Article August 21, 1995 Issue

Forgiveness brings protection and progress

Gretchen Garrity

How can the act of forgiveness be a protection to us? After all, Christ Jesus spent the last hours and moments before (and during) his crucifixion forgiving others, and it didn't seem to protect him from betrayal, mockery, and the cross. Yet, Jesus' forgiveness helped pave the way to his final victory over evil and matter, the ascension.

What was it that enabled Jesus to forgive treachery and hate, and to heal, even while in the midst of his arrest in the garden of Gethsemane, even while suffering the ordeal of the cross? Our Exemplar understood perfectly that forgiveness is based on divine law, that it is an imperative demand of God, Love. He knew that obedience to God's laws brings peace, harmony, and protection. He had proved this when he calmed wind and wave, and when he moved unharmed through violent crowds. The weapons of the world—envy, hate, even murder—could not pierce his God-given armor of protection, his understanding that no material act of hate or envy could ever touch his real being, the spiritual man of God's creating made in His image.

Christly forgiveness is based on this understanding of man's real nature. It shuts out a material sense of life and gives us a glimpse of our true status as divine Love's children, pure and perfect, unassailable by every weapon worldly thought, or mortal mind, would send our way.

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