The Great Chicken Caper

"Maybe the reason it seems hard for me to forgive others 

is that I do not fully believe that I am a forgiven person."

Guilt is an incredibly complex emotion.  When we feel it, we are desperate to get rid of the sensation.  At the same time, letting go of guilt is also letting go of control, an action many of us are a lot less interested in.

So often when we make a mistake and we cause injury, we like to think that we can make up for it somehow.  It's called restorative justice.  If I steal your chicken, the way to restore the situation is for me to get you a new chicken.

Or is it?  

What if that chicken was a gift from your great Aunt Sally who has since passed away?  I can give you a new hen that will lay eggs and do chicken things, but it's not Sally's chicken.  It's not going to restore the situation to it's previous state, nor is it necessarily going to mean that you'll trust me around your chickens in the future.  

So in this great chicken-thieving caper, there are two kinds of injuries.  The first is the tangible loss of the physical object which can in someway be replaced.  But the second is the emotional injury that comes from the sentimental value of the object and/or the damage done to the relationship.

Sometimes I think we confuse these two kinds of injuries, and I think we hold onto guilt as a result.  We hold onto the guilt because we are able to control some aspects of the situation (like chicken replacement), and as a result, we think we can erase the guilt by erasing the loss.  But while we are able to easily replace the lost chicken, we can't easily replace lost trust.  We can't easily repair the emotional harm.  But in our confusion between the two kinds of injuries, sometimes we think we do have the power to fix the emotional harm too.

We think we can earn our way out of guilt, earn our way into that emotional forgiveness.  We think we can control our own destiny on forgiveness, we just have to work hard enough to get there.  And if I believe there is a way for me to work hard enough to earn forgiveness, then gosh darn it, it's possible for you to earn it too if you just keep trying.  As a result, I don't believe I'm forgiven and I won't forgive you either.

But the sandy ground on which this argument is built washes away when you realize that forgiveness can't be earned.  There is no way to replace emotional harm the way we can replace the loss of an object.  We simply can't control that.  And Nouwen is right when he says that this is the "lifelong struggle at the heart of the Christian life."  It's another example of the reality that God is in control and we are powerless.  That can be a really scary thing to have to admit, but it's at the center of the possibility for forgiveness.

So I guess the question is, can we admit our lack of control over guilt and our need of forgiveness, or are we too chicken to do so?