Release Your Enemy to God

For the past two months, we have journeyed together through my series, Removing the Roadblocks to Forgiveness. Today is the final post on this topic. Next week, we will begin a new series based on the fruit of the Spirit, titled Thriving in God's Garden.

Forgiveness is a long journey.
For a number of years, I have been working through this process of forgiving the people who have hurt me the most. I would like to thank my friends and readers who have offered their thoughts about this topic. You have all been extremely helpful. The following paragraphs contain my conclusions about how a survivor of abuse or trauma can remove the roadblocks to forgiveness and begin to thrive.

We are deeply wounded by abuse or trauma.
First, we must acknowledge that childhood sexual abuse, domestic violence, and trauma all leave us with scars. When our perpetrators are finished with us, we may feel:

angry,
fearful,
mistrusting,
incompetent,
guilty,
vengeful,
prideful,
hateful, or
depressed.

Before we can forgive, we must face the truth about our past. If it was hurtful, we need to admit that to ourselves. Then, we need to ask God to comfort us.

Misunderstandings about forgiveness stand as roadblocks for us.
Second, we must realize that many misunderstandings about forgiveness stand in our way to achieving inner peace. These roadblocks to forgiveness include the following:

Roadblock #1: We must learn to get along with evil people.
Often, victims of childhood sexual abuse are told by their abusers that sexual activity between children and adults is good. Harming a child for self-gratification is never good. Actions such as these are always evil, but evil people may try to convince us that they are good.

When we fail to recognize the differences between good and evil, we get stranded on the side of the forgiveness road. The Bible tells us that good and evil cannot coexist. Therefore, we must separate ourselves from the people who continue to abuse us so that we can clearly understand the differences between good and evil.

By studying the Bible, talking with mature Christians, and praying for God to make us more like him, we can clear up this misunderstanding that we must learn to live with evil people. We can finally see that whatever opposes God's law or his character is evil. And whatever imitates him is good.

By learning to see God from a more balanced perspective, we can move forward on the road to forgiving by letting go of the people who are evil. In doing this, we learn without a doubt that our God is balanced, offering blessings to those who obey him and punishment for those who oppose him.

Roadblock #2: I am superior to my enemy.
As victims of serious crimes, we often see ourselves as superior to our perpetrators. This attitude always stands in our way of inner peace. As long as we think the entire problem lies with our enemy, we will remain stalled in our quest to forgive.

We must learn to see ourselves as God does, just as faulty on the inside as our enemies. If we are ever going to forgive them, we have to learn what the entire forgiveness process entails. The steps to forgiving mean that we:

-recognize that God's character defines all that is good,
-recognize that whatever opposes God's character is evil,
-admit that we have faults, just as our enemy does,
-humbly ask God to forgive our sins,
-accept God's grace and let go of all guilt,
-turn our life completely around so that we can imitate God better,
-ask others whom we have hurt for their forgiveness, and
-offer restitution to anyone we have hurt.

Roadblock #3: I have to restore the relationship with my enemy.
The biggest roadblock to forgiveness looms before us when we confuse forgiveness with reconciliation. To reconcile means that we put our differences aside and resume a relationship with someone who has hurt us.

Many people assume that if we forgive someone, we have to invite them back into our lives. This is not true. It is perfectly okay for us to remove ourselves permanently from the influence of someone who has hurt us or continues to hurt us. Even if the person who hurt us is a member of our own family, we do not have to invite them back into our lives.

Roadblock #4: I have to teach my enemy how to apologize.
So many victims believe that it is their duty to teach their enemies how to admit their sin, receive God's grace, and change their lives. As victims, we are the last people who should be doing this. We will only be seen as preachy hypocrites in our enemy's eyes. It is far better to pray for them from a distance, asking God to send others to change them. We can never force our enemies into changing so that we can forgive them.

Roadblock #5: I have to tell him, "I forgive you."
Many victims assume that they have to walk up to the criminal who has hurt them and say the words, "I forgive you," even if that person has never accepted responsibilty for his actions, apologized, changed his life, or offered restitution. This assumption hurts both victim and perpetrator.

When a victim tells her perpetrator, "I forgive you," without any forgiveness effort on his part, she sets herself up for further abuse. Many abusers see this pardon as a green light to resume the behaviors that must not have been all that bad. Otherwise, in their minds, the forgiveness would not have been forthcoming.

This type of pseudo-forgiveness hurts the perpetrator, too. It robs him of the opportunity to learn how to humble himself before God and the people he has hurt. It steals away the time he needs to figure out how to accept and give forgiveness.

The best way to handle an unrepentant enemy who has never truly accepted responsiblity for his actions or sincerely apologized for them is to say these words to God alone: "I release my enemy into your hands. I am willing to forgive him when he is ready. Please help him."

