We have just two days remaining in this series, Removing the Roadblocks to Forgiveness. We have discovered that asking God to forgive us and apologizing to the people we have hurt helps us to understand what we want our enemies to do. Before we can forgive them, we must figure out how to achieve forgiveness from the people we have wronged.
What is restitution?
The dictionary defines restitution as 1) the act of restoring to the rightful owner soemthing that has been taken away, lost, or surrendered; and 2) the act of making good or compensating for loss, damage, or injury.
The Bible is very clear about how restitution comes into play during the process of forgiving. The Lord said to Moses, "Say to the Israelites: 'When a man or woman wrongs another in any way and so is unfaithful to the Lord, that person is guilty and must confess the sin he has committed. He must make full restitution for his wrong, add one fifth to it and give it all to the person he has wronged.'" (Number 5:5-7 NIV)
This decree was given to ancient Israel to ensure that relationships were restored between the offender and God, as well as between the guilty party and the person he wronged. I really like the fact that this passage shows us that when we hurt someone else, we become unfaithful to God. As our love for God grows, we should become more and more hesitant to hurt others.
God's law remains in effect today. And when it comes to forgiveness, restitution is still an important act. Whenever we offer to repay what we have stolen or spoiled, we open the door to the other person's heart. With an open heart, the person we have wronged becomes more capable of offering us the type of lasting forgiveness that we desire.
How can we offer restitution?
When we apologize to someone, we should freely offer restitution to them so that they know we are sincere. For example, if I borrow my friend's car and crumple the fender while backing into a parking space, I should pay to repair the car. I should add one-fifth to the damages by also providing her with a rental car during the repair period, having her car detailed afterward, or giving her an additional gift of my choosing.
Imagine in this scenario if I merely handed my friend the car keys, said "I'm sorry," and walked away without offering anything else. Our relationship would probably be over. She might burn with anger every time she looked at the dent in her fender. My lack of restitution could actually lead to her sin of repressed anger, revenge, or hatred.
The more we give and the longer we continue giving to someone we have wronged, the more credible we become in the eyes of the person who is trying to forgive us. Remember, restitution is important, because it serves as a salve to the emotional wounds that must be healed before complete forgiveness can be offered.
Restitution is what we are longing for from our enemies.
For those of us who have suffered traumatic events or abuse, forgiveness means that someone makes our enemy repay what he stole from us. Childhood sexual abuse is one of the most costly crimes imaginable, because it robs a child of her trust in humankind, her self-confidence, and her courage. It leaves her in a state of depression that may linger for the rest of her life. What price can we put on such losses?
The court system agrees with psychotherapists that it will generally take a survivor of childhood sexual abuse approximately 7 to 15 years of regular treatment sessions to resume living as the rest of the world does. The out-of-pocket costs for such treatment averages $75 per hour. If a survivor of abuse attends treatment every other week, the cost of treatment ranges from $13,650 to $29,250.
Add to these costs the heavy penalty that the survivor pays throughout her life as she struggles to interact with others. Her fears, low self-esteem, guilt, shame, and depression serve to hamper many of her efforts. She may never achieve all that she had hoped for prior to the abuse. There is no amount of money that can ever restore such profound losses.
With profound loss comes extreme anger and hatred. We have learned how counter-productive these feelings are, but we understand why they are there.
Can you see why the offender offering restitution is so critical? As he pays to restore what was lost, the victim's feelings of anger and hatred subside. Eventually, she will get to a point of feeling that he has done enough. Then, she will be ready to say those all important words, "I forgive you."
Do whatever it takes to restore relationships.
We can choose to do whatever it takes to restore harmony between ourselves and the people we have hurt. In doing so, we help them to forgive us. This is desirable for both of us, because if they can't forgive us, God won't forgive them for their wrongs. We may play a huge part in keeping someone at a distance from God if we don't apologize and make things right. Remember, our sin hurts others, but it also hurts everyone's relationship with God.
Now, we have a complete picture of what forgiveness looks like. We identify God's character, figure out how we have failed, admit our problems to God, ask for his forgiveness, accept his grace, change our ways, ask others to forgive us, and then offer restitution. As you can see, forgiveness is a long process. Tomorrow, we will apply this process to our enemies as we conclude our series, Removing the Roadblocks to Forgiveness.
Today's Challenge
In your journal, make a list of the people you have hurt over the years. Begin today to offer apologies and restitution to everyone on your list. While you wait for your enemy to find a way to extend an apology to you, your actions will help you and many others to become restored to God and one another.
