It was the first time since my release that I had been face to face with one of my captors and my blood seemed to freeze.
“You mentioned Ravensbruck in your talk, ” he was saying. “I was a guard therre. But since that time, ” he went on, “I have become a Christian. I know that God has forgiven me for the cruel things I did there, but I would like to hear it from your lips as well. Fraulein-” again the hand came out-“will you forgive me?”
And I stood there-and could not. Betsie had died in that place- could he erase her slow terrible death simply for the asking?
It could not have been many seconds that he stood there, hand held out, but to me it seemed hours as I wrestled with the most difficult thing I had ever had to do.
For I had to do it-I knew that. The message that God forgives has has a prior condition: that we forgive those who have injured us. “If you do not forgive men their trespasses,” Jesus says, “neither will your Father in Heaven forgive your trespasses.”
Quoted in this morning’s sermon by yours truly. Astonishing stuff. Read it all.
Did the RAvensbruck guard apologise? He asked for forgiveness, but that is not quite the same as remorse. I know that Jesus forgave from the cross, and forgave his heedless tormentors. I know that he not only preached but also lived forgiveness. Still, I have wondered from time to time, whether you can forgive someone who does not repent of the wrong that is done. Is forgiveness a two-way thing?
How does either of us know that the guard didn’t repent? God knows, and will judge that guard, and me, and you, either in our own righteousness, in which case we are doomed to hell, or in Jesus Christ’s righteousness, in which case there can now be no condemnation. Earthly consequences are another thing, and we see even King David suffered those and his family with him for the rest of his life. If the guard was free to attend Ten Boom’s talk, he either had served those or was not found guilty by a human court. Perhaps he was saved by turning to Jesus during her talk, having heard the Gospel preached truly and daring to trust in the only hope we sinners have. If you read the rest of the short piece, whether the guard was repentant and saved or not, Corrie Ten Boom was released from the (understandable) hate and unforgiveness she had felt toward this man for the 2 years since the war had ended. Jesus can only take from us those burdens we let go of and release to Him, as she did with the grace for which she prayed to Jesus and received. None of us can dare to be like the unforgiving servant, and in the eyes of God, which are too pure to look upon sin, our “little” sins unrepented or our large grievances not released to God in trust that He will heal all wounds left by those who tresspass against us, will separate us from Him forever. And our “little” sins are just as condemning in God’s sight as the guard’s “big” sins. Even St. Paul called himself “chief of sinners”. Kyrie eleison, Christe eleison!
I believe you already know the answer to that question.
It would be good to read the whole story. As I remember it, Miss ten Boom was telling a story about obedience and forgiveness. It made quite an impression on me in high school the first time I read about her encounter with this guard. Thank you for the reminder.
This is an awesome story. Thank you for bringing it to our attention.
One of the most striking forgiveness stories of the past century.
The guard’s words (“I know that God has forgiven me for the cruel things I did there, but I would like to hear it from your lips as well”) didn’t make it particularly easy, either.
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
“I have wondered…whether you can forgive someone who does not repent of the wrong that is done”
That is the commonest (and in a sense, the paradigm) case in which Jesus commands us to forgive: when the wrongdoer has not repented.
Be sure to read the rest of the story to which Kendall links!
I did of course read the whole story. But here is another one which I recall from memory, having read it (if I recall correctly) in the Christian Century. A woman whose daughter had been murdered received a letter from her daughter’s murderer, serving life without parole in a penitentiary. He said that he had become a Christian, and asked her forgiveness. The woman was conflicted about what to do and consulted her (Lutheran) pastor. He read the letter, thought it lacked sincerity and advised her not to reply. The pastor’s answer troubled me. But what should she have done? I do not doubt Jesus’s command to forgive. We are to do as he tells us. But so much Christian preaching and writing on forgiveness makes it sound like it is a matter of effort and in a situation like the above adds to the distress of the person if they cannot find it in their heart to forgive. One merit of Corrie ten Boom’s story is that she makes it clear that it was an act of Christ’s grace which enabled her to forgive. After many years of ministry I have come to understand that sometimes forgiveness is a process, not an act, something that we have to grow into. It is not a condition of forgiveness if the other party is sorry – but it helps.