The words we may choose to say to our enemies from a distance, either by phone or letter, are these: "You have hurt me. I am willing to forgive you after you have learned what it takes to be forgiven. Until then, we cannot be in a relationship." Enough said. Hang up or sign the letter.

We can only change ourselves.
Third, when we release our enemies, we let go of our need to control the outcome. Instead of spending the rest of our lives focused on how our perpetrator needs to change, we can focus on changing ourselves. In the meantime, we get out of the way so that God can work on our enemy's heart.

We change ourselves by learning as much as we can about God's character, and then we imitate him to the best of our ability. We learn, as I have taught in this series, what it takes to humble ourselves before God and others to offer sincere apologies when we hurt people. We follow up our apologies with offers of restitution, and we try our best to learn a lesson so that we don't repeat the same mistakes.

By focusing on our own need for forgiveness, we let go of our preoccupation with our enemy's need for forgiveness. This frees us to go back and clean up the messes that were caused by the original abuse, such as our anger, fear, lack of trust, low self-esteem, guilt, vengefulness, pride, hatred, and depression.

We should show others how to forgive.
Fourth, we should share these newfound lessons about forgiveness with others. Now that you understand the truth about the forgiveness journey and how you can remove the roadblocks, I hope you'll begin to thrive! When you feel confident, I hope you'll teach the process to others by modeling appropriate forgiveness throughout your life.

I am at peace.
Somewhere along the way, God helped me to let go of the bitterness and anger that I felt toward the people who have deeply hurt me. When I began to pray that he would help me let go of them, my grip on the list of their faults began to loosen.

Today, I am at peace, because I realize that it is not my job to point out my enemies' faults to them. I am the last person they need to hear from regarding how badly they have failed at the forgiveness process. Some therapists advocate confronting abusers to tell them exactly how much they have hurt us. I disagree. God knows what they've done. We can tell him about our hurts and leave our enemies in his capable hands.

I continue to pray that my enemies will learn about the forgiveness process, because it brings such peace. I have released the people who have hurt me into God's hands, and I look forward to the outcomes he is able to bring about in their lives. Perhaps they will come to me someday to show me that they are sincerely sorry. If that happens, we will all rejoice together.

In the meantime, this search for a way to forgive my enemies has led me to the realization that I needed to be humbled. I am not perfect, and I've made a lot of mistakes along the way. Holding onto the pain of my past was hurting me far more than it was helping my enemies to see the error of their ways.

Share your insights about forgiveness with me.
Thank you for taking this road trip with me. I value your feedback, so please post your comments here or send them to me at cheryldenton@rocketmail.com.

Join me next week as we begin my new series, Thriving In God's Garden.

Admit Your Faults

We continue with our series, Removing the Roadblocks to Forgiveness. Now that we have learned how to recognize both righteousness and sin, we move on today with a look into our own faults. Recognizing that we are not perfect takes us one step closer to forgiving our enemies who have abused or traumatized us.

Forgiveness is impossible without humility.
If we want to forgive someone, we cannot keep an attitude of pride or superiority toward them. If we approach forgiveness with our noses in the air, we either make our enemies defensive, or we make them feel insignificant. Neither outcome is pleasing to God, who calls us to love one another.

I Peter 5:5 (NIV) tells us, All of you, clothe yourselves with humility toward one another, because, "God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble." We can see that our efforts to forgive will be opposed by God if we approach the process with prideful attitudes. Our efforts are backed up by God's grace is we approach forgiveness with humility.

Stop judging your enemy.
There is an old saying that whenever we point a finger at someone, there are three others pointing back at us. We cannot forgive if we are focused on our enemy's sins. Jesus said in Matthew 7:3-5 (NIV):

Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother's eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? How can you say to your brother, 'Let me take the speck out of your eye,' when all the time there is a plank in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother's eye.

Beginning today, stop thinking about and clinging to all of the things that your enemy did to hurt you. Release these bitter thoughts to God and focus, instead, on the sweetness of his love for you.

Start examining yourself.
Lamentations 3:40 (NIV) reads, Let us examine our ways and test them, and let us return to the Lord. Before any of us can forgive, we must look deep within to examine the condition of our own hearts. We are all sinners, and those of us who have suffered abuse or trauma generally carry with us sins such as anger, revenge, pride, and hatred.

I am not asking you to examine yourself to see if you have any sin. I'm asking you to look into your soul to see which sins need to be addressed. Through prayer, ask God to reveal your sins to you. Ask a trusted friend or your spouse what sins they see in you.

Admit your sins to God.
After you have identified which sins are hindering you from forgiving, admit them to God. He already knows what they are, but confessing them to him will relieve you of the burden of carrying them around.

