The Fruit of Forgiveness (#1004)
After Wayne and Sara shared their trauma story with Kyle's Advanced Counseling course, Kyle wanted to talk more about forgiveness as the fruit of God's healing, not the way we earn it. So many see forgiveness as an obligation God requires of us, even if we only pretend on the outside, instead of a process that flows out of his healing inside our hearts. They also talk about how easily bullies can misinterpret Scripture to great discussion, and what it means to take God's name in vain.
Podcast Notes:
- Sorry, there is no video of this podcast.
- Wayne and Sara's trip to Calgary and back through Idaho, Washington, and Oregon
Podcast: Download
Subscribe: RSS
Listening to you two describe growing up in your spiritual formation under authoritarian/conforming structures is a form of the traumatization of spirituality. Sara’s is a gigantic T. But when Kyle shudders when he’s sharing about having his salvation held over him unless he forgives!! That is also traumatization of spirituality. It is the place on the cross of “why have you forsaken me.” Trauma is the experience of being powerless to establish a boundary between our self and that which is about to inflict, or is already inflicting, serious harm or even death. It is one of the most acute forms of suffering that a human being can know. It is the experience of imminent annihilation. I think any time a person loses agency, especially as children, it is a trauma to the soul. And so, when your faith in God has been placed in the people who represent God’s presence in your life and those people betray you, you can feel that God has betrayed you. And it is in this dark place that we can learn from God how to find our way to a deeper experience and understanding of God’s sustaining presence, deeper than institutional structures and authority figures. You two have definitely journeyed through a lot of pain. Thanks for this conversation and sharing the healing process with us. So GOOD!
Thanks for your words, Joni, and your love for traumatized people. I know that those expressions of “Christianity” are incredibly abusive and do great damage. I’m surprised that I didn’t come out of it all that traumatized. The people in it had a hunger for God bigger than their abuse. This is the way they thought it had to be, and misinterpretations from the Old Testament could certainly lead them that way. But I came out of it with a connection to and a desire to know the living God. He somehow redeemed me through all of that and set me on a path to discover him, and not give into the fear others were selling. It did take a lot to dislodge me from that illusion and set me on a path to discover his reality of love and life. It has been quite a journey, but well worth the healing and freedom that resulted.
Years ago a group of 10 long term christians had dinner together.
We asked this question:
You sinned, for example being ruff towards your wife and before you asked for forgiveness, you step out and get run over by a bus and die.
Are you going to be with the Lord in eternity.
It was shocking, nearly all were not sure, hoping the will make it.
I believe to directly speak out forgiveness has only the benefit for me to get used to the thought.
Often when hurt, I do not want to forgive,
but that god sends an angel with a sword.
As being so “unmature” ?
Phil 2,13 “god works in you the will and the work” helps¹ me.
I use to pray ” God, I don’t want to forgive,
work in me that I want to forgive”
and he does.
The time comes when I can forgive or confess him my stuff.
In between we can be His favourite, saved, loved.
Greetings Dieter
That’s an interesting conversation you had there, and I’m not surprised that many were unsure. I wouldn’t have been in my younger days. But now, I know all of that results from a sin-focused attempt to manage our salvation. An “unconfessed” sin at our death will not preclude God’s redemption. His death buried our sins once and for all—past, present, and future. We don’t confess sins, in my view, to get forgiveness, but to have a conversation with God about the things that trip us up and how love can displace the seed in our hearts from which sin sprouts.
Our focus is not have we managed our sin well, but are we learning to live inside of love where forgiveness and healing are assured by his work on the cross and his power alive in us.
Absolutly right, I used confess as a Biblical term that is different to asking for forgiveness being at the end in an unsafe condition.
But you are right to confess can be misunderstood too.
The conversation with god, sharing and giving these things is a better way to describe it.
Thank you for making this clear.
I’m so glad that verse to forgive or you will not be forgiven, is old testament and today after the cross it’s “Forgive as you have been forgiven.”