Did Jesus wait for those who crucified him to repent before he forgave them?
Too many people believe that forgiveness is a one time event. They also believe that for one person to forgive another, the offender must repent. While I would agree that the offender must repent to receive the forgiveness, we should forgive as soon as we realize we are offended against.
Forgiveness is not saying: “It does not matter” or “It’s OK.” The truth is that it does matter and it is not OK.
Forgiveness recognizes the wrong and pain and hurth that you sufferred and turns those over to God. It is an act of the will and requires constant attention. Sometimes, it is an act against our own wills or desires and is an act of obedience to God’s will. We may not want to forgive another, but we have to want to want to forgive. We have to say to God: “Lord, I am very hurt and angry now. Part of me wants to have these feelings and nurse them for it puts me in a position of power over my offender. But you ask me to forgive. I do not want to, but I want to be obedient to you. Please take my pain and hanger and help me to see my offender as you see him – to love him as you love him and to forgive him as you forgive him. In the Name of our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.”
YBIC,
Phil Snyder
Corrie Ten Boom’s story has always stayed in my mind since I first heard it.
In contrast is the story recounted in Wiesenthal’s “The Sunflower” where the person asked to forgive walked away and later wondered if he had done the right thing. Here is an article in First Things that references that story.
There is a fair portion of balderdash here, and troublesome it is. I would ask: How does he know God has forgiven him, for if God forgives him for such crimes,without the hardest and severest penance, there there will be no one punished on Judgement Day. Does it make a difference that he became aware of his crime, that he repented and did penance? I certainly think so, for it makes a difference in what you are forgiving him for. One may forgive him for being a sinner, for that is our common lot, and we must grant this universal to others if we wish to receive it ourselves. But to forgive him for his specific crimes is a different matter. If he has not repented and begun his penance, who are you to grant forgiveness, for your forgiveness for his specific crime is part of his repentence, part of his penance, is it not? And if he has not these, then your forgiveness is meaningless. It makes YOU feel good – this is mere vanity – but does nothing to or for him. For you do not forgive others for simply for your own sake, but for the good it does the recipient – if he is capable of receiving it. Ten Boom should have inquired closely of him whether he had felt genuine guilt for his actions, whether he had paid spiritually for them. Merely saying that he is a christian and God had forgiven him can easily be bogus money; how may have we heard say something like this because it was an outward and visible con for in inward and invisible fraudulence. If you forgive those who have not earned forgiveness, then you have become complicit in their crimes. This is why you do not forgive those about whom you know nothing. Christ may forgive such a one out of hand because noe can can deceive Him. We don’t have this advantage.
We are told to forgive our brother, and this either means we are to forgive those with whom we have sufficient relationship to know something, or we are told to forgive all mankind, not for the specifics of their crimes, but for their simply being men. If you forgive all men for all their specific crimes, just as a general principle, then all justice becomes meaningless and therefore impossible. Are we to suppose that Christ meant that we should overlook being just – which requires knowledge and judgment – for the sake of universal forgiveness? Forgiveness is part of The Law, but it is surely not the only part. “It is not a condition of forgiveness that the other party is sorry…” Oh yes it is a condition; mercy is subsequent to justice, not its precusor or its cause. I am well aware that we cannot know another’s mind as God knows it, but we still must try, or justice is merely another vanity. Shall I love my neighbor as myself? And does that mean that I can never exercise justice in my relationship with him because love forbids it? Or is such a reading a sentimentalization of “love?”
Larry
Ah, the outrage of grace…
In the present TEC context, there is a lot of pain and anger caused by offenses, both perceived and real, in the Body of Christ. A good practical book that discusses our responses to offenses and how to deal with them “the Jesus way” is “Making It Right When You Feel Wronged: Getting Past Unresolved Hurts” by Jeff Wickwire. He addresses ways to face offenses by others in the Body of Christ. For me, forgiving those in the Body of Christ who’ve hurt me is often harder than forgiving those outside. Somehow, the disappointment and hurt seems greater. And it is a onging process and struggle. I’ve had to pray over and over, “Lord, that person is your servant, not mine. Vengeance is yours, not mine, help me to forgive, help me not to lash back at them.” Lord have mercy on us.
