Forgive Who?

so this evening i went to my ministry meeting at the church that i attend. the ministry that i am involved with is the single's ministry. the church that i belong to is trinity united church of christ. you may know it as "president obama's old church". yeap, that's my church. and i LOVE it too. ok. so when i joined back in january, i decided what the hay? i'll be a part of the single's ministry. meetings are held every tuesday at the church and by "single", we mean unmarried. without making this an entire post about the ministry alone (which could Easily be a post or 2 or 3 by itself), i'll try to keep it "concise". but ummm. if you know me, like Really know me, you know this isn't an easy task for me (conciseness). but all i can do is try right? so i had been attending my meetings pretty regularly after I became a member of tucc and have thoroughly enjoyed my time at these meetings. they are thought-provoking, insightful, informative, and you meet some really cool peeps too. however, the past few months, i have kind of fallen off with the regularity of my attendance due to "life". that might be another post (the whole "life" thing). anyway, so ever since i started attending, topics have varied from joblessness, to sex before marriage, to children out of wedlock, among many other topics and how it affects "us" as single Christians. today we talked about forgiveness.

forgiveness.

according to dictionary.com, forgiveness is "the act of forgiving" or the "disposition or willingness to forgive".

that didn't help much?

okay, well then let's look up forgive on dictionary.com.

forgive: {verb, used with object} "to grant pardon for or remission of (an offense, debt, etc.); absolve." or "to give up all claim on account of; remit (a debt, obligation, etc.)." or "to grant pardon to (a person)." or "to cease to feel resentment against: (to forgive one's enemies)." or "to cancel an indebtedness or liability of (to forgive the interest owed on a loan)." or {verb, used without object} "to pardon an offense or an offender." 

okay. so i think we're pretty clear on the whole forgiveness/forgive thing now right? good.

allow me to set the stage of tonight's meeting for you real quick. we're in a room where we are seated in a circle (reminiscent of a support group or something like that) pretty intimately, with no more than about 15 of us present. the majority of the group is comprised of women (imagine that!), but tonight, the meeting is being led by a man. altogether, there are approximately four men total. the discussion started off pretty slowly because he started off by posing the question "what prevents us from forgiving others"--okay, so maybe you shouldn't quote me on that because this meeting was hours ago, and i've since had a few glasses of wine, BUT it was Something like that...anyway, so people shouted out pretty obvious and appropriate responses: "anger", "frustration", "hurt/pain", etc...makes sense right? yeap, i thought so too. alright so without attempting to go through the entire meeting play by play (because SURELY that's not going to happen accurately), let me get to the part that I felt was quiiiiiiite in-ter-es-tiing, and which inspired this here blog-post.

so the statement was made (and i will not attempt to quote him verbatim, but BASICALLY what he was saying was) that when you really, truly forgive someone--you ought to be able to acknowledge that person in a less than negative (i.e. positive or neutral) way. whether this person is "presented" to you in person, brought up in mere conversation, or you've seen a photo, billboard, or damn newspaper article of this person (okay i added the last two things)--just whenever and however the person is brought to your attention, (s)he should be "acknowledged" once you have forgiven them (per the speaker). let's just say, said person is an "ex" of some sort- an ex-boy/girlfriend, ex-lover, ex-friend, etc. so when the speaker was talking about this "acknowledgement", my understanding (based on what He was saying) was that if you were to see this "ex" out somewhere, you should speak, say hi, hold "short" conversation....even speak to this person on the phone if/when they call in order to "acknowledge" that (s)he is forgiven. um. i disagree. and i disagreed at the meeting too. vehemently. now let me just say this: normally, i don't say shit. i'm an observer. i love watching people and listening to people. i don't HAVE to talk. i mean, i LOVE to talk, but i certainly do not have to. and i also really don't like people "observing" or looking at me (ain't that some shit?), so i tend to stay pretty quiet in these sorts of settings...BUT. i had to say something tonight.

here's my thing. if you forgive someone for the wrong(s) that they have committed against you, why is it necessary to further acknowledge that person? i mean, in your spirit, you've forgiven them right? you've had a pow wow or two with Jesus, let Him know how you feel about the situation, you've gotten it all straightened out with Him, you've even asked Him to forgive the person of their wrongdoings (whether this person believes they're wrong or not), and life as we know it can move the hell on. right? or am i waaaaaay off on this forgiveness thing?

all i'm saying is--i've forgiven MANY a muthaphucka in my day for doing some TRIF'LIN shit to me. and i mean i've REALLY forgiven them. as in, in my heart, in my mind, in my body, and in my spirit- they have been forgiven. i've prayed on their behalf and EVERYTHING (that's big!). HOWEVER. this does not mean if i were to see the person(s) at the grocery store, i'd stop and shoot the shit with them in aisle 8. i'm sorry. i probably will...not.
i wouldn't hold any anger, hurt, feelings of contempt in my heart against them, if i Did see them, but just because i've forgiven them does not make us bffs. nor, in my opinion, does it make it necessary for them to know that i've forgiven them. hell, for all i know they don't even think they've done anything that warrents my forgiveness, right? or maybe i'm not. i mean but really. "acknowledge the person"? ummm...

we did agree, however, that all of this is situational. i mean depending on who it is, what the situation was/is, etc...maybe one Could get to the point to where you'd have no problem telling the person that they have been forgiven, and/or having some sort of communication with them after the forgiveness and healing have occurred. but lets just say it's an ex-boy/girlfriend/lover that you really have absolutely NO intentions of inviting back into your life on ANY level, despite the fact that you have forgiven him/her. is it necessary to let them know they have been forgiven? is it necessary to "acknowledge" them if/when you happen to see them  upon your forgiveness of their wrongdoing(s) against you? well, hell. is it?? i found myself getting pretty annoyed this evening because what i was hearing was, "you know you have truly forgiven someone, when you have first forgiven yourself for your role in the situation, you've talked to God about it, you've allowed the Holy Spirit to work within you (all of which i agree with), AND you're able to acknowledge the "offender" (THIS I DO NOT AGREE WITH!!!!)." my thing was, "why???" why do i have to make it a point to tell this person, "i forgive you" or break my neck to speak to this person just because we happen to share the same space at any given time upon me forgiving them? i mean seriously. nowhere in the above definitions of "forgiveness" or "forgive" did i read Anything about "acknowledging" the offender. did i miss it? is it implied? i don't get it. maybe it's me. personally, i'd prefer to talk to Jesus about it, allow myself time to heal, forgive the offender and then keep it moving. period. is that not okay??

let me know because hell, if that's the case, i got some work to do......