Levels of Forgiveness

In preparing for the message I will be delivering on Sunday, I have spent some time thinking about how to differentiate levels of forgiveness. The goal is to help people look at what they believe forgiveness to be and invite them to consider practicing perhaps a higher level of forgiveness in their daily lives. Below is a snapshot of four levels of forgiveness I have experienced in my life.

Level 1
I forgive you for what you did to me…but I won’t forget.
 Key belief: Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.
 The sign: I still get upset anytime I think about it
 Underlying belief: You were wrong and you are going to hell!
Level 2
I forgive you for what you did to me…because I am supposed to.
 Key belief: The Master said, “Turn the other cheek.”
 The sign: I still get a little upset when I think about it, but I feel a twinge of guilt because I believe I shouldn’t be feeling this way.
 Underlying belief: As a good Christian, I am supposed to forgive and I am supposed to love my enemies. And you were wrong and you are going to hell!
Level 3
I forgive you for what you did to me…because you were just calling for love.
 Key belief: I see everything as an act of love or a call for love and I respond with love.
 The sign: When I think about the incident, I feel a little sad for you, and hopeful that you may choose differently next time.
 Underlying belief: We are all spiritual beings created by the Divine. We do unkind things out of fear, out of a belief in scarcity and lack But this does not change who we are. We are just calling for love.
Level 4
I forgive you for what I DID TO MYSELF.
 Key belief: I have projected this for my healing.
 The sign: We seek to judge no one. We seek to change no one. Because we know there is no one out there.
Underlying belief: We are really homein God. The life we seem to be living is just a dream made up bya fearful mind. We are the creator ofthe dream, pretending to be a body in the dream. All thefigures in our dreamcome from us. They are acting outfor us.There is no injustice in the world, because we arecreating it all. Why do we create it? Sowe can blame someone else for what we are doing to ourselves. The ones we see and want to judge aresimply representative ofareas in us that needhealing. We heal by forgiving the imagesin the dream. If they are not guilty,then we are not guilty. As we forgiveothers, we forgive ourselves for what hasn’t really happened. And all that is left is the innocence of theHoly Spirit – our memory of our truehome.
My experience has been that I flip-flop between the levels, sometimes in the same week, often in the same day, same hour, and even the same conversation! Making practicing forgiveness a daily part of my life has helped to make me more aware of the daily acts of merciless judgment that peppers my thoughts, words and deeds. Interestingly enough: one way I know I'm getting better is that I'm seeing my judgment more often!

I welcome your thoughts on these four levels...especially before Sunday!

In Joy,
Michael