So we know that we’re supposed to love one another, but does that mean that we just ignore how others hurt us and we continue experiencing the pain? Many of us think if we forgive then we are not supposed to seek justice or in other words, forgive and forget. But what does it look like to forgive and seek justice simultaneously?
Today we’re going to tackle this in three main points. Number one, we’re going to talk about forgiveness and a desire for justice can coexist. Number two, we’re going to talk about what forgiveness is not. And then third, we’re going to talk about ways to pursue justice.
When it comes to justice and forgiveness, do you lean more towards one than the other?
This topic is very interesting to me because God is both just and forgiving and he had to reconcile them. When I’m looking at this, I’m looking at it from my perspective and I always would prefer to be forgiven over having justice sought for myself. So I want forgiveness. Forget justice. When I look at it from a standpoint of other people—when somebody has wronged me, it’s easy to be well, “I want them to pay for what they did. I want there to be some kind of retribution or redemption in this process.” So it’s a really hard thing, but I think I would have to go in the camp of leaning towards forgiveness.
Forgiveness and a desire for justice can co-exist
The definition for justice is restoring what is right, including the victim and the victimizer. It can involve judgment and consequences for those who have done wrong and it requires action to change, reform, and repent. So let’s just set the foundation for what justice actually is.
If I had to sum that up in one word, it’s restitution. And when somebody else hurts us, a lot of us long to hear them say “I’m sorry” and actually mean it, right? It’s them having to recognize that their actions caused me deep harm or slight harm in some instances. And we want restitution, we want to be made whole again. And I think that’s kind of that head of justice, but I think it’s also important to understand what justice isn’t and that if we don’t come at justice with forgiveness as the one who is hurt, it actually is more in the lines of vengeance.
And God said, “Vengeance is mine.” It’s not ours. So we can’t always seek justice on our own. We may be the one who puts the process in motion, who speaks up, goes to somebody and says this happened, but then we have to turn it over. That’s why we have a justice system. What a cruel world would it be if we just said, “Well victim, it’s your responsibility to go seek all of this restitution and retribution from whoever harmed you.” Then it would be mayhem and free for all. So there’s got to be a balance there. As I was trying to wrestle with this topic, I thought about old Western movies. So many of them are vigilantes: You came into my house, you killed my family, and I’m going to go hunt you down. There was no law in the old west. I’m going to hunt you down and “make it right,” but I use “make it right” in air quotes because is that really justice? That person being murdered for murdering my family? Is that changing their heart? Is that really redemptive?
There’s so many nuances to this. There are things in our world that are unjust. There are wars, torture, all kinds of things on this side of eternity that will never be made right. You think about the story of Jesus. It wasn’t just for him to be murdered. That was not fair. Justice is fairness, equitable, like standing. And so where I landed with coexisting and forgiveness is: Forgiveness is a decision that you make and a pursuit that you go towards, in my opinion. Even if justice can’t be served, we can still desire justice if there is a wrong that was done. Some of the things I’ve been through in my life are not just and they’ve never been made right and I wanted them to be made right, but I have to see that sometimes even in justice, injustice provides an opportunity for something else.
I don’t think you can have forgiveness unless you understand the justice of it, the infraction of it. So these two things have to coexist. You have to see that there is a wrong in order to approach forgiveness. In my life growing up in the church, I was taught you jump to forgiveness right away without wanting to know what fair would’ve been.
I think you hurry past forgiveness and you make forgiveness the end point. Back to the comment of justice without forgiveness is vengeance; It’s just me coming to seek my revenge on you. But if I’m forgiving, that doesn’t necessarily mean that’s the end of the story and then everybody moves on and the perpetrator lives to do it another day. And I think that is quite frankly where the church has some issues because they want to make forgiveness the end-all-be-all. But even God himself says we are going to stand in judgment for what we have done. He’s forgiven us, but there’s still a judgment aspect and there is a way to reconcile those two so they coexist. We have to be mindful that forgiveness and justice really go hand in hand and they can’t be separated from each other.
Part of this point is dispelling the idea that there’s one or the other. they really do feed into each other.
Let’s dive a little deeper into what forgiveness is not so we can identify what it is.
Forgiveness is not excusing the behavior. And that’s where I can tend to go. I tend to follow that path and see where it takes me. Well actually, I don’t see where it takes me. I just do it and I’m burying it and I’m gone and away from it and I don’t have to hurt from it. And it’s really easy to trivialize that offense. There is no justice in that because I’m not even remembering that it happened or realizing the hurt that it caused. I’m just excusing it, putting it behind me so that I don’t have to deal with it anymore. And so it sweeps everything under the rug.
