Forgiving

Are you able to forgive?

Offering forgiveness can be hard on so many levels. Forgiveness means giving up our right to revenge and working towards getting rid of the feelings of resentment and hurt that we can enjoy so much. Forgiveness is especially hard when the person who has wronged us still refuses to accept responsibility for their actions.

My regular Wednesday morning guest on 98.5 Sonshine FM is Ross Clifford who is the Principal of Morling College in New South Wales and current President of the Baptist Union of Australia. Each week we chat about a range of issues relating to spirituality and belief.

Today we discussed Marion Jones and Forgiveness. The Olympic Gold Medal winner recently revealed that she used performance enhancing drugs at the 2000 Olympics in Sydney. She has handed back her medals and is now facing the consequences of her actions.

It’s very easy to condemn her and consider her nothing more than a drug cheat but when we point the finger at the mistakes and wrong actions of others are we just as open for others to point out our faults?

Sports people around the world are under increasing pressure to perform at higher and higher levels. Millions of dollars are on the line and both spectators and sponsors want more and more from athletes. We expect super human performances yet cry foul whenever we find that someone has crossed the line to live up to our expectations. Maybe we need to remind ourselves that it’s just sport. Sport is good and healthy but are we placing too much emphasis on sport to the detriment of athletes?

As well as forgiving those in public life we need to be ready to forgive those close to us who hurt us.

Forgiveness in many areas of life often needs to be a process. It can be hard to ‘feel’ like forgiving someone who has wronged us and so we need to be able to start walking a path towards forgiveness long before the healing can begin.

During our discussion this morning Ross recommended a book title Breaking Through by Cathy Ann Matthews in which the author reveals her journey to forgive her abusive father and her mother who stood by and let the abuse continue.

If you’d like to hear our conversations just click play on the media player below.

Have you got a story of forgiveness to share? I’d love to hear how forgiveness help you to move forward in your life. Please leave your story in the comments section of this post or link to a post on your own blog.



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About the author

Rodney Olsen

Rodney is a husband, father, cyclist, blogger and podcaster from Perth Western Australia.

He previously worked in radio for about 25 years but these days he spends his time at Compassion Australia, working towards releasing children from poverty in Jesus' name.

The views he expresses here are his own.

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1 Comment

  • So true that it’s difficult to forgive if the person whom have hurt you is not willing to acknowledge their faults or say ‘sorry I was wrong’, instead the ‘victim’ just get blames and belittled.
    I’ll look out for the book.

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