Tell God that you have made a mess of your life and that you cannot manage it any longer. Ask him to lead you. Then pray that God will give you the good sense to follow him, rather than expecting him to act like a genie in a bottle whenever you need him to carry out a task for you. Remember, Christianity is about learning how to be a follower, not the leader. Leading is God's job, not ours.

Tell one other person about your sins.
We are not required to go to confession to have our sins forgiven. Jesus' death on the cross and resurrection gave us full access to him. However, I believe that telling someone whom we can trust about our faults gives us a great deal of leverage against sin. With an accountability partner knowing about our shortcomings, we have greater power through their prayers and encouragement.

Admitting our own faults is an important step in the forgiveness process. Why? Because we expect our enemies to admit their faults to us. And if we're going to come to an understanding of how difficult that can be for them, we must be willing to do it first.

I think about how hard it must have been for my father to carry around the secret of child molestation for so many years. Imagine how hard that would be. If just one child spoke out, his life would come tumbling down like a house of cards.

I am grateful that my dad finally confessed to the police about what he did to my daughter. It spared her from tremendous embarrassment and the stress involved with court appearances. More importantly, it set him on the road to forgiveness alongside us.

As we travel this journey, we are struggling to forgive someone who has deeply hurt us. It is important to remember that our enemies are struggling just as hard to let go of their sins. By admitting our own faults, we walk in their shoes. In doing so, we can begin to empathize with their battle.

Today's Challenge
Set aside some time for reflection and prayer. Ask God to reveal sins that you may not even be aware of in your quest to forgive. When they surface, write them down in your journal. Admit your sins to God and to one other trusted person. Write down how you think your enemy might be feeling about admitting his own faults. Begin to pray for him.

Hate the Sin, Love the Sinner

Today, we are scheduled to learn about how hatred prevents us from forgiving as we continue with our series, Removing the Roadblocks to Forgiveness. Recent events in my life have really helped me to put into practice an important concept: we can hate the sin that someone carries out to hurt us, but we must still love the sinner.

Matthew 5:43-44 (NIV) reads, "You have heard that it was said, 'Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.' But I tell you: Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you." This is a very difficult thing to do, and we may not be able to love our enemies as much as God does. But, we must try.

Our family had an opportunity to learn more about this concept yesterday, because we went to court for my father's sentencing in the case of his molesting my daughter. As a family, ten of us felt very united when we went into the courtroom. We had spent the day before together, talking about the upcoming court appearance and praying for God to use it for everyone's good.

Confrontation is never easy.
On the way to the courthouse, my stomach began churning. When we pulled into the parking lot, I felt as if I might vomit. My hands became clammy, and my knees began to shake. As we were walking in, my sister described these same feelings. I felt better, knowing that I was not alone with my fears. Confrontation of this magnitude is never easy, but we knew that the time had come for justice to do its work.

The Enemy wants us to give up.
My father and mother sat down alone on the opposite side of the courtroom. No one in the family spoke to my parents, and there was so much tension in the room, you could have cut it with a knife. Our daughter burst into tears, and we all rallied around her to pray for her strength. Within minutes, the spiritual turmoil abated.

God provides models for us.
As we waited, several other cases were heard. A young woman in an orange prisoner's uniform was brought in by the sheriff's deputy. Her head had been shaved. As she was charged with stealing someone's debit card, she hung her head and listened to the judge's explanation of her sentence. At the end of her hearing, she said that she was really sorry for what she had done. It had hurt her victim, she had lost her children, and she had made a mess of her life with some really bad decisions involving drugs. Through her example, we all saw what appeared to be genuine regret.

A second woman was brought in, also wearing the orange uniform, with purplish hair that streamed past her waist. She had been in trouble many times before. During the short time that she was held in jail, pills had been discovered hidden on her person. Her husband appeared, who also had a history of criminal conduct. She claimed to be innocent, and her husband signed an affadavit to promise repayment of her bond money. By this example, we had a pretty good idea that this woman was not yet capable of accepting responsibility for her actions or changing her behavior.

In spite of the differences in these women's attitudes regarding their crimes, I prayed for them both. I learned later that the rest of the family had been praying for them, too. While we waited, I wondered if my father would exhibit the contrition displayed by the woman with the shaven head or the defensiveness of the one with the long purplish hair.

How do we know if an apology is sincere?
It came time for my father to speak. He turned to all of us. He said he was sorry for what he had done to our daughter. Then he apologized to the family as a whole. He followed his apology with the statement, "I don't know what made me do it." Then he shrugged and gave us all an incredibly stupid look, as if he were clueless and completely free of all responsibility for his actions. In that instant, I knew that his apology meant little. Later, the entire family agreed that 'the shrug' negated every word that our father had spoken.

