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Happiness and Forgiveness

One of the most common themes that comes through in the stories people tell me is about emotional baggage which people drag along to family events. Birthdays, anniversaries, family reunions, even Christmas celebrations are sabotaged by tension between a few key members of the clan.

One grandmother I knew served Christmas dinner from ten o’clock in the morning until three o’clock in the afternoon so that her warring offspring could spend some time with her without having to see each other. Old rivalries prevented the family from being able to come together at the same time without old hurts being revisited and unpleasant exchanges taking place.

Sometime families do come together, but social awkwardness hangs in the air because of certain subjects which must never be broached. In other cases, everyone walks on eggshells around one of the kinfolk because his bitterness and anger is likely to overflow at the least provocation, making everyone wish that they had never come.

These are family examples, but wherever people come together this kind of social stress has the potential of tearing down relationships, disrupting productivity, and hindering positive outcomes. Often as not the underlying problem is an old wound that has never healed. The soothing balm of forgiveness has never been applied. The injury, though sometimes years old, remains open and raw.

Instinctual responses of fight or flight are all about withdrawal. They are present in even the lowest forms of animal life. When threatened, most organisms will take the challenge and try to drive the attacker away (like a dog defending its territory), or avoid the challenge by physically outrunning the attacker (like an antelope on the savanna), or by fleeing to a place of safety (like a gopher ducking down into its burrow), or assuming a passive defensive position (like a hedgehog rolling into a prickly ball). But all of these instinctual responses are about quashing relationship.

But no matter how hard we search, we don’t find a natural response to stay in relationship, acknowledge the injury, offer and receive forgiveness and continue into the future more closely knit together than ever. This kind of behaviour has to be acquired. It is based on something higher than instinct. Ultimately, it must come as an insight from outside of ourselves. It must come this way because it is not a natural response and, I would say, forgiveness is not a natural response because it requires humility.

So what does all this have to do with happiness? In the family examples I just mentioned, the problem was unresolved conflict. Forgiveness had never been asked for or offered, so the misery just went on and on. As new members were added to the families through birth and marriage, they were drawn in and experienced the estrangement with no personal basis for the tension and awkwardness they found in their new environment.

The Bible makes it clear that happiness and forgiveness are inextricably linked. Psalm 32:1 Blessed (happy) is he whose transgressions are forgiven, whose sins are covered. Forgiveness is necessary for happiness to exist. Without it, all we have is misery. Forgiveness is indispensable because offences are inevitable. Most of us don’t set out to offend those around us, but through carelessness, neglect and by accident we do. If we cannot humble ourselves to offer and receive forgiveness we condemn ourselves to ever-increasing unhappiness. It increases because old offenses are like old wounds. They get infected and fester and become worse. On top of that, when we refuse to offer or receive forgiveness once, it often sets a pattern and real or imagined offences just add to the accumulation of grief.

If this is true in our human relationships, it is equally or more true of our relationship with God. In this case, God has already humbled Himself and offered us forgiveness based on what the Lord Jesus Christ did for us on the cross. There, He gave His life, the righteous for the unrighteous, that He might bring us to God.” (See 1 Peter 3:18) Everything now depends on whether we will humble ourselves to receive that forgiveness. God offers to release us from judgment against our offenses, if we will accept the terms by which He does so - namely, that we can do nothing to commend ourselves to Him except to receive the free pardon He offers.

You’d think this would be the easiest thing in the world, but many resist His offer of forgiveness because they won’t humble themselves and accept responsibility for offending Him in the first place. When people won’t accept God’s forgiveness, they continue to be estranged from Him. When they are estranged from Him, they lose their great chance at happiness - their only chance at happiness.

Happy people have been forgiven and consequently can forgive others.

Ron Hughes
© November 2007