First of all, I want to give a big thank you to my good
friend Bob Ruble for suggesting this week’s topic! What’s the difference
between forgiving and excusing?
Let’s face it: we’re going to get hurt by other people. It’s
kind of like death and taxes; no matter what we do, we can’t escape it. It’s
not a matter of if; it’s a matter of when. When we get hurt, how are we going
to respond? Are we going to excuse the person or are we going to forgive the
person.
Excusing Another Person
What does it mean to excuse someone? The best way I can
think to explain excusing is to offer you a recent real life example.
Two nights ago, one of my hockey teams competed in a very
intense game, but we managed to come out with a win. One of the guys on my
team, who is a good friend of mine, is good friends with one of the guys on the
other team. One of our rituals after each game is to shake each other’s hands
and say “Good game!” But during our handshakes, my friend’s friend shook my
friend’s hand, but didn’t say anything. He didn’t even make eye contact with
him.
When we got back to the locker room, my friend expressed to
me that he felt hurt by his friend’s behavior. He felt that the least his
friend could’ve done was to say “Good game.” In response, I said, “Well, the
game was pretty intense, especially near the end, and your friend is very
competitive, so he was probably still in his game mode mindset. He probably
didn’t intend to hurt you.” As I later reflected on my comment, I realized that
what I had done was make an excuse for my friend’s friend in order to get him
off the hook. This is what it looks like to excuse someone.
In this example, my response to my friend expressed a
commonly held principle in Western culture: the intentionality of the person
performing the action determines whether the person is at fault. If my friend’s
friend had intentionally been rude to my friend, then he would’ve been at fault.
But in my response, I claimed that he wasn’t at fault because he hadn’t
intentionally been rude to my friend.
When someone is at fault, there is restitution which needs
to be made. In this example, if my friend would’ve determined that his friend
was at fault, meaning that his friend was intentionally rude to him, then he
probably would’ve sought some sort of compensation such as an apology and/or a
commitment to not behave that way next time. But if he reasoned, like I did,
that his friend wasn’t intentionally rude to him, then he wouldn’t have needed
to seek restitution since no restitution needed to be made.
To excuse someone, then, is to claim that a person who hurt
you doesn’t and will never owe you anything, not because you canceled or
overlooked the debt, but because it never existed in the first place.
Forgiving Another Person
Now let’s take a look at what it means to forgive another
person.
Going back to my hockey game story, let’s say my friend had
concluded that his friend had been intentionally rude to him, meaning that his
friend is now indebted to him. My friend would have two options: (1) he can
seek compensation for the debt or (2) he can release his friend from the debt.
Option 2 is what is meant by forgiveness.
My observations overwhelmingly indicate that the majority of
people who believe they are owed a debt choose option 1 over option 2. I can’t
tell you how many times I’ve heard people say, “I’m not going to forgive so and
so until he apologizes to me.” To be candid, that’s not forgiveness.
Forgiveness isn’t something you give after a person compensates you;
forgiveness is only forgiveness if it has been given without receiving compensation
from the person at fault.
In the Bible, Jesus told a parable to illustrate this point.
There was a man who had accumulated six billion dollars in debt! That’s a lot
of money! When the lender called the man to request repayment, the man of course
didn’t have the money to repay the debt. Instead of foreclosing on his house
and taking all of his possessions, the lender did the unthinkable: he released the
man of every penny of the debt without seeking any compensation.[1] He
didn’t even expect the man to say, “Thank you!” This is what it looks like to
forgive a person who has hurt you.
Conclusion
In conclusion, the difference between excusing and forgiving
a person is determined by whether a debt is owed. To excuse another person is
to claim that he or she never owed you a debt. To forgive another person is to
acknowledge that he or she owed you a debt, but you decided to release the
person from the debt.
This leaves us with a question to answer: Is it better to
forgive or better to excuse another person? Check back next week for my answer
to this question.
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