You’re pretending you weren’t hurt rather than sitting in the pain of the hurt and then being willing to process through and move through it. And I would put this other one in the same bucket as that. It is not just saying “I forgive you” because I think those two can go hand in hand really easily. Pretend Marissa, you say you’re sorry for kicking me. And I say, “It’s okay. Thank you for apologizing. I forgive you.” And I didn’t even give myself time to sit there and say, “Well, that really hurt. Your shoes hurt.” I think those two things can go hand in hand. That’s not to say that saying “I forgive you” doesn’t matter and shouldn’t happen; it absolutely should when it’s the right time and when it is true.
Anybody who listened last year would know that we referenced the Tim Keller book last year, “Forgive: Why Should I? And How Can I?” Here are some of the things he says: That it’s not seeking revenge or paying the person back or just simply refraining from certain actions. It’s not having hate in our hearts. It’s not bearing a grudge.
Last year, I talked about an individual at work who I was struggling with and I have since found a different job, but found out recently that he was let go. And there were some people in my life who knew how much I had struggled with this individual and then he was let go.
And they were like, “Well, it’s about time.” No, I’m not going to have those feelings because I have forgiven him. And that’s the saddest thing. People losing their jobs is a big deal. And I don’t wish that on him, and I’m not going to bear that. I reached out to him, texted him, and we ended up having a great telephone conversation that I think was healing for both him and myself because I wasn’t willing to celebrate his calamity just because he had hurt me at one point. I don’t want him to be hurting now just because he hurt me at a different time.
Look at my life and the things that happened with my ex 18.5 years ago. I look back and I wanted things to be made right, they weren’t. But I can honestly say I don’t want ill for my ex. I really don’t. And that doesn’t mean that I didn’t want justice, and it doesn’t mean that justice was served even. It just means that I have actually stepped into forgiveness and I don’t want the worst for her.
I want to make two points about what forgiveness is not. It’s not a weakness. And to your point, Elizabeth, it’s not excusing or diminishing. And it’s not just rolling over. I think there’s an appropriate time for anger. There’s an appropriate time for realizing there’s a refraction. It’s not a weakness. And it’s also not a feeling necessarily. It’s not, “Okay, just because there’s an apology, I’m not going to still have big feelings about it.” It is not just a feeling. Part of that is me not talking badly about them behind their backs. If I am truly forgiving you, if there was just a feeling, then there’s no action that I’m required to do. But if I’m actively engaging and I’m going to choose not to talk about you even though I want to—because somehow that makes me feel better about myself … I choose not to revel in your calamity. That takes an active decision on my part to be doing something differently or not doing something as opposed to just having a feeling.
Would you say that talking bad about someone and reliving it over and over is someone’s subconscious way of trying to get justice?
I think so. Let’s say Robert was to do something to me and I go directly to Robert and he says, “Oh, I’m so sorry.” But in the background I’m like, “Hey Elizabeth, you’ll never believe what Robert did.” Some of that is because I’m trying to sabotage your opinion of him by picking me over him. So I’m seeking that justice for that little bit and now Elizabeth is siding with me and maybe doesn’t love Robert quite as much as she used to because there’s a little bit of justice that I can feel to be done. And I think we see that done time and a time again where parents will play kids off of another parent. That’s a huge deal. There is not forgiveness there.
I still see that as vengeance, not even justice.
I know your story pretty well and everything that you went through with your girls. Your ex wasn’t in the girls’ life. She would show up here and there, but for the most part, absent. And there’s no justice in that, at least at face level. How heart wrenching and gut wrenching for a child to have to grow up without one of their parents by choice. But do you think that you have been able to find the silver lining? Because I would say there is actually some justice in that your girls were protected from their mom and so that allows for more openness and forgiveness.
I say this a little cautiously because it has taken me years to get to this place of forgiveness, but yes, I can absolutely see. Earlier, I perceived it was unjust by all legal accounts and psychological hurt. But in some ways it was grace. You know what I mean? Jesus’ death was not just, but it was grace. When I look at my story, two things come out of the injustice. One is me working towards healing and being a more integrated person. That’s a gift I don’t know I would’ve gone to if it wasn’t for the injustice that I faced. And second, this idea that now I can see that if that was a constant in the girls’ lives, it could have ended much worse. And I want to be careful about this, I don’t want to diminish anybody’s big feelings or big experience with betrayal or whatever it is. I’m not saying, “Hey, just look on the bright side.” And I know you’re not either, but I’m just saying that sometimes when we get it in the rear view mirror a little bit further, justice can look like grace.
Let’s talk a little bit more about not pursuing justice out of vengeance.
