In the movie The Karate Kid, young Daniel LaRusso (Ralph Macchio) promises to do everything Mr. Miyagi tells him to do so he can learn karate. Rather than begin with kicks and punches, though, Mr. Miyagi has Daniel-san sand his floors, wax his cars, and paint his fence. Frustrated by the manual labor and apparent lack of instruction, Daniel confronts Miyagi and complains that he’s nothing more than a servant. In one of the movie’s most powerful moments, Miyagi shows him how the movements he’s been using to sand, wax, and paint are the basic movements for blocking punches and kicks, and then he launches a flurry of attacks that Daniel blocks easily. He’d been training without even knowing it, and had become a karateka.
Forgive. As often as you can.
Too often we think of God’s commands as a laundry list of arbitrary commands the purpose of which—if any is to be found—is simply to prove or to test our faithfulness, thereby obtaining God’s grace and favor. We might deny this when it’s put this way since we know we can’t earn God’s grace, yet how we live our lives reflects this way of thinking. We give to charitable causes expecting God to bless us because we’re generous, and we cry out in offence to Him when His blessings don’t cover the cost of our cell phone bill.
This adherence to commands for the sake of blessing is an easy mistake to make. After all, didn’t Jesus tell a lawyer about the commandments, “Do this and you will live”? So in this Sunday’s Gospel, when we hear Jesus say, “If you forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father also will forgive you,” we can easily misunderstand this as a conditional quid pro quo, as if Christ is saying, “If you do this, I’ll take good care of you.” Additionally, he doesn’t leave the opposite action to inference, warning that “if you do not forgive men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.” The quid pro quo promise of good things for compliance, and warning against noncompliance, should then be a motivation to follow Christ’s commandment to forgive. But to think of forgiveness only in these terms, as a means to an end, is to miss God’s richest blessings.
First, it would be helpful to understand what “forgiveness” actually is. Modern psychologists define it as “willfully putting aside feelings of resentment toward someone who has committed a wrong, been unfair or hurtful, or otherwise harmed you in some way…a voluntary transformation of your feelings, attitudes, and behavior, so that you are no longer dominated by resentment and can express compassion, generosity, or the like toward the person who wronged you.” Modern therapists often utilize this concept of forgiveness in successfully treating mental illness.
Of course, psychologists weren’t the first to notice that forgiveness is an important part of wise counsel. The Fathers of the Church—who more correctly identified such things as spiritual illness—also knew how important forgiveness is. In the fourth century St. John Chrysostom said of Jesus’ teaching us to pray our Father in Heaven would forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us, that “by reminding us of our sins, [God] persuad[es] us to be modest; by the command to forgive others, [He] set[s] us free from all revengeful passion; while by promising in return for this to pardon us also, He holds out good hopes, and instructs us to have high views concerning the unspeakable mercy of God toward man.”
That the psychologist are catching up to Church wisdom is demonstrated further by the word St. Matthew records Jesus using here: ἀφῆτε (aphéte), which is from a verb meaning “to send away, leave alone, permit.” The best definition of forgiveness, is to let go, or to release, to not let a particular offence trouble us any longer. Forgiveness is never about the offender, he can hold on as long as he likes even after I let go. Forgiveness is for me—even if I do it out of a sense of obligation—and the peace it brings will form into a life-changing habit if I do it 70×7 times.
Conversely, to not forgive is to hold on to something, and that something is likely to make us bitter and resentful. Moreover, it is an attachment to something other than God, which is a danger the saints warn against repeatedly. St John of Kronstadt, says not to cling with “your heart to anything, and do not make it the god of your heart; the sole God of our heart must be the Lord-God, Who created it: for our heart is His breath.” He goes on to warn that “attachment to material things, or to flesh, is a lie, an enticement of Satan and the will of the Devil.” We know that worldly attachment is Satanic because it is deceitful. St. Leonid of Optima warns us to “beware of passionate attachments to the world. Although they deceive you with peace and comfort, they are so fleeting that you do not notice how you are deprived of them, and in their place come sorrow, longing, despondency, and no comfort whatsoever.”
We think it’s comforting, because I can nurture my bitterness against my offender by convincing myself that if I deprive him of my forgiveness then he will realize his error, and then I’ll be vindicated when he asks for my forgiveness. But that isn’t really forgiveness, it’s pride. It makes me—my feelings and my perspective—the center of the interaction. Actual forgiveness, however, is just like asking Jesus to take the wheel. It is giving up our vain belief that we have any control over the actions of anyone else, and leaning into the truth that I CAN change myself.
We misunderstand Jesus if we think that this command regarding forgiveness is a quid pro quo. It is a statement of ontological fact, because it is not unwillingness that prevents God from granting us His forgiveness, it is our attachments. Gollum in the Lord of the Rings became so attached to the Ring of Power that he could do nothing but think of possessing it, and his attachment to it disfigured him into a being even his mother wouldn’t recognize. This is the power of attachments, and when we refuse forgiveness we become attached to our grudge, which will possess our mind and disfigure our being. We make ourselves unforgivable. To let go our grudges, however—to forgive—frees us from disfiguring attachments and teaches us to be like Christ.
The best part is that St. John Chrysostom says it isn’t even really very difficult. He said “from our so great and so many sins, God hath given us a short and easy way of deliverance, and one that is free from all toil. For what sort of toil is it to forgive him that hath grieved us? Nay, it is a toil not to forgive, but to keep up our enmity: even as to be delivered from the anger, both works in us a great refreshment, and is very easy to him that is willing. For there is no sea to be crossed, nor long journey to be travelled, nor summits of mountains to be passed over, nor money to be spent, no need to torment thy body; but it suffices to be willing only, and all our sins are done away.” We just have to do it.
If we continue thinking of God’s commands as a checklist to tick off in order to acquire merit, then we might fast and expect God to be more attentive to our prayers simply because we’re hungry. But if we see them more for what they are, then we will see that—like Daniel’s chores for Mr. Miyagi—God’s commands contain a deeper purpose. The purpose of the fast is to shape us, not God, and make us more prayerful, with the goal being to become our prayer and make our life a living prayer of thanksgiving and worship to God.
The purpose of forgiveness is to eliminate our attachment to ourselves and our pride, so that we can attach ourselves to God, which is made evident when we prioritize our relationships over our pride, and are willing to sacrifice our own desires for the sake of the relationship, for the sake of the person whom we claim to love. We forgive to mold ourselves into a better likeness of Christ, who sacrificed Himself out of love for us, because He is Himself forgiveness. It may seems tedious, particularly if you find yourself repeatedly forgiving the same person the same thing, but though—like Daniel-san—we feel like we’re being taken advantage of, we are actually training to block the attacks of the Evil One that are sure to come over the course of our Lenten Journey and all our lives. The best defense is to become like Christ, to become forgiveness.
An Orthodox Priest Abroad 