The enemy will lie to preserve himself.
As the hearing progressed, the defense attorney tried to make the family look guilty by reading a portion of a letter that one of us had written. He told the judge that neither my father nor my mother had spoken any of the statments contained in the letter, in spite of the fact that a court employee had overheard these words a month earlier. This tactic served to drive the family further from believing the sincerity of our father's apology.

Speaking the truth in love is difficult.
We all had the opportunity to tell the judge how my father's actions had hurt our family. Only my ex-husband and my son chose to speak. My ex spoke eloquently about the losses that our daughter experienced as a result of my father's molesting her. At times, tears interfered with his ability to continue. I could see that both the judge and the bailiff felt the pain that we had all endured over the years.

Our courageous son talked about the court's duty to uphold the tenets of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. As a former Marine, he pointed out that my father, a veteran of the Coast Guard, had failed to uphold the same promise our son had made to the military to carry out the laws of our constitution.

Our son also revealed to the court that I had gone to my parents prior to my divorce 13 years ago to tell them that I suspected my daughter had been molested. At that time, my father said absolutely nothing about what he had done and allowed my ex-husband to take the blame for my father's molestation of my daughter. The look on the judge's face as these facts were revealed foretold what was ahead for my father.

There are consequences for our actions.
The judge was wonderful, explaining in great detail how he weighed the evidence to determine the sentence. In my father's favor, the judge considered his age, his claims regarding his remorse, and his recent psychotherapy.

In our daughter's favor, the judge considered the breech of trust created by her grandfather's behavior, her age at the time of the crime, and the fact that my father bypassed opportunities in the past to admit his guilt. Allowing another man to take the blame for his actions caused the judge to reconsider the validity of my father's apology.

My father's sentence turned out to be: 3 years in prison, 5 years of probation afterward, and 25 years as a registered sex offender. In addtion, he was ordered to pay for 5 years of psychotherapy for our daughter. At the conclusion of the hearing, the prosecutor recommended filing a civil suit to acquire additional funding to cover up to 20 years of psychotherapy for our daughter.

We hate the sin, but our hearts break for the sinner.
When the judge ordered my father into the custody of the county jailer, Dad stood to allow the deputy to handcuff him. My niece burst into tears, and the deputy led my father away. I felt such a profound sense of loss, I could not even cry. I felt stunned, trying to understand how it was possible that this man, whom everyone believed to be a warm, loveable teddy bear, was capable of committing such heinous crimes without a hint of genuine remorse.

We hate the sin, and we pray for the ability to love the sinner.
Throughout the hearing, my mother sat alone on the opposite side of the courtroom. No one was willing to talk to her or comfort her. While my father molested children all of his life, my mother had verbally and emotionally abused most of us. We were more terrified of her reaction in court than anything else, and we had prayed for God's protection during the proceedings.

Over the past year, my mother has stuck up for my father, lied for him, villified us, and ignored our needs for understanding and comfort. In her typical fashion when confronted with a crisis, she stuck out her chin and sat ram-rod straight in the courtroom. When the sentence was pronounced, she wiped away a few tears, but otherwise remained stiff-necked. Not one person felt God calling them to go to her to offer comfort.

Oddly, when we left the courtroom, I glanced in the direction where my mother had been sitting. I didn't see her there and was relieved that I would not have to confront her. It was only later that I learned she had never moved from her seat until after we all left. I believe that God made her invisible to me in that moment to protect me.

I hate my father's sin, as well as my mother's. It is actually easier for me to pray for my father than it is for my mother. My father was always easy to love; my mother was not. I recognize this and pray that God will give me the ability to love my mother and merely hate her sins.

Justice brings limited relief.
We all went to lunch together after the hearing to talk about the day's events. Everyone agreed that my ex-husband and our son had tipped the scales in our daughter's favor when it came time for sentencing.

We felt that the judge had been fair and particularly kind, especially when he spoke directly to our daughter. He had reassured her that she bore no guilt for my father's crimes, and that reporting the incidents had taken great courage. He commended our family for the love and support that we all share for our daughter.

But in the end, justice brings only limited relief. We all came away with a burden of grief that felt so heavy, we could barely function. I felt as if we had attended a funeral. Joe said he felt as if he hadn't slept for days. Our daughter told us that she was incredibly sad, because she hated to see her grandpa going off to jail. She hated the sin, but she still loved the sinner.

Thank you for your prayers.
I would like to thank all of you for your prayers yesterday. In spite of the turmoil, I felt strangely peaceful through it all.

Today's Challenge
In your journal, write down the name of your enemy who has hurt you. Write down what action he took to cause you pain. Under his name, write sinner. Under his action, write the word sin. If you are feeling hatred for this person, begin today to understand that Jesus calls us to hate the sin, not the sinner.