I know a man convicted of a violent crime against someone he loves. He acted in a momentary rage; he had never been violent before. It shocked him. Now he’s in prison.
Prison bars are not his greatest problem. He’s repented to the
victim, and the victim forgives him; and he’s repented to God, and he feels God forgives him too.
His problem is that he can’t forgive himself.
He’s confessed all known sins, prayed the sinner’s prayer, and claimed the blood of Christ. He knows he is forgiven by others, but he just can’t forgive himself.
He now feels doubly guilty; guilt at what he did, and guilty that he can’t forgive himself.
What’s it like?
If you’ve ever experienced the inability to forgive yourself … it’s awful. It’s an overwhelming disappointment with yourself, a witch’s brew of mortification at what you’ve done mixed with shame at who you are. The evil potion poisons your soul.
Think of all the negative “dis” words you know, and you’ll begin to sense the feeling: discovered, dismayed, discouraged, dislikeable, disgraced, distressed, disappointed, and despair (yeah, that last one’s a “des” word, maybe you dis-agree, so shoot me).
If other people disgust us, we can avoid them. But we can’t run away from the self-disgust at ourselves. Our undying disappointments ceaselessly hammer their hateful messages: How could you have done that? You are repulsive. What is wrong with you?
Perhaps we failed a friend, or disappointed our parents, or acted cowardly, or acted too aggressively. We can’t live with the shame.
But there are other kinds of people…
Some people don’t seem to feel guilty enough. They betray others—maybe you or me—and they say, “God has forgiven me, what’s your problem?” They seem cruel, unmoved by the suffering they visit on others, untroubled by the misery they perpetrate.
Honestly, I sometimes wish these villains were less quick to forgive themselves. I wish they could feel what they have inflicted; I wish they could put themselves in the shoes of their victims and—just for one moment—experience that pain.
I’m not proud of these fancies. But at the very least, I wish these brutes could experience genuine sorrow at the sufferings they regularly produce.
What about me?
Where do I fall in this jumble of self-forgiveness? I’m schizoid, the worst of both worlds. I once profoundly hurt my wife (well, more than once, but one infliction at a time). My first response was self-defense, “I was tired, and she said something to trigger it, and maybe it was her fault.”
I buried my compassion beneath layers of self-protection, so I lacked the sympathy to feel what I had done to her. I had become a brute.
Overtime, my dis-guise peeled away. I felt exposed, unprotected from the pain I caused. Self-consolation stopped working. I was wracked with guilt and remorse.
She forgave me but I couldn’t forgive myself. I felt that if I forgave myself too easily, then I would be just like one of those heartless beasts I so dislike.
Our problem
Easy self-forgivers cannot bring themselves to empathize with the injuries they inflict. Why? Because the ache of self-admission is too great. They can’t concede, “I’m the kind of person that causes such agony.” It’s unbearable. Something controls their hearts.
Unwilling self-forgivers can’t excuse themselves so easily. How could they have caused such suffering! So they lash themselves with the whip of self-incrimination, “You are vile, rotten, and unforgiveable.” Something controls their hearts too.
We are enslaved. A powerful force controls our hearts’ response to what we’ve done.
What controls us?
In Out of the Salt Shaker, Becky Pippert wrote,
Whatever controls you is your lord. If you live for power you are controlled by power. If you live for acceptance you are controlled by the people you are trying to please. No one controls himself. You are controlled by the lord of your life.
And if we live for a good identity, we are controlled by our need for a good name.
What controls both the easy self-forgivers and the unwilling self-forgivers? It’s an outside dominatrix screaming for self-identity, prohibiting us from accepting either guilt or forgiveness. We may think we are in charge of our lives, but we aren’t.
John Newton
John Newton was a slave trader, captain of slave ships, and an investor in slave trading companies. He knew the dominatrix of non-self-forgiveness and easy self-forgiveness.
Someone unable to forgive himself, wracked by guilt, asked for help. Newton answered,
You say you feel overwhelmed with guilt and a sense of unworthiness? Well, indeed you cannot be too aware of the evils inside of yourself, but you may be improperly controlled by them (Letters, Vol. 11, slightly edited).
