Forgiveness vs. Trust

Facebook is an interesting thing. It enables you to connect with all kinds of people from your past - friends and enemies. Thankfully, on Facebook, you have an "easy button." You can just hit "ignore" when a an enemy soldier requests your friendship. But the interesting part, is the feelings that even the request stirs up. You can hit "ignore" to the request. But you can't always just hit "ignore" to the feelings that stir up in your heart.

When I was a teenager, there was a certain family that totally had it out for my family. We're talking, getting rid of my dad's job, vandalizing our house, slandering us to our friends...I could go on. It was horrible. Our house was egged, our security lighting was shot out, a car window was shot out, prowlers were caught as they ran to this family's van. My tire spicket was bent to not hold air, and then I was chased through a dark parking lot while I tried to escape in my disabled vehicle. My friends all dropped me, except three. My dad was forced to resign his job, our family had to leave our church...all the while this family laughed, enjoyed their pleasures, and embraced the friends they had stolen.

This last week, a member of said family requested my friendship on Facebook. Honestly, I can't remember the last time I thought of them. I really believed I had totally forgiven, forgotten, and moved on. In my blissful ignorance, I preferred to believe that they had probably repented and changed...and if they had the opportunity would beg for forgiveness. I have heard of trials they have faced in the years since, and figured that their compassion had probably deepened. But when the Facebook request hit my inbox, I suddenly felt slammed into a wall of anger, frustration, fear, and disbelief.

Since this person didn't just request my friendship, but sent a message, I decided to assume the best. Perhaps they had completely turned around and were looking up all their past victims on Facebook to repent and clear their conscience of their offenses. So, I messaged back and hinted at my surprise and poor memories of our past, giving opportunity to divulge an apology. However, when my comments were meant with silly sarcasm, I realized that this person was at best completely clueless or at worst, still looking to devour. So, I hit the easy button: ignore.

But as I mentioned before, you can't just ignore the whirpool stirred up in your heart. So I was forced to confront and deal with reality and process some things about forgiveness. Here are some things I have processed and a few new that I have learned:

1. Forgiviness and Trust are not the same thing.
A. Forgiveness doesn't require anyone else's repentance. Forgiveness is an act of your own heart. It is accepting God's offer to heal your heart and teflon coat it from bitterness. It is the refusal to allow the hurtful acts to damage your soul. It allows you to extend agape love to the one that hurt you, even if the relationship isn't healed enough to extend phileo love. Forgiveness keeps your heart soft towards the Lord and towards the possibilities of restored relationship with the offender - towards the possibilities of being able to offer phileo. Forgiveness is a heart action - an attitude.
B. Trust depends on the offender's repentance. Trust discerns if the offender is a safe person or not. Do they intend to hurt and damage? Or were they simply ignorant? Or maybe not ignorant but completely repentant and desire to be completely restored before you and the Lord? Trust is an activity. Trust actively removes the armour that guards your heart from someone. Trust allows the offender to see and have access to your vulnerable parts. Trust extends phileo love.
2. Forgiveness should come before trust. Allowing God to heal the heart, coat it as He needs to needs to come before trust. Trust should come after full repentance on the part of the offender and after the Lord has prompted you that it is safe to move towards the restoration of a phileo relationship - rather than continuing to simply be a channel of His agape.
3. When you have forgiven someone, and they have not repented, most likely, they will offend you again. The memory of the offense often feels like a repeat offense, when there has been no repentance, and forgiveness has to be extended with every memory. This is the meaning of Jesus' reference to forgiving 70x7 - for every offense.

So in the end, I've been working through forgiving the repeat offense caused by stirred up memories on the part of an unrepentant offender, but choosing to continue to respectfully serve as a channel of God's agape love, rather than offer to open up a phileo relationship.

What is the difference?

Practically speaking for this situation. Here are some examples:

Agape - Choosing to not give names when telling my story, or even the location of the country this happened in since we lived in more than one place during those years; choosing to not publicize the actual volitile words that I struggle with saying when I rethink that time in my life; choosing to not reply to the person with ugliness and accusation; choosing to not ask all our past mutual friends to make a choice between me and them; choosing to reply to the person's initial message with kind inquisitiveness, giving them the benefit of the doubt (assuming the best until proven otherwise); choosing not to repay vengance, but let the Lord handle it.

Not Extending Phileo - not allowing this person to have access to my personal profile, blog address, e-mail address, etc; choosing to not divulge information about my extended family - even basic details of location or marital status; choosing to not require an apology when it isn't offered; choosing to not require them to be someone they can't be, for my benefit.

Anyway, here's to the "ignore" button on Facebook! ...and here's to the tenderness of God's love and forgivness that makes all of this possible!