Dead Poets’ Society is one my all-time-favorite inspiring movies. Robin Williams plays John Keating, who teaches his students poetry and English literature at an all-boys private school in the 1950s. But he does more than educate, he inspires. He sees poetry as a new lens that allows people to see their world differently – maybe even more clearly – and in the process, many of his students’ are unable to “unsee” the new world opened up to them.
Of course, it’s not like they weren’t warned. In his introduction to his new students, he hops up on his desk. “Why do I stand up here? I stand upon my desk to remind myself that we must constantly try to see our world in a different way.” And then he marches each boy up and over his desk to have a look for themselves.
This is how I see the scene when Jesus begins to teach his disciples about forgiveness. Learning to forgive as God has forgiven us is not simple. It requires an entirely different perspective.
Then Peter came up and said to him, “Lord, how often will my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? As many as seven times?” Jesus said to him, “I do not say to you seven times, but seventy-seven times.
– Matthew 18:21-22
Peter’s view was generous by the standards of the day. Rabbinic tradition limited forgiveness to three times, Peter more than doubles it. But Jesus – seeing that Peter is looking for a minimum requirement, and misses the point – moves the bar out to a completely unreasonable distance. After all, there’s no easy way to keep track of how often you’ve forgiven someone if the limit is 77 times. Can you imagine the paperwork? The spreadsheets? Especially for those of you with 1000 Facebook friends!
Forgiveness is very hard, isn’t it? I’m sure the rabbinic tradition had at its roots a desire to minimize the hurt and damage people could do to one another. “You can burn me three times, but then we’re done.” But in reality – whether the hurt is a deep wound or a minor bruise, we often have a hard time truly forgiving even just once. I may say, “it’s ok.” But in reality, that’s very far from the truth.
When someone hurts me, that hurt tends to color how I view that person. And if I don’t forgive them as God forgives me, that one hurt, that one sin they’ve committed against me becomes a global issue that defines how I view everything about them. Maybe its self-protection: if I assume you’re that you’re “that kind of person,” the kind who doesn’t mind hurting people, I can write you off and pretend that somehow makes it better. Then – like Peter – I can check the box off, claim I’ve forgiven you, fulfilling my obligation.
This – thankfully – is not how God forgives us. Instead, God sees us as He made us to be. He does not ignore the sins we commit, but He also doesn’t allow those sins to define who we are in His eyes. But He made us in His image, and He has given us infinite value in doing so. So when we ask His forgiveness, He truly forgives. It does not define us. Effectively speaking, it’s “as far as the east is from the west,” (Psalm 103:12) in His mind. And there is no limit to the number of times He will forgive us.
In order to forgive others as God has forgiven us, then, we need a completely new paradigm. We need to learn to see others as God sees them. Do you pray for the people who hurt you? And I don’t mean the “call fire down from heaven” prayers. Do you thank God for them? Do you praise Him for making that person the way He made them? That’s a very hard thing to do – especially when the wounds they leave are deep and will leave lasting scars.
But when you and I look at our own scars and remember the sins others have committed against us, when we “unbury the hatchet,” we need to stop and remember Christ’s scars. The ones you and I gave Him. He has forgiven us, and no longer holds our sins against us. He loves us more than we can fully understand, like the father in the Parable of the Prodigal Son, who behaved in an undignified way to restore his son.
Think today of people who have hurt you (it may not take much effort). They’re probably friends or family, because they have the ability to hurt us most, don’t they? Pray for them. Pray that God would help you forgive them. Thank Him for putting those people in your life, and list off some reasons you’re glad they’re in your life (even if it’s like loving a porcupine!). Pray as Jesus instructed His disciples to pray: Forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors. Finally, ask Him to teach us to see them as He sees them, to love them as He loves them.
Imagine the impact on our world – on our kids, on our coworkers, on the people who live next door – if we had that radically different perspective on those who hurt us? What would the world do with people who truly love and forgive others like Christ loved and forgave us?
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