True Repentance doesn't Demand or Expect Forgiveness

To demand or expect forgiveness is like a chess player trying to manipulate the board, but that’s not true repentance. Instead, repentance submits itself to the poetry of waiting, praying, and hoping.

They thought they could use the Bible to manipulate and control. Verses were hurled, and they were told, ‘You have to forgive because the Bible says so.’

If you’ve been on the receiving end of this form of manipulation, then you will have heard these lines and others trotted out. But the Bible was never meant to be used to whip people into compliance.

A spiritual leader [anyone] who lacks basic human compassion has almost no power to change other people, because people intuitively know he or she does not represent the Divine or Big Truth. Such leaders [people] have to rely upon role, laws, and enforcement powers to effect any change in others. Such change does not go deep, nor does it last. Richard Rohr Eager to Love

Have you ever had someone come to you and demand change because ‘The Bible tells us so’?

One of the worst abuses of the power/ guilt trip manipulations is to demand forgiveness.

To Demand forgiveness

To demand forgiveness is when the person who has harmed comes to the victim and says something along these lines.

‘I have apologized, said I am sorry, now you have to forgive me because the Bible says you have to.’

Then they might bring out scriptures to back their demands up.

My heavenly Father will also do the same to you, if each of you does not forgive his brother from your heart.” Matthew 18:21-35
Whenever you stand praying, forgive, if you have anything against anyone, so that your Father who is in heaven will also forgive you your transgressions. Mark 11:25
“Do not judge, and you will not be judged; and do not condemn, and you will not be condemned; pardon, and you will be pardoned. Luke 6:37
For if you forgive others for their transgressions, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. Matthew 6:14
Be kind to one another, tender-hearted, forgiving each other, just as God in Christ also has forgiven you. Ephesians 4:32
Bearing with one another, and forgiving each other, whoever has a complaint against anyone; just as the Lord forgave you, so also should you. Colossians 3:13

It’s said in such a manner that it feels like a biblical legal requirement by God.

This behavior is unloving, manipulative, and bullying. It indicates that the offender does not fully understand the damage done to the heart of the other. They have not taken the vulnerable time to explore the heart of the other. Instead, they want to minimize and deflect.

The repentant chessplayer

I don’t play the game of chess, but I know what manipulation and trickery can look like. I have done it myself. We all do.

We think of a move to make so we can win the game.

‘If I do this, then they will have to do that. Then I can do this, and they will have to do that.’

‘I tell them I’m sorry. So the next move from them must be forgiveness.’

We chess play our way through relationships, and in the end, nobody wins.

G.K. Chesterton considers people who manipulate as being like Chess players.

Poets do not go mad; but chess-players do. Mathematicians go mad, and cashiers; but creative artists very seldom. I am not, as will be seen, in any sense attacking logic: I only say that this danger does lie in logic, not in imagination. G.K. Chesterton

It’s them versus us, and we have to out strategize the other.

When you live like that, there is likely to be a high level of stress, tension, and anxiety. Everything and everyone has to be controlled, managed, and manipulated. Maybe that level of ‘chess playing’ could lead to mental unwellness.

Honestly, all of us are chess players and poets, but some lean more one way than others. Which way do you lean?

Does God play chess?

Do you think God is like a chess player? Has a plan, a strategy, knows all the moves?

It’s not a silly question. We come to God hoping and praying for a divine chess move to make our lives better. That the person we have hurt will forgive us? That we can be free of consequences. So life will return to ‘normal,’ the way we want it to be.

Our life before God becomes a demand of saying the right words and doing the right things so that God ensures we win the game.

I think God is more on the ‘poet’ end of the spectrum. More of a mystery to be explored than an accountant with a ledger book.

The repentant poet

The repentant poet asks questions such as ‘How have I hurt you?’ Tell me more?

They make no demands and have no expectations. They come to the wounded as a prodigal son, not an older brother listing demands.

One was a repentant poet willing to serve.

“When he came to his senses, he said, ‘How many of my father’s hired servants have food to spare, and here I am starving to death! I will set out and go back to my father and say to him: Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son; make me like one of your hired servants.’ So he got up and went to his father.

The other was a chess player making the moves. He had an accountant’s list of resentful demands he wanted to manipulate. He was plagued by comparisonitis.

