Unity Spiritual Life Center Blog

Ernest Hemingway tells the story about a young man who wrongs his father and then runs away from home to Madrid. Out of great love for his son, the father posts ads in a half dozen or so Madrid newspapers.

"Paco, meet me at the Hotel Montana, 12 noon Tuesday. All is forgiven. Papa."

When the father gets to the hotel, he finds 650 young men named Paco waiting for their fathers.

Forgiveness, it seems, is a universal human need. At its core it is the need to be pardoned, to be released from the emotional strain of having wronged someone or having been wronged by someone. At its essence it means going from bitter to better.

Forgiveness requires an emotional correction. It is an empathic response to a wrong doing. It constitutes an act of extraordinary consideration which oftentimes seems much too lenient, if not down right foolish. But forgiveness is not a doormat philosophy. Forgiveness doesn't mean consent. Forgiveness is an act of release. Essentially it is emotional amnesty. It is truly going from bitter to better… from adversary to ambassador.

That's what Fiorello La Guardia, Mayor of New York did when he relieved a judge for the evening and took the bench himself in one of the poorest wards of the city. A case came up where a grandmother had been arrested for stealing bread to feed her grandchildren.

La Guardia told her, "Unfortunately, you are guilty, and I've got to sentence you. I'm fining you $10 or 10 days in jail."

And then LaGuardia pulled a $10 dollar bill out of his own pocket and gave it to the astonished grandmother.

"I'm going to forgive you this time," said the Mayor, "but I don't want to see you here again."

Then he fined everybody in the courtroom for helping to create a city where grandmothers have to steal bread to feed their grandchildren.

The bailiff passed the hat and the woman left the courthouse that evening both reprimanded and thankful. Not only had her fine been paid, but she left with $47.50 in her purse.

"We must forgive as we would be forgiven," says Emile Cady in her classic Unity book, Lessons in Truth. "To forgive does not mean to arrive at a place of indifference… To forgive is to give some definite good in return for a wrong experienced."

"Emotional wounds cannot heal until we forgive, "says Rosemary Ellen Guiley, in her book Prayer Works. "When we forgive, we experience a tremendous healing of body, mind, and spirit. It doesn't matter whether we forgive a fresh wound or an old hurt; the liberating effect of forgiveness is the same."

Jesus was asked by Peter in Matt. 18:21-22: "Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother when he sins against me? Up to seven times?" Jesus answered, "I tell you, not seven times, but seventy times seven."

The Christ's answer in verse 22 is somewhat startling. If taken literally it appears we are being asked to forgive as much as 490 times. But we're missing the point if we think Jesus is talking about a literal number.

Forgiving someone – or asking someone for forgiveness is an extraordinary human act of compassion and surrender. And yet it is something we must do for our own good…for our own sanity… for our own peace of mind. Forgiveness frees us from the past and keeps feelings of revenge, resentment, and anger from eating at us, from cannibalizing us.

There is another, more profound, meaning for forgiveness. Metaphysically, forgiveness means giving up the false for the true. Another way of saying that is it means giving up our fixation with fiction. The kind of fiction we're referring to is our attachment to anything which blocks our spiritual growth.

And if it takes 7 times, or 700 times, or 7,000,000 times – to give up a false belief, to give up a false conclusion, to give up a self-defeating course of action or long-standing resentment, then that's the amount of time Spirit gives us to get it right.

And getting it right means forgiving it right… right from the get go. That means going from bitter into better.