Larry,
I hope that you don’t mean the Lord’s prayer when you say it.
Think of forgiveness as writing a check to another person. When you forgive, you write the check. You record the check in your register. You hand the offender the check, but he doesn’t cash it. Have you given the money (the forgiveness) to the offender?
Repentence can be seen in this anology as cashing the check. Having a check in my pocket does me little good unless I cash it. As a person who has received much forgivness, I know that I must repent for the forgiveness to have any impact on me.
God does not promise that the offender will accept our gift, nor does he promise that forgivenes will be easy. God promises us to cover the cost of the checks we write.
YBIC,
Phil Snyder
I thank Cathy Lou for her reference to that wonderfully thought-provoking article in First Things by Rabbi Meir Y. Soloveichik exploring differences in Jewish and Christians conceptions of forgiveness. It reminded me of another article from a Jewish perspective, in Commentary, where the writer warned that the Jewish stress of remembering was in direct contradiction to the Christian stress on forgiving: and that without remembering, there would be little justice, and we would trivilialise the suffering of the victims. Larry Morse makes the point nicely in his own post (and BTW Larry I like your riff on the old Penny Catechism, (‘outward and visible con’). Do I think we should forgive? Yes, but it is artificial to separate this from questions of whether the person repents. We may indeed (as Phil would say) give a blank cheque but if that cheque is not accepted, in what sense has anything been given? Of course, we may and probably ought to forgive for the good of our own souls, but then we need to accept that this involves time, some degree of wrestling and perhaps never quite fully getting there. We also need to accept that in some situations of extreme suffering (see the murder example I gave, above) to move too quickly to forgiveness risks trivialising the offence. Finally, while we can forgive on our own behalf, we need to be cautious about forgiving on behalf of others. Sometimes the voice of the victims needs to be heard first. Archbishop Tutu led from the front when it came to forgiveness, but he also headed up a Truth and Reconciliation Commission: there could be no reconciliation, without the truth having been spoken and the hurt acknowledged.
I too thank Kendall for posting this marvelous testimony that illustrates so well and so dramatically how difficult forgiveness can be, and how liberating. It powerfully shows how when we choose to forgive, as an act of obedience, this can lead to a profound change of heart as well, after we let go of the need to see the one who has done the wrong pay for it. I’ve also used this same wonderful story more than once when preaching about forgiveness.
But I agree with others above that the inner transformation doesn’t always happen this miraculously and quickly. That was a great gift of grace, and perhaps can be attributed, at least in part, to Corrie ten Boom’s spiritual maturity and emotional health. She was indeed a great saint.
After over 20 years of pastoral experience, and after some forty years or so of trying to live as a follower of Christ myself, I’ve seen over and over that the failure to forgive is one of the biggest obstacles to spiritual growth or emotional healthiness. But I’ve also seen time and again (especially in my own life) that when it comes to the deepest hurts in life and the times we’ve been most grievously sinned against, forgiveness almost always works itself out in stages. We forgive the other person as fully as we can at the time, and then later discover that the old memory or wound surfaces again unexpectedly, and we have to choose again to forgive, at a deeper level. And then, the cycle repeats itself at unpredictable times, when new experiences trigger the old memories.
There is an important psychological or spiritual reality here that must not be overlooked, i.e., that hurts or wrongs that aren’t acknowledged can’t be truly forgiven. Or more precisely, when the associated FEELINGS provoked by those wrongs aren’t acknowledged or allowed to surface, the process of forgiveness is short-circuited.
Alas, some of us grew up in families where expressions of anger and other “negative” feelings were discouraged and feared as dangerous, and so we learned to suppress our anger all too well, sometimes cloaking that under a veneer of pious expressions of premature or unreal forgiveness. When I’m counseling people, I encourage them to let the feelings of anger and resentment rise and surface BEFORE they try to forgive those who hurt and wronged them. That is, it’s like lancing a boil to let the puss out before putting on the bandage.
