Persecuted Christians Struggle With Unforgiveness, Too

Posted on August 20, 2012 by Pastor Foley

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.

At Seoul USA’s Underground University we train North Korean defectors to serve as missionaries wherever North Koreans are found. One of the ten curriculum tracks we teach is forgiveness. It may be the hardest track of all for the students, even more arduous and demanding than survival training and the constant Scripture memorization.

After teaching UU for four years, I can assure you that genuine, authentic, lasting forgiveness of the North Korean regime does not arise spontaneously in the hearts of North Korean Christians. It must be practiced–not because it’s a human effort but because it’s an act of surrender to the work of the Holy Spirit. Truth is, we don’t like where the consequences of forgiveness lead us, i.e., to the hard (and yes, Holy Spirit-powered) life of reconciled relationships.

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.

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A Really Important Post on the Least Discussed Topic Related to Forgiveness

Posted on August 17, 2012 by Pastor Foley

My unofficial and unscientific review of Google and Amazon.com reveals the following frequency and prevalence of book topics related to forgiveness:

1. How to forgive others
2. How to forgive yourself
.
.
.
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562. How to genuinely seek forgiveness from those you have wronged.

Sure, there are a decent number of websites and even a few books that cover, however briefly, the subject of how to make a good apology. But there’s really so little good,  Scripturally grounded material available on what to do when you’re the one who has truly messed up a relationship, and forgiveness and reconciliation are going to need to be an ongoing process when measured in either dog(house) years or human years.

That’s why I was so delighted to happen across Wisdomforlife’s Seven signs of true repentance. Consider these seven indicators that what you are offering is truly bone-deep repentance and not merely regret (we can deceive ourselves into mistaking the two, you know):

The offender:

1. Accepts full responsibility for his/her actions (instead of saying, ”Since you think I’ve done something wrong…” or “If have done anything to offend you…”).
2. Accepts accountability from others.
3. Does not continue in the behavior or anything associated with it.
4. Does not have a defensive attitude about being in the wrong.
5. Does not have a light attitude toward his or her hurtful behavior.
6. Does not resent doubts about his/her sincerity- nor the need to demonstrate sincerity. (Especially in cases involving repeated offenses)
7. Makes restitution wherever necessary.

My own editorial note, culled from no small amount of personal experience: If you try to effect any of these seven points on your own strength, you will fail. Miserably. But take heart: God never misses a good repentance. He’ll be present, if you are.

And lest you find yourself resenting the person who asks to see these changes in you as an outward manifestation of the inward change you’re professing, consider these wise words from Wisdomforlife:

Of course, only God can read hearts — we must evaluate actions. Jesus said, “By their fruit you will recognize them” (Matthew 7:16a).

I can recall leading a seminar for Peacemaker Ministries one time where a wife, during my presentation, asked me a question about sincerity and forgiveness and her husband, seated next to her, threw his hands in the air and bellowed, “OKAY, I’M SORRY!!!!!!” It was immediately apparent to all three hundred of us in the auditorium what might have prompted the woman to ask the question. Volume does not connote sincerity. Emotional intensity does not connote sincerity. Like Jesus says, keep your eye on the fruit. Fruit don’t lie.

And notice: The fruit of the Spirit can only be produced by the ___________ (go ahead–you fill in the blank). Repentance is either Spirit-led or it’s of the flesh. To the person you’ve wronged, the difference is readily discernible.

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God’s Forgiveness, Like His Love, is “Better Than Unconditional”

Posted on August 15, 2012 by Pastor Foley

Conditional love, conditional forgiveness–these hardly sound like magnanimous divine traits. In fact, they make God sound rather crusty and petty.

Leave it to David Powlison and Chris Brauns to explain why we should actually be quite delighted and honored that God’s love and forgiveness are, in fact, conditional–conditional on us asking, that is, not earning. As in 1 John 1:9‘s “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.” 

Powlison’s God’s Love: Better Than Unconditional and Brauns’ Unpacking Forgiveness both explain why divine unconditionality–whether in love or forgiveness–not only makes for bad theology; it promotes bad behavior, bitterness, and not a whole lot of personal growth.