Showing posts with label restitution. Show all posts
Showing posts with label restitution. Show all posts
Thursday, March 24, 2011
Wednesday, March 23, 2011
Ask Others to Forgive You
My series, Removing the Roadblocks to Forgiveness, offers survivors of abuse and trauma an opportunity to find healing through forgiving others. For the past week, we have been discovering that the best way to learn how to forgive is to look at our own faults and our need for forgiveness. So, today we consider asking someone to forgive us.
How hard can it be to say I'm sorry?
If we have been victims of long-term abuse, it can be almost impossible to admit to another human being that we have made a mistake. In an abusive relationship, such admissions open us up to further abuse.
So, we learn self-preservation by never admitting our wrongs. And we certainly never, ever tell our abuser that we're sorry...unless he's twisting our arm and threatening worse if we don't say those words that we really don't mean.
And after our abusers extract an apology from us, they feel empowered once again. Within days, hours, or minutes, they are back at us with more of the same torture we endured earlier. It's no wonder that we swallow hard and think twice before offering anyone an apology.
We need to learn that it's okay to apologize to some people.
The next step on the road to forgiving others is to ask someone to forgive us. I believe this is the hardest step of all, because it's the riskiest for survivors of abuse.
Let's begin with one important point: the first person to forgive face-to-face should not be the enemy who abused or traumatized us. Like any new learning, that kind of forgiveness begins with baby steps.
So we need to think about someone we have wronged, and we need to consider how we are going to apologize and ask for forgiveness. By beginning with someone safe, we can experience what it feels like to admit our mistake, apologize, and ask for forgiveness. From a normal person, we can expect understanding, acceptance, and forgiveness.
My forgiveness journey began with Joe.
When I married Joe, I don't think I had ever sincerely apologized to anyone in my life. Abuse had ground out any thought of admitting my faults to anyone. So you can imagine my surprise when Joe made mistakes, came to me to admit them, and asked me to forgive him. In the beginning, it was extremely difficult for me to extend forgiveness to him, in spite of the fact that he was apologizing without any pressure from me.
What was wrong with me? Why couldn't I just say I forgave Joe? I realized that in an abusive relationship, the minute an abuser offers us an apology, the cycle of abuse begins again. Like Pavlov's dogs, I had been trained to expect abuse if I ever traveled down the road of forgiveness. I couldn't offer it to anyone, and I couldn't ask for it.
Learn to see forgiveness through your enemy's eyes.
We can see by my experience why it may be so difficult for our enemies to ask us for our forgiveness. Perhaps they were abused as children and learned that admitting mistakes brought on more abuse. Maybe no one ever modeled forgiveness for them.
Model forgiveness for your enemy.
Instead of waiting for our enemies to apologize to us, we can make the best move by extending apologies to others. If our perpetrator is within view of us, he may begin to witness forgiveness at work in our lives when we:
1) admit our mistakes to others;
2) apologize;
3) ask for forgiveness; and
4) accept the grace of someone else's forgiveness.
Don't confuse forgiveness with reconciliation.
In most instances, this four-step process will lead to something that everyone confuses with forgiveness: reconciliation. That means we patch up our differences with someone, and we renew the relationship that was upset by whatever we did wrong.
Reconciliation is the number one reason, in my opinion, that survivors of abuse and trauma cannot forgive. They wrongly believe that forgiving means reconciling. If you don't get anything else out of this series, please read the next sentence carefully. Forgiving does not always entail reconciling. We'll learn more about reconciliation on Friday.
Asking for forgiveness helps us to grow.
Over the years, I have learned that forgiving Joe does not result in his abusing me. In fact, it draws us closer together. Because through our mistakes and apologies, we have learned how to conduct ourselves better as marriage partners. Forgiveness has helped us to grow.
Watching how Joe offered forgiveness taught me how to do it, too. It was not easy to learn that I could admit my mistakes, but Joe was patient with me and readily offered grace when I needed it. Without the baby steps of practicing forgiveness with Joe, I could never have reached the point where I am today with others who have hurt me more seriously.
So, if we recognize that we have broken our relationship with God by sinning, we can learn to admit our mistakes to God and to others. When we are living in safe relationships, we may learn new ways to apologize and ask others to forgive us. Tomorrow, we'll learn the importance of offering restitution to those whom we have hurt.
