“’Lord, how often shall my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? As many as seven times?’” Jesus said to him, ‘I do not say to you seven times, but seventy times seven.’” -Matthew 18:21-22
Forgiveness is a beautiful thing. Wronging others and being wronged by others is ugly, but forgiveness, whether given or received, is a beautiful thing. As beautiful as it is, forgiveness is difficult too. Looking someone in the eyes, especially a close friend or loved one, and saying the words “I am sorry,” can be extremely difficult; meeting that person’s gaze, hearing their apology, and saying the words, “I forgive you,” is perhaps even harder. This difficulty, however, is a good thing. It tells us that something has gone wrong. But, being humans, we tend to shy away from hard tasks, and forgiveness is no exception.
How do we shy away from the difficulty of forgiveness? We do this by cheapening or diminishing the ordeal, most notably when we substitute the, “I forgive,” for a, “That’s okay.” These two phrases are not equivalent. One expression recognizes the gravity of what has occurred, while the other brushes it off as a nonissue.
For years, I never recognized the dichotomy here. In fact, I think I almost exclusively said “That’s okay,” for most of my life. It wasn’t until I talked to a professor who I had felt acted insensitively towards me in class that I realized there’s a difference. After telling him how he made me feel, he said “I’m sorry,” to which I said “Oh, that’s okay.” Surprisingly, he just looked at me and said, “No. It’s not okay.” Ever since then, the difference between these two terms has been strikingly clear.
When someone tells us, “I am sorry for wronging you in such and such a way,” they recognize that they did not love us well. This is why it’s important to say, “I forgive you,” rather than just saying, “That’s okay.” When we say, “I forgive,” we recognize that there has, in fact, been a breach in love, trust, and relationship. This takes a certain amount of humility and vulnerability to tell someone who just hurt our feelings that they have done so. It can be tempting to be Simon and Garfunkel’s rock, because “a rock feels no pain.”
Yes, it is true that rocks and stones feel no pain. But neither do they feel love. A heart of stone is not open to love, whether that is the love of others or the love of God. By being open to the love of another, we open ourselves up to vulnerability. By being vulnerable, we can be loved, but by the same vulnerability, we can be hurt. Hurting our friends and loved ones is an inevitability of the human condition, and so is vulnerability. Perhaps this is why Christ so strongly adjures us to be ready to forgive our brother more than even seven times.
More than this, however, is the way that forgiveness images our relationship with God. When our brother comes before us and apologizes, and we receive his apology in love, we see the image of Isaiah the Prophet, who humbly told God he was a man of “unclean lips” (Is 6:5), the image of St. Peter who declared himself a “sinful man” (Lk 5:8), the prodigal son who admitted that he had “sinned against Heaven and before [his father]” (Lk 15:21), and more. These images represent the lived-out reality of what we say, every time we pray the Our Father: “Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.”
This is why simply saying, “That’s okay,” is so pernicious. It was not “okay” for Isaiah to be a man of unclean lips, for St. Peter to be a sinful man, or for the prodigal son to waste his inheritance on a life of dispensation. These two short words cheapen the experience of an apology by tacitly pretending that the wrong being apologized for never even existed. By only saying, “That’s okay,” it says that the perceived breach in trust, love, friendship, relationship, etc. never actually occurred.
This is acceptable for minor infractions, such as accidentally bumping into someone in a line, stepping on someone’s foot while dancing, or other such small occurrences. But it is completely out of place for genuine breaches of trust. Think how absurd the Marriage of Figaro would be if, at the end, when Count Almaviva finally apologizes, he is met with a, “Oh, that’s okay,” by his wife. Or for Christians whose tradition includes Sacramental Confession, how ridiculous it would be to be told “That’s okay,” after confessing our sins.
This is because saying, “That’s okay,” when things are not okay is a complete missing of the mark. Rather, we must say “I forgive,” for by saying this phrase, we recognize that there has been a rupture in relationship, remorse in the heart of the other, and now we can both work for reconciliation. Forgiveness is not easy. Let us embrace this difficulty, and by doing so, we can work for relationships that better image the love of God, as we go to love our neighbor.
