It Is Written Script: 1224 The Power of Forgiveness Page 1 The Power of Forgiveness Program No. 1224 SPEAKER: JOHN BRADSHAW John Bradshaw: Thanks for joining me today on It Is Written. I m John Bradshaw, and today I m at Florida Hospital in Orlando, Florida, where I m speaking with Dick Tibbits, the Chief People Officer for Florida Hospital. We re here to speak to Dick about an area of his expertise, an area that I believe affects you and me and everyone we know. We re going to talk today about something that affects your eternal destiny, your relationship with God, and your relationship with others. I can even go so far as to say it affects your health in profound ways. Today, we re talking about forgiveness, and Dick Tibbits has literally written the book on forgiveness. His book, Forgive to Live, is one of the most powerful books on the subject that you ll ever read. Dick, thank you so much for joining me today. I m really grateful you re here. Dick Tibbits: It s good to be here, John. JB: You ve written the book on this subject, Forgive to Live. The subject of forgiveness is all the way through the Bible. It s vital. Let s start at the beginning. What is forgiveness? DT: You know, I almost want to go to the other side of that question first. What isn t forgiveness? Because most people think of forgiveness in a certain way what they ve learned and what they ve been taught so their way of approaching forgiveness comes out of their own history. JB: Well, let s talk about that, then. What s it not? DT: The most common definition of forgiveness that everybody knows is forgive and forget. JB: Forget, right. DT: Exactly, and the problem is when we ve been hurt, or something has happened to us that turns our world upside down, we don t wake up the next morning and forget.
It Is Written Script: 1224 The Power of Forgiveness Page 2 JB: Should we? DT: No, in fact, it doesn t make sense, does it? I mean, suppose I had a big fight with my spouse last night, and then I went and prayed and forgave before I went to bed, then woke up the next morning and she said, I m still upset. And I said, Upset about what? It doesn t make sense to forget like that. JB: Yeah, I can imagine that, too, with your neighbor over the fence and you had some great big bust-up and then the next day you just carried on like nothing had ever happened. DT: Yes. JB: The whole idea of forgive and forget doesn t make sense, does it? DT: No. And it s important we understand that, because most people feel like they fail at forgiveness because they pray to forgive, then they remember the next morning and it s still upsetting to them, so they believe their forgiveness failed. JB: So what you re suggesting is that it s normal, even natural, for someone to be involved in whatever situation, extend genuine Christian forgiveness to somebody genuine, real forgiveness and at the same time maybe have some lingering disquietude or discomfort about what s taken place. DT: Sure. In fact, as we ll discover later on in the program, it s not forgetting that s the important result in forgiveness, but remembering in a different way. JB: I m going to ask you again about what forgiveness isn t before we talk about what forgiveness is. I ve met people who have struggled with something very serious, something that happened way back in their childhood. Let s say a daughter had a very hurtful experience with a father or a grandfather, and she s brought herself to the place where she believes she needs to extend forgiveness, as difficult as that is. But then she says, Thanksgiving s coming up, but I don t know whether I should actually sit around the Thanksgiving table with that person because of some of the dynamics that have taken place. Does forgiveness mean everything goes back to how it was? DT: Our fear is that if we forgive someone, it s almost like condoning what they ve done. It s like saying it s okay. And forgiveness is not making a wrong right. Forgiveness doesn t do that. If something wrong was done, it s still wrong, and that s important to understand, because forgiveness doesn t excuse someone for what they did. In fact, forgiveness can still hold them accountable for what they did, while still letting go of the impact of that on your life.