To easy self-forgivers, he says we “cannot be too aware of the evils inside.” Any unwillingness to admit them is cowardly self-protection. Newton continues,
You say it is hard to understand how a holy God could accept such an awful person as yourself. You express not only a low opinion of yourself, which is right, but also too low an opinion of the Redeemer, which is wrong.
To non-self-forgivers, he says we have too low an opinion of Christ; as though God is powerful enough for tiny evils but not powerful enough our huge evils. He continues,
When I look at your complaints, they are so full of self-righteousness, unbelief, and pride that they are little better than the worst evils you complain of.
Newton knew first-hand the self-righteous identity that can’t admit any evil within; and he knew first-hand the self-lashing that comes from clinging to the evil within.
He gives an impassioned invitation—not another beating, an invitation!—to find a new identity, the identity of “We are the beloved,” the identity of being redeemed (at incalculable cost) from the slavery of self-identity. Newton knew true freedom.
John says, “If our hearts condemn us, God is greater than our hearts” (1 John 3:20). We need to release any identity we create for ourselves and simply accept his opinion of us.
It’s why Newton, perhaps best of all believers, could write Amazing Grace.
Sam
My First Parachute Jump Ever … and My Last
Man I wish I had written this! Your thoughts are similar to where I find my thoughts this morning. BRUTE!!!!!!!!!!!!!! HUH! When I got married some thirty years ago, I did not speak, did not communicate, it is said I could get a look on my face that would make you shake in your boots, Just two years earlier I had worked in a biker bar as a bouncer not because I needed the money but because I wanted to hit on people. The extremely critical, demanding ways that made me exceptional in business, made me a lousy husband.
Struggle with forgiveness, man!!!!!!!!!!!! However that is not why my thoughts are there today, though those thoughts never leave me.
What powerful truth here:
“To easy self-forgivers, he says we “cannot be too aware of the evils inside.” Any unwillingness to admit them is cowardly self-protection. Newton continues,
You say it is hard to understand how a holy God could accept such an awful person as yourself. You express not only a low opinion of yourself, which is right, but also too low an opinion of the Redeemer, which is wrong.
To non-self-forgivers, he says we have too low an opinion of Christ; as though God is powerful enough for tiny evils but not powerful enough our huge evils. He continues,
When I look at your complaints, they are so full of self-righteousness, unbelief, and pride that they are little better than the worst evils you complain of.”
It is this last one that has grasped my thoughts this morning. As I read of the attacks on another leader who has supposed fallen and failed. As we point out the truth and definitive errors of this leaders actions under the light of Paul calling out Peter publically. I am left wondering how quick we are to point out the faults and failures of others as they fail. Not only that how quickly we are as Paul was to admit our own deep failures, publically. This is the part that is often forgotten when shining that light.
I am reminded as we point these out that sure our leaders are failing, but so are we and it may be our need to publically point them out and jump on them that most reveals the reality of our own harshness of ourselves. Our own lack of understanding of our own depravity, our own failures or at least our failure to own them and it.
Our failure to do this must always result in not only our failing to truly understand the grace we have been given but our inability to exhibit to others. Which leaves the world grasping for the truth and reality of the gospel of grace, for in those HE calls HIS they see little. What they see in actuality is just more of the same and very little difference.
Sam I mad at you brother because you peeked in my head and stole my thoughts. Nice read! Thanks
Hey pbadstibner,
I’m not peeking into anyone’s inner thoughts but my own. (It’s dark enough just there!)
I love your application to Christian leaders. Why are we so quick to point to the faults of others, and so reluctant to admit our own? I think we’re scared, and we cling to some kind of self-made identity.
God have mercy on us all.
Thanks,
Sam
This is an incredibly difficult subject for me. I thought I was making small strides in recovery, but then my husband blindsided me last week with “I love you, but I’m not attracted to you anymore.”
I am not getting better in my self-loathing as fast as he thinks I should. He has been in a recovery program for pornography for 17 months and suddenly, he has “arrived.” And hence, I am not “well” enough.
Quite honestly, it seems that every time I thought I was making a small breakthrough, that I end up getting knocked down again.
