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"I CAN'T STOP HATING YOU!" #4

FORGIVING THE KILLER A THOUSAND TIMES

In the L.A. Times newspaper, a recent "Quotebook" feature described the emotional state of a woman whose husband had formerly owned a professional NFL football team. After his death some time ago, it came out publicly that he had had a series of extramarital affairs. His wife had never known — and now this sordid little pile of adventures had come to light.

What were her thoughts about what her husband had done? Now, he was already dead and buried and lying in the ground. Was that enough? Was the fact that he was gone sufficient to cool down her anger and resentment? Listen to her word-for-word response to that:

"I'd like to pull him out of the grave," she said, "and shoot him with every bullet I could get."

I don't know; maybe you can relate to that kind of hatred and bitterness. In the monumental book, Dead Man Walking, by Sister Helen Prejean, is a story of a couple whose daughter was abducted, raped, and murdered. It took several days to find the decomposed body out in the woods, and police needed a positive ID. They thought it would be too much for the parents, so the mother's brother, who was a dentist, went to the funeral home and confirmed from dental restorations that it was his niece.

And the dad said later:

"Elizabeth's brother was pretty tore up when he came back from the funeral home. Before he reached his hand into that bag with all the lime in it and fished out Faith's jaw, he said he had always been against the death penalty. But, boy, after that, he was for it."

However, even death penalties turn out to not be enough, as Sister Prejean discovered when the killer, Robert Willie, went to the electric chair. Later she visited with the parents of the victim and wrote this from memory later:

"Vernon [the father] begins to cry. He just can't get over Faith's death, he says. It happened six years ago but for him it's like yesterday, and I realize that now, with Robert Willie dead, he doesn't have an object for his rage. He's been deprived of that, too. I know that he could watch Robert killed a thousand times and it could never assuage his grief. He had walked away from the execution chamber with his rage satisfied but his heart empty. No, not even his rage satisfied, because he still wants to see Robert Willie suffer and he can't reach him anymore. He tries to make a fist and strike out but the air flows through his fingers."

Well, friend, we read some of this and it makes our own frustrations, our own paltry rendition of the song "I Can't Stop HATING You" seem very petty. But rage is rage. And all of us have experienced the helpless feeling of not being able to put away our resentment with someone; we're powerless to rewire our own brain, change our thought patterns. The helplessness of it all is a plaintive theme in Sister Prejean's book, which acknowledges the agony on both sides of the death penalty issue.

We've mentioned forgiveness so many times on the Voice of Prophecy, and that's certainly a topic that could fill up weeks and weeks of programs. And we can't come along here on Thursday after recounting some unbelievably hard stories and tell people, "Well, just forgive your enemy. Forgive your spouse for cheating. Forgive the two punks who rape and murder your daughter and then laugh in your face in the courtroom." And yet, friend, the scars in this world and the scars in our heart prove that there's no other way. Sister Prejean, who witnessed two executions there in Louisiana, met often with support groups for victims' families. And sometimes all they could fall back on was this statement: God makes a way out of no way.

If we make a spiritual statement that forgiveness is simply giving a person up to God, surrendering that person and their deeds and your resentments and bitterness to a strong Savior, then what is tested is your daily and hourly belief in that Savior, in the strength of that God. Forgiveness really tests your Christian faith, your connection with God. Is our God "able," as the songs all say? Can we trust Him to handle the tyranny of our enemy, to pay back the evil we're surrendering to Him?

It's very interesting that when we read in the book of Luke, chapter 17, where Jesus talks about forgiving other people, He spells out that if someone sins against you even seven times in a day, you're obligated to forgive him. So Jesus knew that we would often experience the simmering rage of repetitive wrongdoing, of daily insensitivity. Christ knew that there would come situations where that certain person would get to us, not with one horrible act of violence or murder, but just all the time! And His instructions are clear: forgive him. Forgive him seven times a day if you have to.

But it's the next sentence that's so interesting. In verse five, the apostles all said with one voice: "Lord, increase our faith!"