It Is Written Script: 1224 The Power of Forgiveness Page 3 JB: So, for example a delicate example here is a situation of domestic abuse. One party can forgive the other party, but still decide it s best that this relationship doesn t continue anymore. DT: And that s the tough definition of forgiveness. Most people think that forgiveness results in reconciliation. JB: It doesn t always? DT: It doesn t always. In fact, even in the Gospel, while Christ offers forgiveness to everyone, not everyone is reconciled to God. It s the same thing in our relationships; while forgiveness creates the possibility for reconciliation, it doesn t mandate reconciliation. So if I m in an abusive relationship, sometimes I m afraid to forgive because that means I have to go back and be abused again. JB: But you don t. DT: But you don t. Because while forgiveness is the process of letting go of your controlling my life, forgiveness does not mandate that I go back into a situation where my life is again in danger. JB: So forgiveness isn t forgive and forget? DT: No. JB: Forgiveness doesn t make a past wrong right. DT: It can t. JB: Forgiveness doesn t necessarily mean everybody sits around the campfire and sings Kumbaya and everything s just fine. DT: Correct. JB: There may be some changes to relationships or different dynamics even though forgiveness has taken place. DT: Yeah, on that relationship item, I just want to add this point. What happens when somebody harms me is that trust becomes violated, and I can no longer trust you like I did before. And forgiveness and trust are two different things. While forgiveness is free, trust must be earned. JB: Okay, so what is forgiveness? DT: Forgiveness has three components. First of all, forgiveness deals with the past all the memories, all the past experiences, and the hurt that happens from that. I
It Is Written Script: 1224 The Power of Forgiveness Page 4 have to somehow be able to forgive that so my past is no longer dominating my present. Secondly, forgiveness affects the present. It involves choices I make now that affect me, and forgiveness allows me to frame those choices. And it affects my future, because people who don t forgive are stuck in the past. They re reliving the past, and forgiveness frees me from the past so I can then choose my future, set up goals and move on with my life. JB: So when it comes to forgiveness, there s a situation. It could be one of a million different situations, some dynamic that s taking place, and someone says, I choose to forgive that person. Help me understand what that probably looks like in an ideal forgiveness situation. I know there are many different ways for this to happen, but just one... DT: First of all, you said the right word, I must choose to forgive. See, a lot of times people don t think of forgiveness when something s happened. They react. They feel the hurt. They withdraw. And so forgiveness isn t even in the conscious awareness. They start down a pathway of reacting to the situation instead of dealing with the situation. What forgiveness invites us to do is to confront the reality, to name the reality, and then to make a choice of how I m going to deal with that reality. Even if it s a reality that I didn t ask for, and it s a reality that s extremely unpleasant to me, I still retain the choice of how I m going to deal with it, and that choice is to choose to forgive. JB: Forgiveness might not always feel so good. There s a perverse feeling of satisfaction that person experiences when they choose to hang on to anger or bitterness. DT: Yes. JB: So perhaps sometimes with forgiveness, people don t want to feel like they ve allowed someone to put one over them or get away with something. DT: Let s talk about the two sides of forgiveness that are dangerous. First is what I call a proud forgiveness. That s when I forgive you, really means I m better than you. You see that sometimes in the church, and you can see that in family dynamics. I m going to do a magnificent, magnanimous thing; I forgive you. I think you ll feel like a heel and I feel good. That s not forgiveness; that s just boosting my ego. Of course, the other side of forgiveness is I m fearful to forgive
It Is Written Script: 1224 The Power of Forgiveness Page 5 because I ve then empowered you. I ve allowed you to get away with it, and I m still hurting, so why should I forgive when the pain is mine? In fact, we really hope the other person will come and ask for forgiveness. But too often they don t. JB: Forgiveness is a very biblical subject. You can t be a Bible Christian and read the Bible without coming across the subject of forgiveness again and again and again. In fact, Jesus last words before He died dealt with the subject of forgiveness. And we don t even get very far into the Bible before the subject of forgiveness comes up. DT: Well, forgiveness is defined by the Bible. If we didn t have the Bible, where would we get forgiveness from? Its origin is with God way back in the original story of the Garden of Eden. JB: You go through the Bible and the sanctuary service, the temple service, dealt with the subject of forgiveness. You had the situation where they came to Jesus and said, I ve forgiven 70 times, aren t I good? And Jesus rocks their world by saying, Now, wait a minute, you re not really forgiving someone unless you re prepared to forgive them 490 times, that s 70 x 7. As we go through the Bible, how did Jesus relate to forgiveness and share that idea with others? DT: Jesus practiced forgiveness so frequently that it was a part of not only what He taught, but how He lived. He was hounded by the religious leaders. He was criticized by merchants and chased out of town. While we see him as a popular preacher, there were also many people who didn t like Him. And imagine what it would be like to get up every morning and have people say things that are terrible. He was born in Nazareth; He s no good. He was born on the wrong side of the tracks. Who s His real father? All the things that kids can do to tease each other, Jesus had to deal with that. Yet what we find in His life is that forgiveness gave Him the opportunity to live a life that was loving and full as opposed to a life that became bitter and resentful. JB: Some of the most remarkable stories in the Bible deal with forgiveness: a woman taken in adultery, the woman at the well, and the fellow who living among the tombs and was demon-possessed, and then when Jesus was done with him, he was clothed and in his right mind. Forgiveness had an enormously powerful effect on these people. In fact, often when Jesus would heal someone, rather than saying, You are healed; stand up, He would say, Your sins have been forgiven you. Doesn t that tell us something about how important this is?
