More on Forgiving and Judging

I tend to believe my thoughts. Something comes into my head and my first reaction is to believe it. Whether those thoughts come from my own mind or from something I've been told, my natural response is not to question, challenge or wonder about them, but just to accept them as true. 

But on those rare occasions when I do question or challenge those thoughts, I'm surprised nearly every time at how wrong they can be and how "off" my understandings and conclusions can be. And yet, even knowing that, I so quickly come to conclusions and judgments, then act and speak based on those faulty beliefs. 

But with awareness comes opportunities to do something different.  And in my efforts to change I've been studying "out of the best books," including "A Glossary of Gospel Terms." Below are some incredibly powerful passages from the Glossary:

Ignorance

"Only fools judge a matter before they hear it. Such souls warrant one's kindly efforts to persuade, not their censure or condemnation. All carry foolishness, learning year by year, struggling to overcome the many things they've neglected in their study, prayers, and contemplation. God does not grade on a curve. Therefore, when anyone begins to think he's outshone his fellow man, he should reflect again on Moses' reaction to seeing the Man of Holiness: Now for this cause I know man is nothing, which thing I never had supposed. No one has anything to boast of, even if he knows more than his fellow man. All know less than He who is more intelligent than them all. 

"Whenever I contemplate the gulf between He who is Holiness and myself, and the great charity required from Him to condescend for me, I can hardly bear the thought of feeling triumph because of the ignorance of my fellow saints. How unkind. How foolish. How uncharitable. More than that, how very unlike the Lord who we all claim to serve."

Forgiveness

"God is no respecter of persons. All are alike to Him. Qualifications are based upon the behavior and faith of the person, not on their status or past mistakes. Most people think their errors are too serious an impediment for them to find acceptance from God. He doesn't want to judge His children; He wants to heal them. He wants to give them what they lack, teach them to be better, and to bless them. He doesn't want to belittle, demean, or punish them. When they ask Him to forgive, He forgives. Even very serious sins. He does not want them burdened with sin. He wants them to leave it behind. His willingness to leave those errors in the past and remember them no more is greater than any can imagine. It is a guiding principle for the atonement."

"Christ taught His followers to forgive so that they may, in turn, merit forgiveness... Christ taught that there is atoning power in forgiving others. As a result of the things He suffered, He understood that men must forgive others in order to be able to obtain forgiveness. There are many things men do in which they lack the capacity to make amends. The price they must pay for their own transgressions is paid by forgiving all others of their offenses."

Judge/ment

"The judgment of God is provoked by those who are angry with their brother. One is not to be angry with his brother because that is the beginning of a whole sequence of events ... Anger leads to abuse. It leads to discourtesy, dishonesty, and cheating. It justifies miserable conduct because man thinks it right to give offense to another. It corrodes relationships and makes society sick. If this can be prevented in the heart, it can heal society. All must refrain from letting offenses turn into anger, dealing with them inside the heart, showing forgiveness and compassion."

"The purpose of the Sermon on the mount ... is not to equip man to judge others. It has no use for that. It is designed to change a person."

"You need to become something different, something higher, something more holy. That will require you to reexamine your heart, your motivations, and your thoughts. It will require you to take offenses and deliberately lay them down without retaliation. When you do, you become someone who can live in peace with others. Living in peace with others is the rudimentary beginning of Zion. It will not culminate in a City set on the hilltop until there is a population worthy of dwelling in the high places, in peace, without poor among them. Christ's sermon is not merely a description of what kind of person He is. It is a description of what kind of person will qualify to live with Him."

