Now if you think you’re doing a perfect job at forgiving people, you’re utterly delusional. When we humans don’t want to face what misers of mercy we are, we just carefully avoid thinking about the people who really tick us off. We think that not thinking about something makes it go away. There are names for these kinds of mind games: denial, compartmentalizing, and stuffing to name a few. But the point is that you really don’t feel good will towards every person on the planet. In fact, you hate people who you don’t even know. What kinds of feelings come to mind when you hear the termsmolesters, murderers, pimps, and drug lords. How about Nazis, genocide, and terrorists? Can you honestly say that there’s no hardness of heart happening when you read over the daily news and learn about man’s cruelty to man? We humans are constantly passing judgement on each other and condemning each other. We’re constantly defining ourselves as better than someone else. The guy who cuts you off on the freeway and nearly causes an accident—did you forgive him to the degree that you want God to forgive you? Or did you just flash him a hostile hand signal and eventually forget about him?

Ignoring someone does not constitute forgiving them. Forgiveness is when we fully acknowledge the scope of the violation, take an honest assessment of the damage that has been done, and say “I’m choosing to be merciful about this and have justice withheld from me for your sake.” True forgiveness is very difficult for us humans to pull off. That’s why we’d all end up in Hell if Yahweh took us seriously when we prayed The Lord’s Prayer at Him. As serious Christians, we need to stop rattling off these religious mantras and start being a lot more thoughtful about what we say to our Gods.