It Is Written Script: 1224 The Power of Forgiveness Page 6 DT: Well, it s not only important spiritually, which is what Christ taught us, but there is also no way to salvation without forgiveness. He also used it to heal people emotionally and spiritually. I think of the story when Jesus posed the question, Which is harder, to say Rise, take up your bed and walk, or to say Your sins are forgiven? Then that individual then rose and walked. Jesus linked forgiveness with healing. JB: Let s explore that for a moment. There is a connection between forgiveness and a person s physical health. And this connection isn t some tenuous little trumped-up link, but a scientifically demonstrated link between forgiveness and health. You ve been at the sharp end of finessing that research and presenting it to major medical institutions and large groups of people all around the world. Help me understand this link between forgiveness and one s physical health. DT: Most people don t see the connection on the surface. Forgiving can heal, but let me show you the research we did. JB: Before you do, I m going to repeat something you just said, Forgiving can heal. DT: Absolutely. It can heal spiritually we know that our relationship with God. It can heal emotionally by healing the resentment and bitterness that I carry in my life. But it can also heal physically. It s like getting three for the price of one. JB: Please tell me about this physical healing that comes from forgiveness. DT: Sure. We did the research, and let me explain to you how simple yet profound this was. What we know from previous research is that retaining anger we call it resentment can elevate blood pressure. In fact, the American Heart Association has identified anger as a risk factor for heart disease. So chronic anger, resentment and bitterness about my life or about others is taking its toll upon my body. We know that. The question is, can forgiveness reverse that? So we did a study right here at Florida Hospital. We had patients randomly divided into two groups a control group and an intervention group. The intervention group received an eight-week training program on forgiveness. The control group simply continued going about life as normal for that same eight-week period. What we did is we tested every participant, looking at their blood pressure. We also looked at their anger score by using a standard expression inventory test.
It Is Written Script: 1224 The Power of Forgiveness Page 7 What we discovered is at the end of eight weeks, the people who learned how to forgive, and practiced that forgiveness, actually had a statistically significant and medically beneficial reduction in blood pressure. In fact, in the group that was in the top half of the anger, they all went from stage one hypertension a clear disease to normal blood pressure in eight weeks. We also did a lifestyle questionnaire to make sure that during that eight weeks they weren t quitting smoking, starting to exercise, or changing their diet. In fact, the only variable that we could identify in the study was the practice of forgiveness. JB: Why does it have that powerful correlation with a person s health? DT: What we know about the mechanism is that anger releases cortisol into the bloodstream. When you re angry, the mind-body connection the endocrine system drips, if you will, cortisol. What cortisol does is it elevates blood pressure. And so think about this: getting angry once is no problem my blood pressure goes up, it comes back down, and life is normal. But if I hold on to that feeling, we call it resentment. In fact, the word resentment comes from the French, which means to re-feel over and over again. So every time I recall that story or that incident, and feel the anger again, I m elevating my blood pressure. So the chronic recalling of a painful story results in the chronic disease of hypertension. Forgiving and letting go of that story so that it no longer has the same hold on your life then reduces the cortisol in your bloodstream and reduces your blood pressure. JB: You ve touched on something there, this idea of reliving something over and over and over again. Dick, forgiveness sounds pretty simple, it s a very biblical idea, but not everybody chooses to forgive. When someone chooses not to forgive? What s the harm? What are they doing to themselves? DT: You know, when I don t forgive, I m retaining all the bitterness and anger. I m the one who s hurting. So often we resist forgiveness because we don t want the other person off the hook. I think if I don t forgive them, then they re being punished and they re hurting a little bit. I ll make them suffer so they ll know how much they hurt me. But here s the inside reality: they ve gone on with their lives. Oftentimes, they don t care. And I m still sitting here hurting from something that could have happened to me a month ago, a year ago, a decade ago. So forgiveness is critical if I m ever going to deal with my pain and my suffering.
It Is Written Script: 1224 The Power of Forgiveness Page 8 JB: People anchor themselves in the past, don t they? They stay slaves to an old life, and something you said really rings true. The other person in this equation may have just gone on. They backed into your car in the supermarket parking lot 15 years ago, scraped up your lovely paint job, then never thought about it again. And you ve relived it every day for 15 years. That s what happens, isn t it? DT: It s terrible what happens, and yet I don t realize that my failure to forgive is punishing me. That s what I try to bring out in the book, and that s what we re talking about today: that when I don t forgive, I m the one who suffers. I summarize that whole principle in a simple phrase: You simply cannot swallow a poison pill and hope the other person dies. It doesn t work that way. JB: Not forgiving is a poison pill? DT: It is a poison pill to me. Think about it. When I don t forgive, I m left with that hurt and anger repeating itself over and over again. You become bitter. I m sure you ve met people like that. Look at them and ask yourself, Is that the life I want to live? Nobody wants to live that life. Even the person who s living that life doesn t want to live that life. The problem is, they don t know how to get past it. They haven t learned how to apply forgiveness to it. JB: Something as simple as forgiveness will cause bitterness and maybe even a lifetime of anger to roll away. DT: You know it does, but I want to be very clear, it s not an instantaneous thing. We talked earlier about Christ s statement to forgive 70 x 7. I don t think Christ was saying if somebody hits you, forgive them, they hit you again, forgive them, they hit you again, and so on and so forth 490 times. I think, rather, what God is saying is that when you forgive someone, the hurt can come back, so forgive again when that happens. The hurt can come back when you least expect it, but forgive again. So forgiveness is a process; it is not a single act. It s not me just saying I forgive you and now everything is wonderful. But what I will say is that when you follow the process of forgiveness and practice forgiveness, it will get better. JB: Let s apply this in a challenging way. Your neighbor runs over your dog. The dog got off the leash and ran out into the street. Your neighbor is crying and shaking, and the dog is dead. You know they meant no harm. You re going to miss Fido forever, but you can forgive the neighbor. That s an easy one. Well, an easier one. DT: Easier.
