I don’t know if I mentioned my struggles with this. I think part of the problem was I had parents who were always judging and condemning me and others and they never forgave when I did something wrong or showed any kind of mercy or compassion or understanding towards a wrong doer. As an example, my mother said she hated drug addicts because she had to pay taxes for their medical bills when they were addicted to drugs. My cousins would complain about how politicians wanted to give medical care to low income people and she said those too lazy to get a college education and a high paying job did not deserve medical care when they were dying of cancer and various diseases. This environment conditioned me to hold grudges against others.
I came up with a three-step program to help me forgive those who have done wrong to me.
1. Release your material claims over others
2. Release your social claims over others
3. Release your religious claims over others
I think one of the reasons I had difficulty forgiving people in the past was that I was focused on only 1 or only 2 or only 3. When you have the idea in your head that you will forgive some categories of wrong doing but not others – you are entangling yourself into patterns of grudge holding that will revoke your ability even to forgive the category of wrong doing that you have agreed in your mind to forgive.
So if you choose to hold material grudges but not social or religious grudges, you will end up holding social and religious grudges because your material grudges lead to social and religious grudges.
The main thing if you choose to hold religious grudges but not social or material grudges, you will end up holding social or material grudges because your religious grudges will cause you to hold social and material grudges too.
So, a material claim over another that I can think of in my own life is when I spent over $40 buying somebody a Christmas gift during a secret santa trade and they spent $8 buying me a gift and then complained behind my back to my friends about how they didn’t like my gift. That made me very angry and caused me to hold a grudge against this person based on material claims.
A social grudge that I held against somebody else is when I got annoyed with my boyfriend for having a female best friend that had been in his life for years before I ever met him. I secretly wanted him to stop talking to her even though we had only been together for 8 weeks and she had offered tons of emotional and social and mental support to him over the years and was very good for his mental and emotional health. That was a social claim I had over somebody else that I had to let go of.
A religious grudge that I held against somebody else was when a pastor kicked me out of church based on a lie that a member of his church told about me and then refused to hi to me when I said hi to him in public as a gesture of forgiveness and good will. Not only did he reject my offering of forgiveness but he went out of his way to humiliate me in front of others over something I didn’t even do! My religious claim over him was that he was not suitable to be a pastor based on the way that he treated me and should be removed from his ministry as a result. I had to let go of that.
I find that as I make the decision, to let go of my material claims, my social claims and my religious claims over others – that I can see all this unconscious anger being brought to the surface and being released and removed from my life.
The next time you have difficulty forgiving somebody – consider that it might be because you have not forgiven others that would make it easier for you to forgive this one person.
So, you have to let go of all claims and grudges and not just a certain category: the material, the social and the religious / legal / moral claims must all be forgiven.
It doesn’t mean that wrong doers deserve to go unpunished, but it means you are not responsible for punishing them, that is God’s job and God is very good at doing His job. You should also be good at doing your job. Then everybody is happy!
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