"We do 'judge' one another, because we must. But the judgment should err on the side of forgiving. It should err in favor of trusting motives to be pure and intent to be good. All should be generous with their gratitude, evaluations, and suppositions. When they know someone is misbehaving, they should make allowances for those shortcomings, forgive them before they ask, and impute no retribution because of the offensive conduct. This does not make us better than another, it makes us whole. It allows the Lord to forgive us for our own, much greater offenses against Him. For when we are generous, we merit His Divine generosity. It is how we are healed. It is the means for our own salvation. Instead of thinking ourselves better than an offender, we should look upon them with gratitude, for they provide the means to obtain salvation - provided we give them forgiveness from all their offenses. This is why we should rejoice and be exceedingly glad. They enable us to obtain salvation by despitefully using us, as long as we measure them by the same standard that allows God to forgive us. What perfect symmetry: You measure to others using an instrument that will be used by God to measure back to you. So your ready forgiveness is how God will treat you. All those grudges can be replaced with petitions to God to forgive those who abused you. As you lay aside all those sins against you, committed by others, it will purge you from all your own sins. Straight and narrow indeed. But oddly appropriate and altogether within your control."

Making Up is Hard to Do

 Forgiving is easy until it's not. And when it's not, it often seems impossible. For me, why would I forgive someone who is clearly (to me) in the wrong and doesn't feel or show any remorse for what they've done? Why should I forgive someone who continues to demonstrate that same offensive and hurtful behavior over and over? 

I've been reading a book titled "A Return to Love" and was struck by several things in a section on Forgiveness. Here's a sampling:

"If I choose to bless another person, I will always end up feeling more blessed. If I project guilt onto another person, I will always end up feeling more guilty."

"Our perceptions of other people often become a battleground between the ego's desire to judge and the Holy Spirit's desire to accept people as they are. The ego is the great fault-finder. It seeks out the faults in ourselves and others. The Holy Spirit ... sees all of us as we really are... The places in our personality where we tend to deviate from love are not our faults, but our wounds. God doesn't want to punish us, but to heal us. and that is how He wishes us to view the wounds in other people."

"Forgiveness is 'selective remembering' - a conscious decision to focus on love and let the rest go. But the ego is relentless - it is 'capable of suspiciousness at best and viciousness at worst.' It presents the most subtle and insidious arguments for casting other people out of our hearts."

"In accepting the Atonement, we are asking to see as God sees, think as God thinks, love as God loves."

"It's easy to forgive people who have never done anything to make us angry. People who do make us angry, however, are our most important teachers. They indicate the limits to our capacity for forgiveness. 'Holding grievances is an attack on God's plan for salvation.' The decision to let go our grievances against other people is the decision to see ourselves as we truly are." 

'It can be very hard to let go of your perception of someone's guilt when you know that by every standard of ethics, morality, or integrity, you're right to find fault with them." 

But the question is, "Do you prefer that you be right or happy?" "If you're judging a brother, you're wrong even if you're right. There have been times when I have had a very hard time giving up my judgment of someone, mentally protesting, 'But I'm right.' I felt as though giving up my judgment amounted to condoning their behavior. I felt, 'Well, somebody's got to uphold principle in this world. If we just forgive things all the time, then all standards of excellence will disintegrate!'"

"But God doesn't need us to police the universe. Shaking our finger at someone doesn't help them change. If anything, our perception of someone's guilt only keeps them stuck in it. When we are shaking a finger at someone, figuratively or literally, we are not more apt to correct their wrongful behavior. Treating someone with compassion and forgiveness is much more likely to elicit a healed response. People are less likely to be defensive, and more likely to be open to correction Most of us are aware on some level when we're off. We'd be doing things differently if we knew how. We don't need attack at this point; we need help. Forgiveness forges a new context, one in which someone can more easily change."

"Forgiveness is the choice to see people as they are now. When we are angry at people, we are angry because of something they said or did before this moment. But what people said or did is not who they are. Relationships are reborn as we let go perceptions of our brother's past. 'By bringing the past into the present, we create a future just like the past.' By letting the past go, we make room for miracles."

"An attack on a brother is a reminder of his guilty past. In choosing to affirm a brother's guilt, we are choosing to experience more of it. The future is programmed in the present. To let the past go is to remember that in the present, my brother is innocent. It is an act of gracious generosity to accept a person based on what we know to be the truth about them, regardless of whether or not they are in touch with that truth themselves.... When people behave unlovingly, they have forgotten who they are."