With Jax, I think about times that we’ve been out throwing a baseball or football and maybe I throw the ball a little too hard. But he was in this habit where I would throw it and either he would miss it or I would throw it too hard and it’d scare him. And he would throw it back at me really hard, really horribly and be like, “Ha ha, that’s what you get.” And it’s a silly example, I know. But that’s what satisfying your anger and the desire to see the wrongdoer suffer feels like. It feels like, and I know Marissa, you have a lot to say about this, but I know that’s not healthy and that’s exactly what he’s doing or has done. He doesn’t really do it anymore.
I think it’s human nature to be like, “I have anger, I want to go somewhere. And I don’t want it to stay inside of me, so I’m going to throw that baseball back at you and hope it hurts you.” It’s been seven and a half years since my husband died and shortly before he died, our marriage was really rocky. There were confessions of infidelity, there was emotional and psychological abuse. It was very, very, very difficult. He and I were separated at the time and then I, out of the blue, got a phone call that he was dead. So it went from tension (but I still loved him) to “He’s gone.” And I remember in that first week, when you don’t sleep, no matter how much you want to and how many drugs you take, thinking that there is no part of his death that makes what he did okay and now I just have more hurt.
There’s this vengeance because his death was related, in some ways to what he had been putting the family through. It didn’t fix it, it didn’t make my pain any less. In fact, it made it worse. And there was this realization for me (and I think that’s where some of my curiosity in the subject of justice and forgiveness comes from) that no matter what that other person suffers, it is never going to make me feel better or take away the pain that I felt because tit for tat just leaves you with tit and tat. It does not resolve. Two wrongs, don’t make a right. That’s why they say that. It’s not like math where you can multiply and get a positive. It’s subtraction. And so I think getting to that point and really being able to see that has been extremely helpful for me because there is no level of vengeance that will fix what was done no matter what it is.
So then if vengeance can’t fix it, sometimes we might just seek to have control. In this case with Bill, there’s no more control to be had, but it can be a desire of ours. “Well, I’m going to now micromanage you, micro punish you and hold you under a thumb.” I think if our kids hurt us, we may be more likely to do it because we have a power dynamic that allows us to do that. And especially as single parents, we have to be careful we are not doing that with our children when they hurt us that we’re not saying, “Okay, well go clean your room. Go clean out the garage too because I want to make you pay for what you did” as opposed to when we’re doing discipline out of love.
You said something along the lines of pursuing justice out of love. Dig a little deeper into that because the two don’t seem super compatible.
“It’s our job to help perpetrators see their wrongdoing out of love for them, love for potential future victims, love for the human community, and love for God. The only way this is possible is if you forgive as you are seeking justice” (Tim Keller). I think it’s really hard to think of somebody who has hurt us and think, “I am going to respond in love to them right now.” When somebody hurts us as much as Bill, my first husband, did to me and my kids, it’s really hard to look at him and say, “I’m going to forgive you in love because I love you.” I think we have to realize that in that instance, love is not a feeling. Love is a decision and it’s an action. And it is something that we do out of obedience to God where he calls us to act in love. So it’s not that all of a sudden I feel romantically interested or I just feel that all of this goodwill towards this person. It is more of a “God loved me, and out of love for him, I’m going to obey him, and he calls me to love others and therefore this is going to be an act I do” both for the “others” who could be potential victims and for the love of this person. And sometimes potential victims could be our children if we’re talking about a spouse. And I love my children. It’s really easy to see that. It’s really easy to act out of love for them. Sometimes it’s harder to act out of love for somebody who we see as hurting our kids. That’s a really, really hard concept—are you sure you want me to love that person? But yes, God calls us to love our enemies. Jesus loved Judas who betrayed him, he loved you and me who have betrayed and hurt so many people in our lives. I’m really curious to get to heaven and ask Jesus if he felt loved towards Judas. Was it a decisive thing or did he actually benevolently feel love for his betrayer? Especially while he was dying on the cross.
I have a really hard time having any sense of love for people that get off the hook or have abused others. But those of you who know me or have been listening long enough, you know that I was sexually abused as a child and l call it a “black ink blot on my life that has 0% love in it.” My counselor and I just talked about it last week because it’s definitely a spot that is showing up in my life now. There’s zero goodness, there’s zero love in that black hole in my life. There’s no goodness from God. I don’t see the goodness of God, I don’t see the love from God in that, I don’t see the love for myself in that, and I certainly don’t see love for the perpetrator. And so this point for me is really hard to comprehend and wrap my head around. Doesn’t mean I won’t get there someday and I’m open to that, but it makes my stomach turn to think about acting in any sort of way out of love for my perpetrator. I mean, just right now my stomach is turning. It is disgusting to me. God knows my heart in this.
