Article September 23, 1922 Issue

True Forgiveness

WARNER S. CONN

DAILY we pray, "And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors." For many years the thought which this conveyed to the writer was of time only; or, "forgive us our debts," when "we forgive our debtors." How much broader and deeper becomes the interpretation when the light of Christian Science is turned on this prayer. Then, in addition to meaning "when," it means "in like manner."

Mrs. Eddy tells us in the Christian Science textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 5), "Sin is forgiven only as it is destroyed by Christ,–Truth and Life;" and again she says (p.497), "We acknowledge God's forgiveness of sin in the destruction of sin and the spiritual understanding that casts out evil as unreal." In numerous other passages she joins forgiveness with complete destruction of sin. Unless our forgiveness of our debtors approximate the divine method of pardon, we are not truly endeavoring to forgive.

How often we hear the expression, "I shall forgive, but I cannot forget!" This sort of forgiveness destroys nothing at all; and is not forgiveness. It includes no surrender of belief in "minds many," but clings to the sense of an individuality or personality that could have the desire and ability to injure. It falls far short of the Mind of Christ, as exemplified on page 476 of Science and Health, where Mrs. Eddy says, "Jesus beheld in Science the perfect man, who appeared to him where sinning mortal man appears to mortals." The Master's attitude was indeed that of true forgiveness, which entails the separation of the desire to wrong another from the claim of personality,–seeing the false desire, not as a person who can harm us, but as the impersonal and erroneous claim of evil belief. In other words, the one who offends is not the creator of the evil, but its victim; and our proper realization of this fact renders us impervious to the shafts of error, and at the same time helpful to the one who would harm us; and such forgiving must carry its own reward in our broader understanding of the real man and his relation to his Maker.

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