That's Not Fair - They Did Me Dirty
THAT'S NOT FAIR
Forgiveness is what people expect from me, but they did me dirty and they did it on purpose.
They lied about me.
They embarrassed me.
They broke trust.
They said something they knew would hurt.
That's not fair.
Last week, we looked at one of Jesus' stories where the unfair part was that somebody got something they did not earn.
Grace.
This week, the problem is different.
Sometimes the thing that feels unfair is not that somebody got more than they deserved.
Sometimes somebody really did hurt you.
Sometimes they really do owe you.
And Jesus still talks about forgiveness.
How many times do I have to do this?
Peter comes to Jesus in Matthew 18 and asks:
I love that question because I think Peter is really asking:
How many chances?
How many apologies?
How many times can somebody do the same thing before I finally get to say:
Nope.
That's it.
You're out.
Seven probably sounded pretty generous.
Then Jesus says:
Jesus is not giving Peter a bigger number to keep track of.
Then Jesus tells him a story.
The debt was real.
A servant owes a king more money than he could ever realistically repay.
The servant begs for patience.
Instead of simply giving him more time, the king does something unbelievable.
Gone.
The servant walks out owing nothing.
Then that same servant finds another man who owes him a much smaller amount.
Now he wants his money.
The second man begs for patience too.
Almost the exact same words.
But the servant refuses.
He has him thrown into prison.
When the king hears what happened, he is furious.
The man wanted mercy for himself and justice for everybody else.
There is one detail in the story I think we skip too quickly.
He did.
The debt was real.
That matters.
Because sometimes when Christians talk about forgiveness, we make it sound like the goal is convincing people that what happened was not really a big deal.
Just let it go.
Move on.
Stop being bitter.
Except sometimes it was a big deal.
Sometimes they really did you dirty.
Sometimes they knew exactly what they were doing.
Sometimes they owe you an apology.
Sometimes they owe you more than an apology.
If there were no debt, there would be nothing to release.
Forgiveness is not the same thing as trust.
This is probably one of the places forgiveness gets hardest for me.
I do not usually struggle because I want revenge.
That is not really where my mind goes.
I struggle when I think the person is probably going to do the same thing again.
I am fiercely loyal.
So when trust gets broken, my mind immediately goes to the bridge.
Can we rebuild this?
Is there actually a way back from here?
And the hard part is that trust is a bridge.
You can start rebuilding from your side.
You can forgive.
You can change how you carry the hurt.
You can stop trying to collect the debt.
The other person has to participate if the relationship is going to be restored.
That is why forgiveness and restoration cannot mean exactly the same thing.
Forgiveness is something I can choose even if the other person never apologizes.
Restoration requires more.
Trust requires more.
Forgiveness is the default.
You can forgive somebody and still not trust them yet.
You can forgive somebody and set a boundary.
You can forgive somebody and tell a parent, pastor, counselor, teacher, or another trusted adult what happened.
You can forgive somebody and still admit that the relationship may never look exactly like it did before.
Forgiveness does not mean handing somebody the keys to hurt you again.
It means I am not going to spend the rest of my life trying to collect the debt.
I learned that the wrong way.
When my parents got divorced, I was angry.
Really angry.
And teenage me came up with what I thought was a pretty good plan.
I was going to make their lives miserable.
Not because I hated them.
Honestly, I think part of me believed I could fix everything.
If I could show them how miserable this was...
If I could make life after the divorce difficult enough...
Maybe they would realize how much better things were before.
Maybe they would come to their senses.
I thought I was punishing them.
What I was really doing was taking something that had already hurt me and using that hurt to hurt them.
Then everybody was hurting more.
That is what a grudge is really good at.
Somebody hurts me.
So I hurt them back.
They react to me.
I react to them.
Pretty soon one hurt has created five new ones.
Somebody eventually has to decide:
It does not erase what happened.
It does not make the first hurt okay.
It means:
Sometimes forgiveness keeps the future open.
Years ago, I was working through the ordination process.
It was a hard season.
I was finishing coursework and trying to figure out how honest I was supposed to be with the committee about the things I was struggling with.
I was honest.
Probably too honest.
One of the things I talked about was how much time I was spending gaming.
At the time, I was also streaming online, so this was not exactly a secret.
There were videos of me gaming on the internet.
People could see it.
Then I got an email telling me I was not going to receive my minister's license that year.
I was heartbroken.
I was angry.
I felt judged.
I felt like people had taken one struggle and made a decision about me based on it.
At the time, it felt incredibly unfair.
But eventually I had to recognize something.
The people making that decision were people too.
They could misunderstand me.
They could make a decision I disagreed with.
They could hurt me.
And if I believed God had really called me, then I had a choice.
I could walk away angry.
Or I could forgive them and keep going.
Years later, I sat across the table from the man who had sent me that email.
By then, he had been part of ordaining me.
He told me how important that moment was to him because it was one of the last things he got to do in his role as assistant superintendent.
That conversation has stuck with me.
Because none of those moments happen if I refuse to forgive the people who hurt me.
They do not happen if I decide one painful decision gets to be the end of the story.
