Blog
Forgiving Self: Biblical Category or Meaningless Psychobabble?
You’ve heard it from people wrestling with guilt and shame: “I can’t forgive myself.” Sometimes, the sentiment is uttered by Christians who, at least verbally, acknowledge God’s forgiveness. The language is heard in counselling rooms, in small group conversations, in...
Poisoning Yourself: The Danger of Bitterness to the Soul
There is a particular cruelty to bitterness that is easy to miss in the early stages. When we are first wronged—when the hurt is fresh and the sense of injustice is acute—holding onto the grievance can feel almost righteous. It can feel like a refusal to minimise what...
When God Forgets: Forgiving and Forgetting Rightly Understood
Few phrases in the Christian vocabulary are more frequently used and more poorly understood than “forgive and forget.” It appears with great regularity in conversations about reconciliation, and carries an implicit expectation: that genuine forgiveness produces a kind...
Drawing the Line: Why Wise Boundaries Are Not the Same as Bitterness
There is a version of the call to forgiveness that, when applied without nuance, ends up doing harm. It goes something like this: If you have truly forgiven someone, you will restore the relationship to exactly what it was before. Any hesitation to do so, any distance...
Watched by the World: Forgiveness as Gospel Witness
When Paul wrote to Philemon, he did something easy to overlook. He did not address the letter to Philemon alone. He addressed it to Philemon, Apphia, Archippus, and—pointedly—to the church that met in Philemon’s home. This was not a private note slipped discreetly...
Two Different Things: Forgiveness and Reconciliation
One of the most important clarifications a Christian can make when navigating the aftermath of being wronged is the conviction that forgiveness and reconciliation, while deeply related, are not the same thing. Conflating them causes real harm. It leads some people to...