Forgiveness brings healing and health
Chapter 10
by Gini Crawford, MSW
Stress from unforgiveness
Unforgiveness or resentment (sins) affect our health. A Psychological study was done on unforgiveness and the effects on the heart. The study observed a group of cardiac patients and their response to past offenses that they hadn't forgiven. As each shared their past offense, a monitor attached revealed how resentment negatively affected their heart. Prolonged unforgiveness or resentment leads to heightened stress. Heightened stress makes even healthy people more prone to heart disease as well as other health problems.
Stress is a normal psychological and physical reaction to the demands of life. A small amount of stress can be good, but too much stress affects your body, your thoughts and feelings, and your behavior. Some indicators of stress are anxiety, restlessness, feeling overwhelmed, sleeplessness, depression, forgetfulness, work difficulties and relational struggles. A close friend betrayed me. It took me months to forgive her because there was no apology. The betrayal kept ruminating in my mind and stressed me - affecting sleep, other relationships and work, causing forgetfulness until I gave the betrayal to God and forgave. The hurt was still with me, but I felt God healing and working in it. Years later the friend came to me and apologized. She said, "God had been convicting me for years over the betrayal and I'm so sorry I haven't listened to God for so long."
Forgiveness brings healing. Whether a person wants to be forgiven or deserves forgiveness, forgiveness sets the forgiver free from the stress creating emotions that come from unforgiveness. The result of this is a serenity that positively affects the psychological, physical and spiritual, which can be very good for our health. (Psalm 25:13-22, 31:10).
Conditional forgiveness
When your forgiveness is conditional it requires some sort of response from the person who has wronged you. If you are honest with yourself, you could wait for decades to forgive, hoping for an apology. In the meantime the person you won't forgive has probably forgotten the wrong, never realized they wronged you, or doesn't care about hurting you. They might even be dead. So living for an apology that will probably never come will make you miserable over something you could have chosen to move past years ago if you had just forgiven the person. Conditional forgiveness is counterproductive to our happiness and well-being.
To be frank, the majority of situations where I have been hurt, I never get "I am sorry" from the person. So I have to consciously and deliberately make myself let go of the hurt without an apology. If I am willing to forgive, apology or not, God has always seen me through any hurt, and brings healing to my heart and mind (John 14:27). We should forgive without conditions because God forgave us without conditions.
...in God I trust and am not afraid. What can man do to me? / Then they cried to the Lord in their trouble, and he saved them from their distress. He sent out his word and healed them; he rescued... Let them give thanks to the Lord for his unfailing love and his wonderful deeds for mankind. Psalm 56:11, 107:19-21 NIV®
Life Application
Unforgiveness affects our well-being
One afternoon in the late 1990's, I got a long distance call from a policeman telling me my aunt was found dead in a motel room. (She had died of a heart attack.) I was shocked! Why was she in a strange room instead of her house? A policeman went to her house and had to break in. He saw the mess. My aunt bought obsessively and saved literally everything that wasn't perishable food. I knew she had depression. I had no idea she was struggling with what is called Hoarding Disorder. Since I lived across the country it was easy for her to hide it from me. The sad truth was, my aunt had died in a motel room near her house, because her house was so full of things that she couldn't live in it. The whole mess still breaks my heart.
My aunt's psychological upheaval from depression, and her obsessive/compulsive behavior wasn't a sin. She inherited a tendency towards these psychological struggles. However, her tendency to harbor unforgiveness, was a sin, and clearly added to her psychological stress.
Just think of my aunt, if she was a forgiver she would not have struggled with the high stress of anger and bitterness towards people. She did die of a heart attack, so it's reasonable to think not forgiving people affected her health. As my aunt grew older and wiser in the Lord, she worked hard to be loving to people she felt had offended her. "Forgiveness was still a struggle", she told me, "but God has made it clear to me forgiving others is godly."
A heart at peace gives life to the body... Proverbs 14:30a NIV®
Sin brings stress and repercussions of stress into our lives. Reading Psalms, King David wrestled with his sins and the sins of others. He knew only God could heal him psychologically, physically and spiritually. David loved God, and trusted in Him to deliver him. God was his help, hope and peace. Read Psalm 4:1-8, 32:1-11. Sin does bring stress into our lives. Share a time when the sin of unforgiveness made you very stressed.
Prayer: Dear Jesus, give me the strength and desire to forgive, when the offender isn’t sorry.