How Humility Makes Way for Forgiveness

One of the main tenets of Christianity is the belief that we are transformed by God and made new; that we have been and continue to be forgiven (and this does not require a belief in ‘substitutionary atonement’). Forgiveness, along with justice for the oppressed (ie Luke 4:18), is part of what we call the ‘good news.’ So shouldn’t Christians be especially forgiving? In theory, yes. But Christians fail at forgiveness as much as anyone. Do we truly believe in forgiveness? Because experience of forgiveness is transforming. It makes us more forgiving toward others.

In our upcoming lectionary reading (Matt 23:1-12), Jesus is harsh. He speaks against hypocrisy, about being full of ourselves and our positions instead of serving, instead of practicing humility. It’s easy to read words like this and think of people we believe deserve this harshness. It’s harder to recognize how the words apply to us. But really, we all have the tendency to flaunt our goodness like Jesus describes in the passage. This is human.

Here I want to explore one of the main benefits of not doing this, and of acknowledging our self-centered tendencies. It is this: humility helps us to forgive. And non-forgiveness has the ability to destroy us.

I’ll tell you how I experienced this myself. In 2015, my husband betrayed me and quite suddenly left our marriage (I wrote of the journey in Season of Wonder). It was an extraordinarily painful time because I loved him intensely. I hoped we would grow old together. So, his betrayal filled me with rage. It was important to work through these feelings since we need to feel our feelings. But as the months went on, I realized that no matter how much I left open the door for my husband, he was not coming back. And if I stayed in rage, it would kill me.

I also began to see something else. Twelve years before all of this, I had left my prior marriage. I myself had hurt someone intensely. We have, almost all of us, hurt someone intensely. So in 2015, when my next spouse left our marriage, I had to look in the mirror with painful humility and excruciating honesty. I had to acknowledge how I too had hurt someone. And you know? This realization made it possible for me to forgive my husband. To forgive him completely, and to love him as a human being and friend, even as we divorced.

Reflecting on Cycles of Violence

If I hadn’t been willing to admit to myself how I was deeply flawed, and how I too had made terrible mistakes, hurting someone I loved—if I hadn’t accepted the painful humility/humiliation of this admission, I don’t think I could have forgiven my ex-husband. The pain was too great. In the end, I was able to forgive. Instead of eating away at me, my feelings of rage slowly dissipated.

One of the reasons it’s critical to practice humility, as Jesus talks about in our passage, is because it softens our hearts toward others. It helps us to look at people who are struggling and failing, and to see our own struggles and failures. Perhaps most importantly, it helps us to forgive; and forgiveness liberates the heart.

Of late I, like many others, am reflecting on cycles of violence. One reason we participate in these cycles is by believing the wrong we’ve done does not measure up to the wrong done to us. We thereby justify repeated acts of vengeance and the harboring of resentment. I imagine forgiveness feels impossible when stakes are perilously high, such as when loved ones have been victims of violence. But in history we find examples of very costly forgiveness. Could costly forgiveness be the only way out of impossible cycles of violence? It is a question we need to revisit again and again, and especially at this time.