Forgiveness isn’t easy. It is a spiritual discipline that ALL Christians must develop and grow through the Holy Spirit. |
As I travel around the world speaking about the North Korean
underground church, one of the things I observe is that Christians in the West
invariably love to hear stories about how persecuted Christians produce
jaw-dropping, heart-warming forgiveness with the same frequency and ease with which
McDonald’s produces french fries.
The one small problem with this is that it’s not true.
In my own experience,
persecuted Christians struggle with unforgiveness at least as much as
Christians in the West do. They may even struggle with unforgiveness more
than we do, given the suffering their families, villages, and churches
regularly experience. Persecuted Christians are sometimes some of the least
forgiving and most bitter saints I meet.
I can recall a Voice of the Martyrs/US Conference years ago
to which Mrs. Foley and I had brought a North Korean brother to speak. An
American man and his five year old son came up to meet the North Korean after
his presentation, and the American greeted our brother by saying, “This is my
son, Little Timmy. He prays every night that God will open Kim Jong Il’s heart
to accept the gospel.” Our North Korean brother turned to us and said, “Really?
I just pray every night that God kills him.”
When we assume that
forgiveness somehow flows spontaneously in a persecuted setting, we overlook
the reality that forgiveness is described in Scripture as a spiritual
discipline, not a miracle. It is learned, in other words, not latent. We
learn how to extend forgiveness to those who commit big sins against us by
first extending forgiveness to those who commit little sins against us. And
when we fail to see the connection between extending little forgivenesses and
extending big forgivenesses, we hyperspiritualize persecuted Christians,
letting ourselves off the hook from growing in the grace of forgiveness and
ignoring the reality that it doesn’t matter where you are a Christian; God is
going to seek to grow you daily in the Work of Mercy of forgiving and
reconciling.
In order to ensure that we grow in our practice of
forgiveness each day, Jesus inserts into the Lord’s Prayer a daily petition
that God’s forgiveness toward us be shaped by our forgiveness toward others.
“Forgive me today in the same way I am forgiving others today, Lord.” That is
humbling and stretching no matter in what nation God calls you to be his
disciple. It is not an ounce easier in Nigeria than in North Dakota.
Yes, beautiful, breathtaking forgiveness does happen among
persecuted Christians. But it happens among those who have daily kept their
hearts tender before the Lord through far less breathtaking, far more mundane
acts of forgiveness preceding the hurt. The most moving stories of forgiveness
in places like North Korea and Pakistan and Eritrea are not ones where a
persecuted Christian spontaneously extends forgiveness to those who harmed his
family.
The most moving stories are the ones where a persecuted Christian
prepared for the major forgiveness he would need to offer by working daily
through the mundane morass of underground church conflicts, fights with his wife,
and spats at work with co-workers.
The miracle, in other
words, is not the spontaneous extension of forgiveness but the hard-won battle
quietly waged daily by the Holy Spirit to keep each of us from slipping into
the sludge of bitterness, not at the hands of our worst enemies but rather our
regular and closest companions.
Examine your own
heart. Are you allowing the Spirit to work forgiveness in your life and
relationships? How might you grow in showing forgiveness, mirroring the
forgiveness Christ first showed to you?
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