Forgive me when I can't forgive

³⁴ And his lord, moved with anger, handed him over to the torturers until he should repay all that was owed him. ³⁵ My heavenly Father will also do the same to you, if each of you does not forgive his brother from your heart.” (Matt 18:34-35)

This saying, which quite frankly I’d rather not ponder, comes in a passage where Jesus is teaching of the importance of forgiveness. Verse 34 is the last verse of the parable of the unforgiving servant. Now with parables, when the lesson is uncomfortable I can always muster up a tiny bit of “but it’s just a parable” wiggle room, even when no such escape clause is actually present. But verse 35, well that’s a different matter. That is Jesus, after the parable concluded, directly  promising severe punishment to those who cannot forgive. Forgiveness is so important to Jesus that he builds it into his model prayer in which he, just like in the parable, entwined God’s forgiveness of our debts with our forgiveness of our debtors.

Yikes.

I think I am a generally forgiving person, perhaps fair to middling on the scorecard. But I have a forgiveness blindspot when it comes to church leaders.

I still hold a grudge against an elder who once told my wife and me: “Oh, I have to apologize. I didn’t know your son was autistic, I just thought you were bad parents.”

It was one thing to assume we were bad parents, but quite another to be our shepherding elder for a couple years and not know our non-secret that our son had autism.

If a brother or sister breaks a promise or a trust with me, I believe I can sincerely forgive, as I have been (as far as I can tell) forgiven for doing likewise on any number occasions where I screwed up. But if a leader's yes doesn't mean yes, and no doesn't mean no--this creates a malignancy in my soul.

More recently I had an elder respond (verbally) to an email in which I requested a meeting (that he obviously didn’t want to be bothered with) by telling me, in a tone that clearly expressed that he was being unduly and unreasonably put upon, that he was “on a spiritual high from the previous day’s sermon, until reading my email completely brought him crashing down.” My mind still reels from the thought that an elder would say such a thing to a member of his congregation, one in good standing who was serving well and not causing any turbulence in the church, although that shouldn't really matter.

It is this type of affront, from church leaders, that I find nearly impossible to forget and forgive.

Which makes Matthew 18:35 perhaps the hardest of Jesus' hard sayings. It doesn't give you a get-out-of-jail-free card for those times when you are betrayed by church leaders.

And what makes the command to forgive a truly heavy burden is the description, in verse 35, that it is from the heart. That suggests an emotional component to the forgiveness. Sure, I can behave civilly with those I must forgive. I can bump into one of the elders mentioned above and pretend that nothing ever happened and carry on as before, showing no outward sign of the anger within. That, in fact, is what I do. But that resentment is still in my heart.

How to get rid of it? If I had the answer, I’d practice it. If the answer is the usual one, prayer, then I’m doing something wrong.