten us. Sometimes it's people we love. It's the people who are the closest to us. Sometimes it's people we work with. And sometimes it's people that we don't even know.
That person behind us in the car that just beeps the horn at us, because maybe we're just going a little bit too slow for them. And the things that hurt us, or offend us, or threaten us, sometimes they're small things. Sometimes, they're things that are quite important to us. Sometimes, they're really really big things.
You might have heard me say once before that as a kid at school, I was never one of the beautiful people. I had snide remarks. I was ignored. I was left off the team. Sometimes at work a bunch of people go out for a drink after work and no one thinks to invite you or me. Those things can really hurt and when we feel the pain, we want to retaliate. We want to lash out. We want to pay them back. We want to get our pound of flesh from these people.
"Well, if they ignored me, you know something, I can ignore them, too. Maybe those people who went out after that drink last night at work and they didn't invite us. Maybe when they send me an email today at work or need something from me at work, I might just ignore them. I might just frustrate them. I might just play hard to get. I might just completely block them from getting what they want to do." And before you know it, something small, something that somebody did that they may not have met anything by it. It was just an oversight. All of a sudden, something small escalates just like that into something significant in an instant. You know what I mean.
Then sometimes we're dealing with significant hurts. With hurts, you know, an ingrained problem with your boss at work. For some reason, the boss just doesn't want to be fair. For some reason, every time there's a promotion, he or she overlooks you and me. Maybe you feel they're lying about you or maybe there's a real problem in our marriage. Maybe the relationship between husband and wife just, you know, over the years, it's tired. Haven't you heard people say "we've grown apart"?
These are significant problems, they really get us down. And sometimes we have to deal with major hurts. You know, when people really, really hurt us. Later this week we're going to be talking to Lorraine Watson, we are going to be talking about abuse as a child, about our own children being killed by a hit and run driver. People go through divorce. You know, every now and then in life we have to suffer really major losses. We all deal with these things. Everyday. Whether they're small, significant or major. Whether it is with people we love, we work with, or people we don't know. And it turns out how we respond has a huge bearing on the quality of our life.
Lets go back to that study that I mentioned at the outset, of the sexually abused women. The 50% who forgave, remember what the report said, they experienced far less anxiety and depression 12months down the track. In fact that startled the psychologists doing the research. They were surprised. They thought, we have never seen such amazing results with people who have been through abuse.
But you know, it's no surprise to God. The apostle Paul, a couple of thousand years ago wrote this, "Never avenge yourselves, leave that bit to God. No, no. If your enemies are hungry feed them. If they are thirsty give them something to drink, don't be overcome by evil. But overcome evil with good."
You know, this guy Paul has the habit of putting such profound truths into such a small number of words. Psychologists maybe have just figured out that God has known all along. That avenging yourself, getting revenge, something that we mostly do by living out an active resentment towards someone, you know the sort of thing. The silent treatment. We just ignore them. We just "Deal" with them. And we push them away. It's not the answer. True forgiveness is laying down for good our right to punish someone. And that is really hard.
Whether it is being ignored by someone or whether it is something as big as sexual abuse, hurt, hurts. And when we are feeling hurt, when we are experiencing the pain of rejection or pain of abuse or something really little, all we really experience is that pain, right then and there.
And to forgive someone, to lay down our right to hurt them back. To ignore them back, to punish them back, my experience is that when I have done that, when I have made a real decision that this person who has just ignored me, I am not going to punish them. I am not going to hurt them back. When I've made those decisions in life, you know something, it has never felt good at the time.
It has never been a fun thing to do. You know, the cupboard doesn't open and the orchestra starts playing when I forgive someone. For me it never feels like that.
And yet the paradox is that it is the only thing that really sets us free. But wait there is more… you see what Paul wrote there… he said, "Look don't avenge yourselves, don't try and punish people. That's much better left to God, He is a much better judge of character, He is a much better judge of what is going to work and what is not going to work. No, no. If you have an enemy someone that is hurting you, if they are hungry feed them. If they are thirsty give them something to drink. Overcome their evil by blessing them."
99.9% of people respond to being blessed. Maybe not straight away, but eventually they do. And when they do, a whole new world of relationship opens up for us. Not only do we feel better because we have been set free from the pain of what after all, they did wrong. But we have this relationship there to explore. People say, "Forgive and forget." But what Paul is saying here, what I believe God is saying here is, there is a step in the middle… Forgive, it is a decision it is tough… But it is the only way to set us free. Then bless them.
And I reckon that is even harder. But it is the action that reinforces the decision in our hearts. Bless them, deliberately step out and support this person when someone is stabbing them behind their back.
And then forget. We never forget the thing that they did. What we end up forgetting by blessing them is the pain and the resentment, that we would carry round in our hearts like a cancer.