“The older brother became angry and refused to go in. So his father went out and pleaded with him. But he answered his father, ‘Look! All these years I’ve been slaving for you and never disobeyed your orders. Yet you never gave me even a young goat so I could celebrate with my friends. But when this son of yours who has squandered your property with prostitutes comes home, you kill the fattened calf for him!’

Forgiveness is a gift.

Forgiveness is a gift. Free and undeserving. There are no strings attached to this gift either.

True forgiveness is an act of the heart.

It’s a movement where God has worked on the heart and brought it to a place of knowing. Knowing more, understanding more, seeing the bigger picture.

Forgiveness is coming to have compassion (splagchnizomai to be moved in the inward parts) for the other.

If you want that type of forgiveness, then it takes time. Wresting and dancing time between the hurt and the healer. It’s poetry, not chess.

Forgiveness is a gift initiated as a work of God on the heart of the victim. They may choose to hold resentment, anger, and bitterness. Their fists clenched, holding on to their rights for justice. The hurt they are experiencing may be connected and fused with other injuries from earlier years.

But the God who knows all sees all. God sees all the pain and torment we carry.

The gift of forgiveness that God gives to us is because God knows all.

God is greater than our hearts, and he knows everything. 1 John 3:20

God forgives all because God knows all. Everything since that first fruit was eaten in the garden. Everything that has led up to this point of pain. God knows more about the story of our lives than we do. God is full of love and compassion, so the only response to our foolishness is forgiveness.

To demand forgiveness is to interfere with the work of God on the heart of the wounded.

True repentance waits and hopes.

We wait and hope. Repentance prays for the victim of our foolishness. Repentance knows justice but prays for mercy and hopes for a grain of grace.

Quotes to consider

Groups tend to emphasize accountability when they don’t know how to relate. Better behavior through exhortation isn’t the solution, though it sometimes is part of it. Larry Crabb
Compassion means entering the suffering of another in order to lead the way out. Rosaria Champagne Butterfield
Poets are commonly spoken of as psychologically unreliable; and generally there is a vague association between wreathing laurels in your hair and sticking straws in it. Facts and history utterly contradict this view. Most of the very great poets have been not only sane, but extremely business-like; and if Shakespeare ever really held horses, it was because he was much the safest man to hold them. Imagination does not breed insanity. Exactly what does breed insanity is reason. Poets do not go mad; but chess-players do. Mathematicians go mad, and cashiers; but creative artists very seldom. I am not, as will be seen, in any sense attacking logic: I only say that this danger does lie in logic, not in imagination. Poetry is sane because it floats easily in an infinite sea; reason seeks to cross the infinite sea, and so make it finite. The result is mental exhaustion, like the physical exhaustion of Mr. Holbein.To accept everything is an exercise, to understand everything a strain. The poet only desires exaltation and expansion, a world to stretch himself in. The poet only asks to get his head into the heavens. It is the logician who seeks to get the heavens into his head. And it is his head that splits. G.K. Chesterton
Repentance involves 1. facing my utter helplessness to make life work as I would wish; 2. sorrowing over my insane strategies that are intended to make ‘Life Work’; 3. clinging to a God who calls me to follow a plan of life that seems absurd. Dan Allender
Let Gospel truth burn deeply in a desperate, humbled soul. Only at your ugliest will you most clearly see God’s beauty. You will not completely stop sinning. Repentance is required every day. But redemption, regeneration, and reconciliation – the wonder of grace makes it possible for the sinner and the saint you are to enjoy God’s love and spread it around. Larry Crabb, Waiting for Heaven
Forgiving is not a single event, but a gradual process of increasing compassion and reducing resentment. Shirley Glass
The willingness to forgive may be a choice, but the ability to comes after gaining greater understanding. David Riddell
To assist you to forgive, remember that the offender was also the victim of someone else, and they were merely dumping their own pain. David Riddell
Accepting responsibility for your own attitudes and choices is the first step to a healed life. (Christians call this ‘repentance’). David Riddell

Questions to answer

Have you ever been told you have to forgive? What did it feel like?
Repentance requires letting go of demands and expectations. What’s it like not to be in control?
What’s it like to be compassionate to one that you have wounded?