Corrie didn’t pretend not to feel anger toward the guard. She was in touch with the coldness in her heart toward the guard. She allowed the painful, shameful memory to surface. But she also called on the Lord for the power to forgive and wilfully stuck out her hand, and God’s grace supernaturally welled up within her and quickly melted her cold heart. I just wish it happened so quickly and seemingly easier all the time.
David Handy+
Thank you N. R. A. David for your pastorally wise and useful post. It jogged my memory to recall another Corrie ten Boom story which fits your post exactly and which I am surprised no one recalled. It is the other aspect of forgiveness, the process of which you and I wrote. Corrie found it hard to forgive and talked it over with a wise Christian. He told her that where we do not even try to forgive we are like hands tolling a bell: it sounds out again and again. When we decide to forgive our hand lets go of the rope. Of its own momentum the bell will keep on tolling for a bit, just as the wound will hurt, and we may think nothing is happening. But gradually the momentum of the bell will slow, and it will get fainter and finally stop.
You’re welcome, Terry Tee (#18). Yes, I too love that other illustration by Corrie ten Boom about the gradual quieting of the bell after we let go of the rope. It’s so true.
David Handy+
As another observation, often (after we drop the rope), we find ourselves upset by the continued ringing and we grasp the rope again in an attempt to quiet it. There are times that grabbing that rope actually makes it move more and longer.
Forgiveness of others is both an event and a process. In my work with Karios prison ministry, forgiveness of self (accepting God’s forgiveness for my own sins) and foriveness of others are major themes. We do not need to forgive others for their benefit. We need to forgive them for our own benefit. Hatred and nursed wrongs are poisons that damage our relationship with God and keep us from knowing His love fully.
Finally, there is a wonderful “judo trick” that Satan plays with us. In our efforts to forgive, we bring to mind the anger and pain we felt when we were offended and Satan uses that time to make us angry again and our “forgiveness” can take the form of “I forgive you for being such a dirty so and so.” This does not release the anger and pain, but it deepens them.
Forgiveness is not something that we can do on our own. We need God’s strength, grace, and love to forgive others.
YBIC,
Phil Snyder
#20, thanks for saying what I was thinking and about to say. Forgiveness only occurs with God’s help; the most important part of this story for me was the prayer. Without it, nothing happens but coldness of heart. I have found so many times, prayer has softened my heart or changed my thinking. Prayer really is our answer. We just forget sometime.
Larry said, “If you forgive those who have not earned forgiveness, then you have become complicit in their crimes.”
Earned forgiveness! I couldn’t possibly earn God’s forgiveness – that’s why Jesus died in my place. And I should ask another person to earn my forgiveness? I don’t think so!
There are of course pastoral considerations; I’m not advocating being walked over. Forgiveness is freely giving up the right to demand satisfaction, and we have to do that, for our own sake if nothing else – and also for the other person. But giving up the right to demand satisfaction is not the same thing as giving up the right to ask a person to change a habit that treats me as though I am worthless.
I suspect that this guard conveyed his sense of shame and repentance to Corrie ten Boom in some way – but the focus of the story is on her seeking grace to let go of that right to demand satisfaction.
(Who’s Corrie Ten Boom? I never heard of here bu everyone else seems to know who she is.)
[i] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corrie_ten_Boom [/i]
“Earned forgiveness! I couldn’t possibly earn God’s forgiveness – that’s why Jesus died in my place. And I should ask another person to earn my forgiveness? I don’t think so!
There are of course pastoral considerations; I’m not advocating being walked over. Forgiveness is freely giving up the right to demand satisfaction, and we have to do that, for our own sake if nothing else – and also for the other person. ”
So says Hakkatan. I was not talking about God’s forgiveness, but you own. Of course someone has to earn your forgiveness, for if he need not, then you are in a position of having to forgive everyone for anything, whether they have trespassed against YOU or not. This conclusion is inescapable. If you forgive everyone for everything, the justice is both meaningless and therefore impossible.
