At the end of the summer of my first job when I was still just 14, the boss said to me rather derisively, “Well, I think we’re both glad this summer is over. I tried to teach you, but you’re the first boy who has ever worked for me that I couldn’t teach to do this job.” I had done my best, but his comment cut right to my teenage heart. To complicate matters, my parents were friends of the boss and his wife. When I told them what he told me they just smiled and said, “O come on, son. He didn’t mean that. He was just frustrated.” (That might help you understand how I was raised in the Land of Numb.)
Whether he did or didn’t mean it, that comment hit me hard. He was a man from our church, and though I saw him nearly every Sunday for years after I worked for him, I rarely spoke to him again. When I did, I only said, “Hi” and kept moving.
Years later after I was ordained into the ministry, I was asked to speak at my home church back in Northwestern Kansas. The old boss was there that day. After the service as I shook hands with parishioners he came up to me smiling and said, “Congratulations. I never thought you could do it.”
Smiling back, I responded, “Well, I guess I did.”
“Yep, he said, “I guess you did.” He turned and walked out. I never saw him again. But then long about 10 years later I was living in Illinois, married to Jennifer and serving as a campus pastor at the University of Illinois. One Sunday morning I went by myself to speak at a rural church an hour’s drive from my home. On the way home I thought of the old boss and started smiling. I realized that I had forgiven him, in a way I never had felt before.
There were plenty of previous times when I thought I had forgiven him, but then I’d step back on the escalator of revenge and ruminate about what he said to me when I was still a boy, thinking about what I wish I had said in response. I would say out loud, “What a mean thing to say to a young kid. You know better than that. What’s your problem?” Or usually even worse.
I started thinking about the Lord’s Prayer that I prayed every morning in my devotions, saying, “Forgive me my debts as I forgive my debtors.” I realized that you can’t want to be forgiven for that which you don’t want to forgive. I played the scene over in my mind, thinking bad thoughts about the old boss. But that afternoon I said, “Now wait a minute Don. You can’t want forgiveness for what you do not believe to be wrong (in my case, replaying the incident over and over in my mind). You can’t both regret being unforgiving while allowing yourself to be unforgiving. You can’t regret and not regret at the same time.”
Indeed, something had happened in my heart that day. It had been a long process, but that day I felt way down in my knower a deep compassion for the man who hurt me with both his actions and his comments the summer of my very first job. And that was one of the keys—deep compassion for the person who hurt me.
Driving home through the Illinois countryside that Sunday afternoon, I remembered that I knew the man had a hard upbringing. I was filled with compassion and empathy as I thought about what life might have been like for him when he was 14, the same age I was when he told me I was the only person he couldn’t teach to do the job. My heart softened.
I try to show compassion and empathy when I am tempted to keep playing scenes of hurt over and over in my mind. When I do, I think I am close to understanding that the essence of God’s kingdom is when I will good to others rather than saying, “That’s it. Now I will live with a malicious will toward others because of what they did to me.”
Pastor John Ortberg gives this experiment in compassion that is closely tied to forgiveness:
Drive with compassion.
Engage online with compassion.
Write that email with compassion.
Interact with strangers with compassion.
Speak to your family with compassion.
Go to work or school with compassion.
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“God, give me a heart of compassion today. Forgive me my trespasses, as I forgive those who trespass against me.”
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