Feel LIKE YOU JUST CAN’T FORGIVE YOURSELF?

Sitting across the table from a middle-aged women, working through some pastoral issues, she finally confessed what was really going on, “I just cannot forgive myself.” This is what was holding her back from moving forward into the next season of her life, with her family and with God. The burden of regrets caused what felt like an insurmountable weight. “Yes,” she said, “I know God forgives; I just can’t forgive myself.”

Maybe you have felt the same. Stuck in that place of regret and shame, knowing all that you have done, but unable to step beyond it. Christian or not, we are often haunted by the past. I think this is a symptom of a much larger cultural shift, a truly ‘modern’ problem.

That problem? We have cast out the One who can actually sooth the tempest in the soul and silence the ghosts.

Forgiving yourself doesn’t work. I know that we have been told (i.e. in Instagram posts and blogs) that we just need to come to terms with our story, or be okay with who we are, and live with no regrets, but that doesn’t help the soul deal with the past mistakes and choices that we have made. This unfortunate illusion, that we should be able to forgive ourselves, pervades the modern psyche, when in reality, we can’t. We don’t get to forgive ourselves because we have no authority to do that.

Forgiveness by its nature is a received thing. Something undeservedly extended to us, from the ones we have offended. Our personal feelings of remorse, shame, guilt, and regret aren’t absolved because I worked through them to the point where – if I am being honest – I have justified them enough not to feel regret. The modern worship of the self as the source truth, value, identity, and love by extension leads to think that we get to forgive ourselves as well. It makes sense. Yet, we are still haunted. We still feel the need to justify. As I said, in the modern secular experiment, we have cast out the One who can actually sooth the tempest in the soul all the while telling ourselves there is no need to feel guilt in the first place, yet we do. So how do we often deal with that? Some of us deny the impact of our past choices on others; some live stuck in the past; others repeat self-destructive behaviours in self pity – a kind of self flagellation – and some others pretend in pride that we have no issues at all.

Here is what I think we need to realize again broadly as a culture, and personally as well: that we need to be humble enough to receive forgiveness from the One who actually can ultimately pardon and, from there, do what we can to reconcile with whom we need to.

First, we need to remember that we are not the ultimate Judge. There is no possible way that you can be. If God forgives (and, in Christ, we are forgiven), then when we say something to the effect of, ‘That’s nice, God, but I just still can’t forgive myself; I will remain in my guilt until I feel it’, than we are saying that we rank higher in judgment than God, that we are in a higher court and can overturn His judgment. You can’t. If God exists, then He is the Judge—no higher court, not even us. And if He declares you forgiven of all of sins – all of them in Jesus – then what we need to do is to receive that reality as the Truth. My subjective feeling of regret needs to be submitted to His unending mercy, and realize that if God himself doesn’t hold me to that failure, why would I hold myself to it? Paul writing to a group of Christians in Rome said that, in Jesus, there is no condemnation (Romans 8:1). None.

So we need to stop playing God and receive His mercy. You are forgiven if you are in Jesus.

You are forgiven.

You are not your failure.

Don’t beat yourself up any longer.

Rise, and live out the kingdom. 

Secondly, where you can, actually make reparation. Go back to the friend, the spouse, the father, the child, the gravesite, and make amends as you can. This is something that I think we don’t value enough. Repent to them and make it right where you can. Call them, write them, repent to them. If, because of time or death, you cannot make amends, do what you can do with where you are. Not to make up for past failure. But to live out your forgiveness from God, which always produces transformation.

Lastly, if you live haunted, let Jesus silence the ghosts. We need forgiveness. Our souls know it. If you haven’t received the mercy of God in Jesus, come now and let the freedom of his grace produce a new kind of life in you. Vague spirituality doesn’t deal with the weight adequately. Religious observance doesn’t lift the weight, but only adds more burden to an already heavy soul. Secular morality does nothing to comfort; we know we have transgressed. Jesus deals with the sin and gives mercy to the sinner, through no act of merit, but sheer grace. This is freedom.