I get what you’re saying and I appreciate your vulnerability there because as Christians, sometimes we just diminish that and just go, “Well, I’m going to say the right thing.” But what I love about that is, there is a little Elizabeth that wants justice and is holding that and the gravity of that. Honestly, I think the only way you can actually move towards forgiveness or move towards love in a bigger concept is if you understand the wrong.
And he died a few years ago. I don’t know if I’ll ever wrap my head around the justice piece with that. Maybe I will. We’ll see. But I do hope to find peace with it at some point.
This really highlights how we may know what we are supposed to do, but doing what we are supposed to do can be really difficult and it can be an act of will that takes our entire life to get it done. And sometimes even that’s not long enough. So just knowing that we need to be forgiving does not make that easy. I also think that there’s this additional concept of restorative justice, and I think both of you have parts of your story where you may not get all of the restorative justice that you’re seeking. This focuses on healing, reconciliation and transformation. Just because I seek justice with somebody and have forgiven them does not mean I will ever be reconciled with them. But that is the ultimate goal.
And if you think about it in a daily relationship, call it a marriage, call it a parent and child, call it our relationships in this room, when Elizabeth does a small slight, if I was never willing to forgive and then reconcile back with her, we would never talk to each other again. And people are not that indispensable in my mind. So there has to be some level of reconciliation back. I have to put up with my children. We have to reconcile. Plenty of our single parents have to put up with their exes. There’s got to be some kind of reconciliation. Now, reconciliation does not mean I suddenly trust you again. It may mean I will never fully trust you again, but I’m willing to reconcile, which means I’m not giving you the cold shoulder. And that’s part of what forgiveness is because I’m not punishing you. I’m moving on with the relationship and the way that it is now based on what I know about you and who you are and what that relationship needs going forward. There are some of these relationships that need to be broken off. Elizabeth’s example—that is a relationship that should not have been continued but there’s other relationships that we have to protect and use judgment and wisdom to say, “Which of those relationships do I move forward on?” But we cannot stay in that victim mentality and continue to punish ourselves because we don’t seek restoration in it.
I don’t know that you can move towards forgiveness until you really understand the infraction. And to me, pursuing justice is a desire and forgiveness is surrender. We are talking about forgiveness all this month, but the point that we’re trying to make in pursuing justice is you don’t have to diminish that just because you want forgiveness. There is an innate sense in us for things to be made right. And pursuing justice is acknowledging that. Then to your point, Elizabeth, what I love about what you shared (and I’m so glad you did), is that you are open, but you kind of acknowledge that it’s beyond you. A lot of times just as justice is not necessarily for us to exact, forgiveness requires a power greater than us because on our own, we can’t necessarily get there. I mean, we can make the decision, like you’re saying, “I’m willing, I’m open,” but at the end of the day, it’s surrender and allowing God to help us. And maybe at some point the feeling will match the decision.
Takeaways
- Healing can only take place when justice and forgiveness coexist. That does not mean it’s all fixed. Healing is understanding how both of these things play together.
- We sometimes confuse forgiveness with vengeance, apathy, or excusing someone’s hurtful actions. And we need to be aware of what forgiveness is not. It is not those things.
- When we combine justice and forgiveness, we are called to rebuke and love the other person who wronged us, but we are not called to obviously seek retribution.
Listener Question
If a solo friend rushes into a relationship, how can we be supportive but also voice our concerns in a healthy and loving way? Or would it be best not to say anything?
While I knew my second husband for years—nine years before we even started dating, we moved pretty quickly and we’re extremely happy. It’s way better and way easier than my first marriage was. Some of it is because we’ve done the growing and healing. He was never married, but I think we freaked a lot of people out around us, Robert included. And I’m interested in those because I’m a little biased. It worked for me. But Robert, what was that like on the other side?
“What the heck are you doing, Marissa?” No, I think this is a great question because there is a tendency for single parents to move quickly because we’re lonely. Do you say something? I think it really depends on the level of connection with the other person, but I think before you say anything, you need to really get to know the whole situation. And even though I might’ve thought on paper, “Marissa, you’re moving fast,” I knew how much you had done the work, and I knew your pursuits were not just to soothe some loneliness. And then beyond that, I met Matt. And so at that point, I didn’t necessarily have to say something because I sought to understand first. And we had enough of a relationship. For while it was like, “Okay, I don’t know all the ins and outs of what’s going on in your relationship, but I know you, Marissa and I have met Matt and everything.” There’s indicators you can pay attention to beyond, “Hey, are you moving too fast?” Seek to understand first.
And so I would say even if you’re the person on the receiving end of this, listen to the people who have wisdom and have been there and have pursued their health and all of that. And believe them when they tell you.
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