Today's Challenge
Are you a survivor like me who is terrified of extending forgiveness when someone apologizes to you? Are you fearful that admitting your faults and asking for forgiveness will bring about more abuse? If you're in an abusive situation, get to a safe place. Then, start practicing the habits of extending forgiveness and asking for it with people who are capable of doing the same.
How hard can it be to say I'm sorry?
If we have been victims of long-term abuse, it can be almost impossible to admit to another human being that we have made a mistake. In an abusive relationship, such admissions open us up to further abuse.
So, we learn self-preservation by never admitting our wrongs. And we certainly never, ever tell our abuser that we're sorry...unless he's twisting our arm and threatening worse if we don't say those words that we really don't mean.
And after our abusers extract an apology from us, they feel empowered once again. Within days, hours, or minutes, they are back at us with more of the same torture we endured earlier. It's no wonder that we swallow hard and think twice before offering anyone an apology.
We need to learn that it's okay to apologize to some people.
The next step on the road to forgiving others is to ask someone to forgive us. I believe this is the hardest step of all, because it's the riskiest for survivors of abuse.
Let's begin with one important point: the first person to forgive face-to-face should not be the enemy who abused or traumatized us. Like any new learning, that kind of forgiveness begins with baby steps.
So we need to think about someone we have wronged, and we need to consider how we are going to apologize and ask for forgiveness. By beginning with someone safe, we can experience what it feels like to admit our mistake, apologize, and ask for forgiveness. From a normal person, we can expect understanding, acceptance, and forgiveness.
My forgiveness journey began with Joe.
When I married Joe, I don't think I had ever sincerely apologized to anyone in my life. Abuse had ground out any thought of admitting my faults to anyone. So you can imagine my surprise when Joe made mistakes, came to me to admit them, and asked me to forgive him. In the beginning, it was extremely difficult for me to extend forgiveness to him, in spite of the fact that he was apologizing without any pressure from me.
What was wrong with me? Why couldn't I just say I forgave Joe? I realized that in an abusive relationship, the minute an abuser offers us an apology, the cycle of abuse begins again. Like Pavlov's dogs, I had been trained to expect abuse if I ever traveled down the road of forgiveness. I couldn't offer it to anyone, and I couldn't ask for it.
Learn to see forgiveness through your enemy's eyes.
We can see by my experience why it may be so difficult for our enemies to ask us for our forgiveness. Perhaps they were abused as children and learned that admitting mistakes brought on more abuse. Maybe no one ever modeled forgiveness for them.
Model forgiveness for your enemy.
Instead of waiting for our enemies to apologize to us, we can make the best move by extending apologies to others. If our perpetrator is within view of us, he may begin to witness forgiveness at work in our lives when we:
1) admit our mistakes to others;
2) apologize;
3) ask for forgiveness; and
4) accept the grace of someone else's forgiveness.
Don't confuse forgiveness with reconciliation.
In most instances, this four-step process will lead to something that everyone confuses with forgiveness: reconciliation. That means we patch up our differences with someone, and we renew the relationship that was upset by whatever we did wrong.
Reconciliation is the number one reason, in my opinion, that survivors of abuse and trauma cannot forgive. They wrongly believe that forgiving means reconciling. If you don't get anything else out of this series, please read the next sentence carefully. Forgiving does not always entail reconciling. We'll learn more about reconciliation on Friday.
Asking for forgiveness helps us to grow.
Over the years, I have learned that forgiving Joe does not result in his abusing me. In fact, it draws us closer together. Because through our mistakes and apologies, we have learned how to conduct ourselves better as marriage partners. Forgiveness has helped us to grow.
Watching how Joe offered forgiveness taught me how to do it, too. It was not easy to learn that I could admit my mistakes, but Joe was patient with me and readily offered grace when I needed it. Without the baby steps of practicing forgiveness with Joe, I could never have reached the point where I am today with others who have hurt me more seriously.
So, if we recognize that we have broken our relationship with God by sinning, we can learn to admit our mistakes to God and to others. When we are living in safe relationships, we may learn new ways to apologize and ask others to forgive us. Tomorrow, we'll learn the importance of offering restitution to those whom we have hurt.
Today's Challenge
Are you a survivor like me who is terrified of extending forgiveness when someone apologizes to you? Are you fearful that admitting your faults and asking for forgiveness will bring about more abuse? If you're in an abusive situation, get to a safe place. Then, start practicing the habits of extending forgiveness and asking for it with people who are capable of doing the same.
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