Are we FARR from healing?
Are we FARR from healing?
What will it take to heal from the turmoil we see as a people?
Some of us think healing begins with forgiveness. To some it is as simple as saying “I am sorry” or “I apologize” and then moving on as if the thing never happened.
The truth is it is not as simple as the word “sorry”.
Healing begins with forgiveness, but forgiveness does not mean you do not have to be accountable or responsible.
We still need to accept that our actions had outcomes and those outcomes require some sort of payment on our end. Our actions have consequences both for us and for others.
Forgiveness demands repentance. Repentance is the desire and commitment to turn away from the attitude and action which needed forgiveness.
“If we move on without forgiveness, accountability, responsibility, and repentance, then healing did not happen.”
If we move on without forgiveness, accountability, responsibility, and repentance, then healing did not happen. We conduct surface like actions with no deep change. And as a reminder, we are then FARR from healing.
If we move on pretending forgiveness was enough, then we position ourselves to easily slip back into the action and attitudes which require forgiveness.
This is what happened to America. We never healed from racist attitudes, and we moved on before true accountability, responsibility, or repentance occurred. As a result, the year 2020, marked with the stress of a pandemic, was filled with people who slipped so easily into racist attitudes. They stood proudly by such attitudes and believed in the deepest places of their heart that they were right to hate someone because they had a different skin color.
Some of those who hated were Christians. As a Christian woman, I am terribly sorry because those people showed the world the attitude of their heart meant more to them than the love of Christ.
The Example of King David
For the Christian, one of our best examples of forgiveness with accountability, responsibility and repentance is King David. For selfishly coveting another man’s wife and killing that man, he was forgiven, but the consequences of his action led to the death of his child.
I can only assume his heart always carried this knowledge as he owned his role as the author of the child’s death. In the Bible, we see he repented for this sin. What we do not see is him repeating the action of coveting a man’s wife.
In addition to the story of King David, Jesus himself tells us of the importance of repentance in Luke 17:3 NKJV:
“Take heed to yourselves. If your brother sins against you, rebuke him; and if he repents, forgive him.”
Jesus is touching on accountability and responsibility in these verses. You can only repent of that for which you feel accountable and responsible.
In the end, we are FARR from healing. We need to spread the message. We cannot heal until we forgive. And we cannot completely forgive without the recipe of accountability and responsibility with repentance. May we continue to practice this in our own lives.