Brauns’ points are nicely distilled in a trio of blog posts that are well worth your time: 5 Problems with Unconditional Forgiveness, Conditional Forgiveness Is Taught by Many Christian Authors and Theologians, and Must Christians Always Forgive? by A.B. Caneday. For the click-reluctant, let me distill the distillation even further and share the key features of Brauns’ argument. Actually, Brauns lets Caneday carry the systematic freight:

Caneday unfolds the biblical logic for conditional forgiveness. Caneday reasons:

1. Forgiveness always concerns sin.
2. God forgives confessed sin.
3. God’s forgiveness correlates to our forgiveness.
4. Our forgiving must be like God’s forgiving of our sins.
5. God’s forgiveness of sin is for the repentant and so is ours.
6. Not to grant forgiveness of sins to the unrepentant is not the same as being unforgiving

He hastens to add this helpful clarification from Caneday, lest anyone think that the conditionality of forgiveness means that we get to choose whatever conditions we want to set when it comes to others seeking forgiveness from us:

One of the more helpful distinction Caneday makes is his point that, “Not to grant forgiveness of sins to the unrepentant is not the same as being unforgiving.” Hence, Caneday stresses, “We must always be ready to forgive, eager to forgive, praying that the Lord would grant repentance to the unrepentant person in order that both he and we may grant forgiveness of sins.” (p. 16)

The phraseology of Adams is helpful here, whom Brauns quotes at length in another post:

You are not obligated to forgive an unrepentant sinner, but you are obligated to try to bring him to repentance.  All the while you must entertain a genuine hope and willingness to forgive the other and a desire to be reconciled to him or her.  Because this biblical teaching runs counter to much teaching in the modern church, it is important to understand it.  Such forgiveness is modeled after God’s forgiveness which is unmistakably conditioned on repentance and faith.

So why is it good news that God seeks us out in order to extend forgiveness to us but waits to grant it until we ask for it?

Because it shows once again the amazing amount of respect and honor God accords to us dishonored (and dishonorable) creatures. He doesn’t wait for us to seek him out, arms crossed. He doesn’t make us beg. He doesn’t lay out hoops through which we must jump. But he does respect our freedom. If we persist in sinful behavior and refuse to repent from it because we’re perfectly content in our rebellion, he does not forgive us when we don’t see ourselves as in the wrong. What a gracious maker. Far from being crusty, his conditional love is actually far more freedom-affirming than the vapid theological saw of him swatting out of our hands that which we cling to so tenaciously in our rebellion against him.

And what good sense that we would obey him in forgiving others that same way. We too are to diligently, frequently, lovingly seek out those who have wronged us. We too are to call them tenderly to repentance. We too are to intercede for them with the father. And we too are to let them know that we are ready to forgive them because of the lavish goodness and healing that God has already extended to us.

But forgive them for what they stubbornly insist is not wrong? How does that affirm their agency, convey respect to them and to God, and set the stage for true healing of broken relationship?

It turns out that, truth be told, restoration of relationship isn’t really what many of us want in forgiveness. We simply want the messiness, brokenness, and guilt to be swept away like broken glass off the kitchen floor–a point Brauns makes well when he notes that Unconditional forgiveness removes the urgency of being reconciled with the offending party:

If forgiveness is a private affair, then there is no need to ever interact directly with the one who has caused the injury. It is not uncommon to hear someone say, “I have forgiven her, but I will never talk to her again.” Such an approach does not embody the forgiveness granted by the Lord who welcomes sinners into His loving arms.

In the end, that’s the crusty, petty thing about supposedly unconditional forgiveness: It produces fairyland faux relationships, not gritty, deep, hold-on-tight-and-we’ll-go-the-distance-together authentic reconciliations. In Powlison’s words, God does “better than unconditional.” That’s because Scriptural forgiveness is always about enduring relationships centered on the Cross. We are forgiven into such relationships, not out of them.

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