Since then, I have had the privilege of baptizing nearly 100 students.
I cannot imagine what my life would look like, or what the Kingdom would look like through the small part God has allowed me to play, if I had decided that one moment of perceived injustice was enough to make me walk away.
Sometimes it keeps the future open.
If you walk away when it hurts the most, you may never get to see what God might have done on the other side of forgiveness.
We turn people into what they did.
When somebody hurts us, especially when they do it on purpose, it becomes really easy to turn what they did into who they are.
He is not a person who lied.
He is a liar.
She is not a person who hurt me.
She is fake.
They are selfish.
That is just who they are.
And once I put somebody in a category, I do not have to see a complicated person anymore.
I only have to see the worst thing they did to me.
I have moments I am embarrassed by.
I have said things I wish I could unsay.
I have hurt people I love.
And I am incredibly grateful that the people who love me have not decided my worst moment is the only version of me I am ever allowed to become.
I have needed forgiveness too.
"We love you, and there's nothing you can do about it."
In our ministry, we tell students this all the time.
and there's nothing you can do about it.
That does not mean there are no consequences.
It does not mean people cannot break trust.
It does not mean every relationship stays exactly the same.
It means your worst moment does not get the final word on whether you are loved.
I think that is one of the reasons I love that phrase so much.
The amount of hurt we can cause each other does not even come close to exhausting the love that comes from God through us toward one another.
That kind of love leaves room for people to repent.
To change.
To grow.
To become more than the version of themselves that hurt somebody.
That does not mean I change them.
I cannot.
God does the changing.
Forgiveness just stops insisting that the worst thing somebody did to me has to permanently define who they are.
I canceled the debt and kept the receipt.
There have been times when I told somebody I forgave them.
We talked.
I said I was over it.
We moved on.
Except I did not really move on.
Months later, I could pull the whole memory back out.
Replay it.
Remember exactly what they said.
Remember who was there.
Remember how it felt.
Something new would happen and suddenly I would reach backward.
See?
This is just like what you did before.
We do that.
"I forgive you."
But we keep the evidence.
Just in case.
Just in case we need to win the next argument.
Just in case we need to prove why we are still justified in being angry.
Just in case we need to remind ourselves what they owe.
We say the debt is gone while keeping the paperwork.
Why does Jesus expect this?
This is where Jesus' story becomes more than:
Be nice.
Be forgiving.
Be the bigger person.
We do not forgive because forgiveness is polite.
We do not forgive because it makes us look spiritual.
We do not even forgive mainly because forgiveness might make us healthier, even though sometimes it does.
That servant had received mercy he could never earn.
Then he walked outside and demanded payment from somebody else.
That is the part Jesus wants us to see.
Christian forgiveness does not begin by pretending they did not hurt me.
It begins by remembering what God has forgiven in me.
I have stood before God with a debt I could never repay.
Jesus did not tell me:
Try harder.
Do better.
Maybe eventually we can call it even.
He gave Himself for me.
Grace.
Mercy.
Forgiveness.
And now Jesus asks me what I am going to do with the debts other people owe me.
Mercy for me, justice for them.
That is really what went wrong with the servant.
He wanted mercy for himself.
He wanted justice for everybody else.
And if I am not careful, I want the same thing.
God, forgive me.
Be patient with me.
Do not define me by my worst moment.
Give me another chance.
Then somebody hurts me and suddenly I am keeping score.
Jesus says that does not work.
We do not forgive people so we can earn God's forgiveness.
We could never earn it.
We forgive because God's forgiveness is supposed to change us.
It changes the way we see people.
It changes how we carry hurt.
It changes what we do with the debt.
If I keep saying:
This is the one thing I will never release.
Then I am holding onto something God is trying to loosen in me.
I am basically saying:
But I still want control over what they did.
At some point Jesus asks me to open my hand.
What do you do when they really did you dirty?
Maybe there is somebody you immediately thought of while reading this.
You remember exactly what they did.
You remember when they did it.
Maybe you still have the screenshots.
Maybe they never apologized.
Maybe they did apologize and you still do not trust them.
Maybe the bridge is broken and you are the only one standing there trying to rebuild it.
Maybe they really do owe you.
Jesus is not asking you to pretend they do not.
I am not asking you to trust them again today.
I am not asking you to hand them access to your life again.
I am not asking you to act like it did not hurt.
The question is harder than that.
Are you going to keep trying to collect?
Are you going to keep the receipt ready?
Are you going to allow what they did to decide what you do next?
Or are you going to let the mercy you have received from God begin working its way through this too?
Forgiveness breaks the cycle.
Forgiveness keeps the future open.
And forgiveness leaves your side of the bridge ready, even when you cannot build the other side for them.
We do not forgive because they suddenly deserve it.
We forgive because the King canceled our debt.
Because people who have received mercy should become people who give mercy.
Because grace should keep changing us long after we first receive it.
Forgiveness is the default.
Maybe your first step is not talking to that person.
Maybe your first step is talking to Jesus.
Maybe that is because grace has never really been fair.
And thankfully, neither is the mercy God has given me.