Kickoff: Forgiveness Week
Unless otherwise noted, these speeches and open letters were written for the Dean of Students of Biola University between 2011-2016.
I live near a middle school… and I often see these kids walking to school in the morning. Now, I understand that (for whatever reason) many middle schools no longer have lockers? So they have to carry their books and binders everywhere?
So I see these kids with these gigantic backpacks… they must weigh 40 pounds… and some of these kids are pretty small, and it seems like the backpack is as big as they are, and they’re bent over like little old men…
And I was thinking that most of us, by the time we get to college, we don’t have to carry that big backpack of books anymore… but a lot of us are bent over anyway. Maybe we’re carrying a backpack full of other things.
Things like regret, blame, fear, doubt, anger, frustration, shame… things that have been done to us; things we’ve had to go through; pain we’ve had to endure; wrongs we’ve had to suffer. Things that we didn’t deserve… things we can’t let go of.
Maybe you come from a broken family; maybe you’ve suffered abuse. There was that thing that happened when you were a little kid… that thing that happened in high school… that thing that happened with that person you really trusted...
I don’t have to list them for you, you know what I mean:
the revenge fantasy you spin out in your imagination,
that nagging reminder of that person out there that you’re estranged from,
that sense of regret about that thing that you could never make right again…
And so we carry them. Sometimes they’re invisible, no one else knows… and sometimes we vent about them to everyone we meet. Some we pray every day to be rid of… and others we hold on to tightly, because we don’t know what it would be like to live without them.
So we want to spend some time this week talking about forgiveness.
Do you have to get justice first, and then offer forgiveness?
Does the injustice we’ve suffered make it hard to really love God?
Are there things we just can’t forgive?
Is offering forgiveness a sign of weakness?
Isn’t forgiveness just setting myself up to get stomped again?
Does forgiveness mean no consequences?
What’s so wrong with keeping score?
And what do I do with all this anger?
And what if you are the offender… How do you ask for forgiveness?
We’re going to talk about those things.
And we’ll talk about forgiving yourself, too.
So I hope that by the end of this week, you can unpack at least a few of those things out of your backpack.
We have several special guests with us this week. Today, we welcome Dr. Ev Worthington, Professor of Psychology at Virginia Commonwealth. Dr. Worthington’s list of publications and accomplishments is long, and his expertise in this area is nationally recognized, but what is most important is that he brings practical wisdom and sound guidance about the freedom that genuine forgiveness brings.
Please help me welcome Dr. Ev Worthington!