It Is Written Script: 1224 The Power of Forgiveness Page 9 JB: Someone burned your toast for the 50th time. You can get over it because it s just burned toast. DT: Correct. JB: However, as we re talking about forgiveness today, someone s watching and saying maybe even through tears It s easy for them to say because they don t know what I ve been through. There are some people who have been through hell. Is it flippant for us to say, Well, you ve just got to forgive? How does someone get their mind around a murdered spouse or something like that? We could talk about the Holocaust and ethnic cleansing. How about when you take it to that level? DT: You know, I want to be sensitive at all levels. True, the dramatic is much harder; the story of the student going in and killing a dozen of his classmates. How do you forgive that? I want to come back to that, but let me first return to the burned toast illustration you gave. My need to forgive is really connected with how personally I take the act. If you burned my toast because you forgot how long the toast was there, no big deal. But if I believe you burned my toast on purpose because you wanted to upset me, and that the next day you do that again just to get under my skin, and I take that in a very personal way, then that can be the proverbial squeezing the toothpaste in the middle that caused the divorce. One of the keys of forgiveness is to look at the question, Do I really take it that personally, or can I depersonalize it and realize, that s that person, that s the way they are, and they are not going to be controlling my life because of the way they are? So forgiveness helps me to get perspective. We talked in the earlier segment about the biblical examples of Christ s forgiveness. My favorite example is, as the Roman centurions were nailing Him to the Cross, His words were Father, forgive them. But I really like the second half, For they know not what they do. He just changed the whole circumstance. Yeah, they knew what they were doing...or did they? Christ knew, He didn t take it personally. He knew they were doing a job, a terrible job, but He didn t take it personally. He saw a bigger picture. JB: I wonder, too, if some of these very big, very dramatic wrongs, make it even more important that somebody practice forgiveness, as difficult as it might be. We had a lady on It Is Written not very long ago who forgave the man who shot her husband dead. That s just dramatic.
It Is Written Script: 1224 The Power of Forgiveness Page 10 I guess I could probably learn to live with somebody stepping on my toes when I m lining up to buy something. I could get over that, but something that big like a murder is just going to live with you, it s just going to sit on you, it s not just going to just walk off on its own. You ve got to do something about dealing with that sort of hurt in your life, and forgiveness is what you do. DT: John, it s absolutely critical that you be able to forgive those big things, because those are the things that you ll be thinking about day in and day out. They turn your life upside down. And so forgiveness is God s gift that can turn our life right side up. JB: Forgiveness is God s gift? That s an interesting take. DT: Yeah, because if we don t forgive, we remain trapped. I m reminded of this illustration: Two POWs met together at the Vietnam Wall, and they were reminiscing about their experience of being prisoners, the torture they went through and the bitterness that they experienced. So one of the soldiers turned to the other and said, Have you forgiven your captors yet? The second one turned around with raw anger and said, No, I will never forgive them for what they did! Then the other soldier replied, Then they still have you captive, don t they? JB: Powerful isn t it? Thanks so much for taking the time to be with us today. A lot of people are going to be so very blessed and very grateful that you took the time. Thank you. DT: Thank you. JB: There s so much about this subject that we haven t covered that we d like to. You might be thinking something like, I now know how important forgiveness is, I know it s good for my health, and I know it s going to liberate me to forgive, but how do I forgive? Next week, we re going to talk about the How-Tos of forgiveness, and you ll be able to forgive comprehensively and move on past hurt and past pain in a healthy way, just as Jesus wants you to do. Let s pray together. PRAYER: Our Father in Heaven, we thank you so very much that you are a God who gives us forgiveness, and you ve given us the gift of forgiveness to extend to others, for our good for theirs, certainly but for ours so much.
It Is Written Script: 1224 The Power of Forgiveness Page 11 Please Lord, help us to be like Jesus in this way people who forgive, and who can be free from hurt, free from pain, free from an unfortunate past, and made healthy to live with Jesus now and forever. This we pray in Jesus name, Amen. It Is Written Box O Thousand Oaks, CA 91359 USA Tel: (805) 433-0210 Fax: (805) 433-0218 www.itiswritten.com