I have prayed and prayed and prayed about this. At this point, it seems easier to just give up. I wasn’t lovable as a young child, I haven’t been lovable to my husband.
Hello Irene,
Thank you so much for your personal sharing. My heart goes out to you in the pain and confusion of your situation. Let me respond with a few thoughts—but mostly I pray that God reveals to you (that he speak personally to you of) his love.
Everyone longs to be attractive. Everyone. No exceptions. Apart from God, no one—no exceptions—actually feels attractive. Oh there are those “beautiful” supermodels (NOT!) that everyone tries to emulate.
But they are filled with self-loathing; so they become anorexic, spend tens of thousands of dollars on liposuction, chin tucks, and nose jobs. Even the beautiful don’t feel so.
And some people try for beauty by being successful, rich, nice, good parents, smart, or hard working, etc. And it never is enough. The “beautiful” or “successful” are just as lost.
Besides, those “beautiful” people are usually the shallowest. We all know it. We are all looking to be beautiful. And we all fail. (Even men addicted to pornography can only do so by numbing their own hearts to the pain of their own inner-unattractiveness.)
Where does God come into all of this?
God knows our deepest problems. Not just our problems of a tough day, or tight finances, or a headache. God knows our deepest problems, and it was from those problems (along with the “light” problems”) that he came to rescue us.
Jesus was the greatest, the most splendid, most glorious. And the most beautiful.
In heaven. But…
When he came to earth, he gave it all up. He became unattractive. “He had no form or majesty that we should look at him, and no beauty that we should desire him” (Is. 53:2).
Why did he give all that up?
Couldn’t he have come to earth as beautiful as all our modern pictures depict him? NO!
Because he came for two purposes: to take the life that we deserve (because of our unattractiveness) and to give us his life that he deserves (in all his glory).
He gave us his beauty.
This is true love. He took any bit of unattractiveness that is in us—any tiny bit that there was—and he put on us his incredible beauty. We are truly beautiful inside and out.
Irene, you are beautiful. BEAUTIFUL!!!!!!!!!! We may have to live temporarily with that cold sore on our lips on that pimple on our nose; but it is momentary. Forever after, beginning now, we are beautiful.
God says so. His opinion is more trustworthy–and longer lasting–than any human’s opinion, be it spouse, parents, or friends.
Sam
Hi Sam,
I thought this post was great. You definitely hit the nail on the head here with the two extremes we often fall into with self forgiveness. It reminds me of a quote I once read, which I cannot find now so I’ll paraphrase: To grow as a Christian one must simultaneously grow in knowledge of one’s own sinfulness, and in knowledge of the goodness of God. Growing too quickly in the first leads to despair, and in the second to presumption.
-Chris
Hi Chris,
Great comment. I love your final quote. In fact, I’m going to repeat it:
“To grow as a Christian one must simultaneously grow in knowledge of one’s own sinfulness, and in knowledge of the goodness of God. Growing too quickly in the first leads to despair, and in the second to presumption.”
Thanks,
Sam
In 1990 I committed this act that I said I would never commit. For 4 long years the guilt was consuming me daily. I felt like the worse human being in the whole world. Then one day, a lady told me of God’s love, how he loved the world so much he gave his only son to die for me. That he took my punishment on himself. I was overwhelmed by His love and right there and then I accepted his forgiveness and His Grace. I can remember to this day the joy, the love I felt. It was so real, I could touch it. The next few weeks I had to remind the devil, myself and people around me that I was forgiven. The price had been paid in full. I was no longer guilty. I had to keep my eyes on Jesus and His sacrifice. That was the only way to keep from looking within and holding on to ugliness. PTL! Jesus is amazing!
Tereza,
Thank you for your incredibly beautiful story.
It’s strange, seemingly inside out or upside down, but most people who truly experience the deep love of God experience it after sensing deep guilt.
I think when we feel relatively guiltless (“hey, I’m a pretty good person”) then the sacrifice of Christ means little. But, when we have real guilt, and THEN we hear of Christ’s sacrifice, we are blown away by his love.
Thank you so much