One time, in one of the hardest seasons of my life, a friend sent me an image of the book, Total Forgiveness, by R.T. Kendall. I felt my stomach churn at the title, the very last subject I wanted to consider—and the ticklings of offense. Why must she put it before my eyes at this moment?
When I finally braved myself to open it, his book felt like a pulse that jolted me alive. His concept of forgiveness was radical. There are moments today when I return to his words and find them radical still, and perhaps too extreme, possible to misapply. And yet, forgiveness is radical. Undeniably so.
Kendall prefaced his book with a story of a harm—which he did not disclose—so indescribable that his only option forward was to forgive… totally. He then grounded this concept in the redemption and reconciliation Joseph experienced after forgiving the brothers who sold him into slavery. Joseph, in fact, not only verbally forgave his brothers but honored, blessed, and drew them—and all their families—into the prosperity of Egypt. He demonstrated what Kendall called “total forgiveness.”
If I were a preacher, I might implore you now to consider all of the ways forgiveness blessed not only Joseph but his family and their families to come. I might describe to you the redemption he experienced, reuniting with his father and younger brother, and the fulfillment of his prophetic dreams. I might pose that it was through a lifestyle of forgiveness that Joseph arrived at a place of royalty, for he had to walk out forgiveness not only with his family but Potiphar’s wife, who falsely accused him; Potiphar, who believed the accusations; the Pharaoh’s chief cupbearer who forgot him in prison, and others. In fact, perhaps he even walked out forgiveness with a God who he felt permitted or initiated these situations.
As I ponder this passage and Kendall’s work, however, I’m not sure forgiveness requires convincing. I feel, in fact, that something in us already aches for the truth of forgiveness. If the Holy Spirit is water to our bodies, then forgiveness is like air. Even if you bubble-wrapped yourself, saw no one, and lived in a paradise home, it is impossible to avoid harm in this life, intentional or unintentional. And when harm comes, sometimes the path forward—the only path that truly cleanses, replenishes, and liberates us from the pain in our lives—is forgiveness.
Perhaps one of the only adequate ways to understand the essentialness of forgiveness is through the experience of being forgiven. It’s in the tears of a husband in the secular song “It’s Quiet Uptown,” when his wife takes his hand after his affair and the loss of their son. The ears of the Ravensbruck concentration camp guard when he hears, “I forgive you brother, with all of my heart,” from a former prisoner. The hands of my friend as, week after week, she washes the feet of her aging father, who caused deep wounds in her life.
It’s in my own heart as I gaze at the freshly vacuumed carpet of my church, singing “What can wash away my sins?” remembering the harm I caused another dear person through my own woundedness. Some things are too precious to describe, the mercy of being forgiven one of them.
Like faith, forgiveness is rarely a feeling, more often a choice. When she forgave that former S.S. guard, Corrie Ten Boom explained that she put her hand in his, prepared to force herself to speak the words, when the love of God for him poured through her.
According to Kendall, such forgiveness is “a life sentence,” a posture of the heart we must work towards, act upon, and maintain. His extreme proposition of knowing we have totally forgiven someone consists of seven steps:
Don’t bring up past harm.
Ensure they don’t feel fear around you.
Don’t wait for them to feel sorry.
Let them save face—provide dignity.
Don’t expose their failure as a weapon.
Remember it is a life sentence—that is, you do it as long as you live.
Pray for them—that God will bless them.
His ideas are extreme and, as always, must be walked out with wisdom. He notes that forgiveness does not always mean reconciliation with a person, especially someone who causes ongoing harm. Forgiveness does not require forgetting or erasing a past history of context for a person. It does not mean keeping someone from experiencing the consequences of discipline or the law that protects others from similar harm. And certainly forgiveness does not mean avoiding the necessary healing process for pain, which may involve anger and grief.
Yet at some point, more than being forgiven, forgiving may be what we need to resuscitate our lives. And Kendall suggests that the degree to which we forgive is the level of freedom we will experience. Indeed, many staff at Global have testified to how a person they ministered to received healing after forgiving someone.
Can we pray for God’s best to pour out upon the one who hurt us the most?
Total forgiveness is changing my life. I say “is,” because there are still moments where unforgiving parts of my heart float to the surface. I’ve learned that sometimes I have to sit with the pain these parts hold—the memories, the emotions, the lost dreams—before they can release the harm they experienced.
While reading Kendall’s book, I remember sitting on my heels and focusing my heart on the person who had harmed me, bringing the pain to the center of my attention, and then releasing the offense. Later, it took choice after choice in our shared community to praise in worship, to reconcile with the parties I could reconcile with, and to celebrate the blessing I watched befall them, for our God is a merciful God.
And yet, after all that, I still feel that the person who benefited the most was me. Each act of forgiveness felt like tying a balloon to a burden on my shoulders and letting it float away.
Total forgiveness probably looks different for every person. I share these stories not to say, “Do it this way,” but to affirm what your heart and spirit already know to be true: the freedom that comes through forgiveness, of having iniquities hurled into the sea—whether yours or another’s you’ve borne (Micah 7:19).
READ MORE:
Hogue, Rodney. Forgiveness: releasing offense, breaking bitterness, and living free. Self-published, 2008.