Overcoming Shame: A 9-Day Video SeriesSample

Forgiveness is the honest acknowledgment of wrongdoing and the vulnerable naming of any doubts about your self-worth that have resulted from feeling demeaned, and then making the choice to release yourself from resentment by forgiving the one who has harmed you. You decide not to return hurt for hurt, independent of whether the other person is even aware of your decision to forgive them.

This is not excusing what happened or engaging in some form of naive denial about it. True forgiveness requires the courageous self-awareness to tell the truth about what happened, how demeaned you feel, and what you are choosing to do about it—forgive.

Jesus knew all of this. His psychologically brilliant teaching on forgiveness cuts right to the heart of the matter. He said, “Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye?” (Matthew 7:3).

He got it. He knew that the real root of resentment was not what the other person did, and it didn’t really have much to do with her or him as a person either. Sure, what the other person did was bad, but that is only a speck compared to the plank you are carrying around causing you to resent that person—feeling demeaned.

And Jesus knew that this was only a matter of perspective. As things look to you in your own eyes, you think you see the problem clearly, but the truth is your plank is completely preventing you from seeing the real problem at all.

Once you are able to see that the real problem you have is with yourself and not the other person, the possibility of genuine forgiveness is close at hand.