Forgiveness

“O Lord, you have searched me and known me.”

–Psalm 139

If a church community is blessed enough to have an addict come to a worship service they will likely come in contact with someone who knows fear. It is likely this sense of fear comes from an inner sense of shame and the accompanying fear of being abandoned.

The addict is looking for hope.

Hope to conquer the cycle of addiction.

Hope that values still matter and relationships can be real.

Hope that one can be fully known and still loved.

Hope that a string of assumptions can be revealed for the lies that they are. The lie that the addict has no dignity can be replaced by the truth of inherent dignity. The lie of rejection is replaced by the truth of embrace. The lie of worthlessness can be replaced by the truth of healing.

The cycle of fear of rejection is broken not by hiding the truth but revealing the truth of the past and being embraced rather than rejected.

Healing - existential, mental, physical and spiritual healing happens when the brutal cycle of the lies of alienation are replaced by the truth of truth-telling, embrace and forgiveness.

My grandmother told me years ago that the most important word in the Bible was forgiveness. “Everything else flows from forgiveness,” Mom Smith said with experience and authority. She was right.

A man told me a couple weeks ago that he “was in prison long before he went to jail.”

His prison was the brokenness of alienation. Healing came when he knew that he was loved, not because of what he did or didn’t do but because it is a truth. He discovered that authentic love is real.

So, if you are blessed to have an addict join your well-intentioned family of faith you have every likelihood to witness healing and to know a deeper sense of self-healing and communal healing.

If that addict has a relapse, don’t perpetuate the cycle of fear and shame by dragging them in front of a board of elders with a demand for a written apology. Instead, listen to their deep pain and pour out God’s mercy.  The pain comes from a place of profound sadness, fear, shame, unworthiness and, yes, where the still voice of hope can be heard. Hope that forgiveness is real.

Forgiveness is messy work but it is worth it.