One of the scenes I enjoyed in “Shanghai Noon” occurs when Jackie Chan’s character angrily confronts Owen Wilson about giving him ‘bad directions’. Owen flippantly replies “No, I gave you wrong directions”. Things quickly escalate turning the confrontation into a full-blown bar fight.
That scene replays in my mind when I read all the material being promoted about ‘unforgiveness and affairs’. I see article after article on how ‘unforgiveness is a sin’ and that you need to forgive. If that was all I’d read, I’d feel guilty all the time. It would leave me feeling like I was rejected and cast off even by the church after I’d been rejected by my spouse.
But then other articles appear expounding on the sin of ‘affairs’ and how it can cause unforgiveness. And I realize that we need to take steps in recognizing both sides of the problem, not just one or the other. We need to be aware that while both are wrong, they also require different responses.
When you don’t even know ‘how’ to forgive, having experts and articles telling you that you’re a terrible sinner for not forgiving the affair doesn’t make sense to me.
They’re piling on guilt to a situation where you are already drowning in emotions.
What concerns me more is how the experts often give ‘wrong directions’ when it comes to forgiveness. Like the Owen Wilson character, they don’t give bad directions, they give you ‘wrong directions’ when it comes to forgiveness in the aftermath of an affair.
Wrong directions mess you up even worse than ‘bad directions’. Wrong directions, like the episode in Shanghai Noon can lead to escalating conflicts and fights. It makes things worse than they were before.
When it comes to forgiveness, first you have to know what you’re forgiving. It often takes time to figure out what exactly you’re forgiving. When you finally have that identified, then you are ready for learning how to forgive.
Telling you that you are doing wrong for not forgiving right away gets you chasing emotional squirrels while you’re emotionally fragile. You need time in gaining clarity about what needs forgiving.
When you are ready for forgiveness on your own timetable, the next step is learning ‘how’ to forgive. That’s why I put together the video “Forgiveness: Stop the pain, Tear down the walls and Remove the roadblocks“. Rather than guilting you into something you’re not ready for, it shows you the five W’s of forgiveness, (including the how) along with other key information you need when that time comes.
Getting the right directions makes a huge difference in arriving at your goal.
Keeping It Real,
Jeff
