When You Can't Forgive Yourself
Stop trying. You really should. What freedom can your own forgiveness really grant you? What meaning does it have anyway? Are you God? You make up your own moral code, you violate it, and now you find your own remission inadequate. Funny, isn't it? That you are enough to determine your own truth but not enough to keep it or clean up your failures? Psychopaths, for the record, are chillingly good at forgiving themselves
My college pastor had this to say: when you confess your sins to God and you still carry guilt -- confess your unbelief. You might not like the sound of that, but I'll tell you: it sure gets you off that merry-go-round of confession and guilt. When you pray the words of that desperate father: I believe; help my unbelief! You remember how gracious Jesus was to that poor man and how He went and healed the child.
Confessing your sins, even in private to all-knowing infinite God, is frightening. It's frightening to see yourself. Maybe your sins are small, but turn on that floodlight and you see the mice and the leaks and the broken sewage lines in your soul -- and it doesn't take much. A very little sin requires a great deal of scouring the floors -- and then you find another one under the linoleum -- and then, there, under the broken chair -- and then you realize how much filth you've become accustomed to. You realize that the black mold has infiltrated and house of your soul needs leveling. You feared the sunlight and here you are without a shelter.
Trying to forgive yourself keeps the focus on yourself and that's a very cramped place. Your forgiveness isn't worth much, which is why you have trouble finding it valuable or freeing. But go to the place of infinite Rest and infinite Love. Say: search me and know me. There is forgiveness in Him that He may be feared. He will sing over you with gladness and you'll forget that your own condemnation ever mattered.
My college pastor had this to say: when you confess your sins to God and you still carry guilt -- confess your unbelief. You might not like the sound of that, but I'll tell you: it sure gets you off that merry-go-round of confession and guilt. When you pray the words of that desperate father: I believe; help my unbelief! You remember how gracious Jesus was to that poor man and how He went and healed the child.
Confessing your sins, even in private to all-knowing infinite God, is frightening. It's frightening to see yourself. Maybe your sins are small, but turn on that floodlight and you see the mice and the leaks and the broken sewage lines in your soul -- and it doesn't take much. A very little sin requires a great deal of scouring the floors -- and then you find another one under the linoleum -- and then, there, under the broken chair -- and then you realize how much filth you've become accustomed to. You realize that the black mold has infiltrated and house of your soul needs leveling. You feared the sunlight and here you are without a shelter.
Trying to forgive yourself keeps the focus on yourself and that's a very cramped place. Your forgiveness isn't worth much, which is why you have trouble finding it valuable or freeing. But go to the place of infinite Rest and infinite Love. Say: search me and know me. There is forgiveness in Him that He may be feared. He will sing over you with gladness and you'll forget that your own condemnation ever mattered.
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