And maybe we say, "Huh? What does faith have to do with forgiving?" And the answer, I believe, is plain. Unless we have faith in a mighty God, unless we've put our lives and our destinies and our need for revenge in His hands, we're simply incapable of letting go of that wicked person. We can't do it.

In his book Pain and Pretending, Christian talk-show host Rich Buhler has a chapter on forgiveness. And he makes a good point when he says:

"Forgiveness doesn't have to be the first thing you do. . . . Some victims know that forgiveness needs to be their ultimate choice, and they feel guilty when they can't offer forgiveness from the beginning of their season of recovery. Their guilt, in my opinion, is unnecessary and unrealistic. You don't have to forgive immediately. Recovery is a season and involves a lot of work. . . . Forgiveness is a process. It takes time. And it is okay, even healthy, for victims first to acknowledge their feelings of unforgiveness."

In his book The Crisis of the End Time, Marvin Moore describes a scene where a person might confess a sin to you — and you're simply not ready spiritually to forgive them. In your walk with Jesus, you're not to the point of giving that problem fully to Him. That's okay, says Moore, and he suggests this statement in return:

"Thank you for making this confession. I appreciate your honesty. However, I must be honest in return and tell you that I feel very angry right now, and it is not possible for me to say ‘I forgive you' from my heart. Please give me time to process this with the Lord."

In one of Helen Prejean's group therapy sessions, one of the victims' relatives spoke up and said very forcefully:

"Don't let that minister pressure you into forgiveness that you do not feel."

So friend, letting go of our resentment is an enormous spiritual risk, a painful adventure we probably don't want to take. It's hard, maybe the hardest thing many of us who are Christians encounter. It's a faith struggle, and as it turns out, it's sometimes a daily faith struggle. As C. S. Lewis mentioned in a letter we read Tuesday, we sometimes have to say to our own mind many times a day: "No, don't go over there. Stay away from that area." And today we might add, in our directions to our own lurching, sensation-seeking brain: "Now listen, we gave that to the Lord this morning, and now we're going to give it to Him again! So stay away from there!" And even though we want to stray into that dark area of resentment, to fondle those feelings, it's a spiritual exercise of faith to resolutely seek a different path for our mind and our emotions.

Isn't it hard? We mentioned yesterday that we can't change the other person; in fact, he or she is likely unaware, blissfully unaware, of your resentment. In those letters C. S. Lewis wrote to an American lady, he made this observation, dated November 9, 1955:

"The only thing one can usually change in one's situation is oneself. And yet one can't change that either — only ask Our Lord to do so, keeping on meanwhile with one's sacraments, prayers, and ordinary rule of life. One mustn't fuss too much about one's state."

We see that same expression here that forgiveness is a faith experience, asking God to do for us what we can't do for ourselves. And sometimes if we're Christians struggling with ongoing resentment, we can only do what Lewis suggests: keeping on with our prayers, our Bible-reading, our going to church, our sacraments — receiving the Lord's Supper or Communion is a wonderful way to learn forgiveness, by the way.

On the very last page of the book Dead Man Walking, a Lloyd LeBlanc attends the execution of the man who killed his son. And when the condemned man says, "Mr. LeBlanc, I want to ask your forgiveness for what me and Eddie done," he nods to indicate a forgiveness he had already given.

When did he give it? The night the sheriff's deputies discovered David's body in the cane field. A devout Catholic, he had fallen to his knees beside the lifeless body of his boy and prayed the Our Father. And when he came to the line, "Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us," he stopped. Could he do it? Could he, right there by that dead body, do this impossible thing? He looked up to heaven and said to God, "Whoever did this, I forgive them."

But you know, as the years go by and he experiences birthdays where David would have been 21, as he thinks of the wedding that might have been, the grandkids his precious boy will never give him, he has to forgive again and again and again. As Sister Prejean writes at the end:

"Forgiveness is never going to be easy. Each day it must be prayed for and struggled for and won."

And as C. S. Lewis closed in one letter to his revenge-thirsty friend in America, this is a spiritual struggle that we hope will bring us closer to God than we otherwise would ever have been.