What this Christ’s intention? “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who have trespassed against us,” is a request to God, and in the issue at hand, not germane. A patent criminal has asked, not God’s forgiveness, but ten Boom’s, a very different matter. His crime against ten Boom was apparently real and substantial. He says that God has forgiven him. Indeed. And how does she know? Should she take HIS word about it, or should she exercise a a profound skepticism? His appeal is to God, in Christ’s name. God will do as He will. His appeal to ten Boom is to lift his crime from his shoulders, a practical undertaking. He doesn’t want to feel guilty any more. But we ask as we should, “Has justice been done?” For if has not been, then guilt should not be lifted for he has not earned it – not in this world by this world’s standards. Remorse, penance and absolution, are these necessary before forgiveness is granted? Or are these just words without practical application in the real world?
How can I say the Lord’s prayer? This is not hard to answer. I ask that He forgive me to the degree I have forgiven those who have trespassed against me. This is NOT an argument that I should forgive everyone who has stepped on me, nor those whose crimes are great but not against ME, only that those whom I have forgiven be used as a debit card for the payment of my own crimes.
Everyone found the piece above a beautiful example of Christianity at work. I found it a piece of pious sentimentality, a practice commonly engaged in because the rush of virtuous good feeling is so pleasant, dopamines flooding the pleasure centers. Here’s a practical question for you all: If you give everyone who trespasses against you, how can you demand that he go to prison for the greatness of his crimes? Or don’t you? And would you have forgiven Judas himself? I seem to remember that Christ said it would have been better if he had never been born.
Is it really Christ’s intention that we forgive everyone in sight – and out of sight as well? The above is not meant as an ill-natured and cross grained attempt to pick a fight, but rather a declaration of an apparent contradiction that has always baffled me and continues to do so. Larry
I do a great deal of work with people who have been sexually abused and often share some of my struggles (and subsequent joys) in working through forgiveness. I was severely sexually abused by my father and a group of his friends when I was a young child. And as an adult, working through this trauma, I felt God speaking to me about forgiving them. So I began to pray…about the possibility of maybe someday thinking about forgiving them…and it took much prayer and many tears…but when I was able to forgive them…I was the one who experienced a great gift…a gift of the freedom from anger…a gift of the freedom from shame..a gift of the freedom from guilt…And what I realized was that when I forgave my father and these men, I wasn’t excusing their actions…I was just letting go of all that I had been holding on to and giving it to God to take care of…It wasn’t my job to do that anyway…It was God’s.
And as the years have gone by…and as I’ve shared and talked and prayed with those who hurt so deeply, God has helped me to grow and heal…When I spoke at a workshop last February, He gave me these words to share:
“There is nothing in your life that is beyong God’s healing…
Nothing so broken that it is beyond God’s repair…
And nothing that you have done, or that has been done to you,
is beyond God’s forgiveness.”
–dsf
Writingmom (#24),
Thank you for sharing that moving testimony. That’s exactly the kind of thing I meant above. Beautifully said, sister.
And Larry (#23),
Who was Corrie ten Boom? The best answer is to find a copy of her best-selling life story, “The Hiding Place,” or locate a copy of the movie of the same name made about her remarkable life. She has an honored place among evangelical Christians similar to that of Anne Frank among Jews. Both were Dutch girls who suffered the agonies of the Nazi campaign to wipe out the Jews in Europe. Anne was a Jewish girl who died in the concentration camps after her family’s hiding place was found, and Corrie was a Christian from a devout evangelical family that hid Jews in their home. For this “crime” of harboring Jews from the Gestapo, Corrie’s family was sent to the concentration camps too, where all the rest of them died. By a miracle (of a clerical error), Corrie was released by mistake, and went on to become a prominent speaker in evangelical circles.
I can still vividly remember hearing her preach in a moving chapel service when I was a student at Wheaton College back in the mid 1970s. Afterwards, I was so shaken I couldn’t go to class, but walked around for an hour processing the powerful message that I’d heard. In a word, she was an evangelical saint.
Thanks again, writingmom. Your testimony rings true to so many of us, who have suffered in all sorts of terrible, inexcusable ways, often from the hands of those closest to us. Keep sharing your story.
David Handy+