forgiveness when it hurts (and seems impossible) to forgive

I just received a copy of a new book from Westminster John Knox Press called Change of Heart by Jeanne Bishop and cannot wait to read it. I have been looking forward to reading it since I heard her speak at a sales conference last year. While Bishop was incredibly engaging as a speaker (she is a defense attorney adept at swaying jurors), the message of her story was even more compelling. Here's the short:

Twenty-give years ago, a local teenager murdered her sister, brother-in-law, and her unborn niece/nephew. He was tried and convicted to a life without parole sentence. Jeanne was content to never think about the killer ever again. Then, after a conversation with a pastor, she realized that forgiveness  - at least forgiveness demonstrated by Jesus, was more than forgetting. It was about reconciliation. It was about transformation. It was about restoration.

As I sat listening to her, I frankly admitted to myself, "She is a better Christian than me." For all my views on war, violence, and Christian pacifism, I do not think I could ever forgive someone who murdered my family...I'm not sure I wouldn't end up in prison, myself. That's the point, though. It's what the author would even say. On my own, biblical forgiveness for even the smallest wrong is seemingly impossible. I may say I forgive, but I find my mind kneading the injustice and bitterness over and over again. Not to be pithy, but I really think the only way we can truly forgive someone is to have a "change of heart" and that change can only be wrought by the One who transforms our heart of stone into one of living flesh. 

I will be posting more thoughts as I read through this, but I can already recommend that everyone should read it. It does contain some emotional stories and imagery (as you can imagine a book about a murder might), but they only serve to show how much of a supernatural thing forgiveness truly is.


"Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: the old has gone, the new is here! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting people’s sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation. We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ’s behalf: Be reconciled to God. God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God." - II Corinthains 5.17-21