Reconciliation
Universal Laws For Healing Human Hurt and Broken Relationships

Philip G. Ney, MD, FRCP (C)
January 02, 2005

Introduction
The Benefits of Reconciliation
The Results of Unforgiveness
The Process
Important Points to Remember In the Reconciliation Process
Summary

Introduction

When God decided that he would like to create a creature (humans) to be his friends, he made them “a little lower than God.” ¹ Knowing they would have complex transactions and interpersonal relationships, He formulated the fundamental laws that govern their interactions. These Laws of Love are more basic, more permanent, and more essential than the laws that govern the physical universe. The Law of Love came first, and then the three, maybe two governing forces in the universe. (gravity, strong force/weak force/electromagnetism.) (Science is now in hot pursuit of the one fundamental physical force that binds the universe.) The universe was made for humans, and therefore the laws that govern its time, matter and energy are secondary or subservient to the Law of Love.

When the Law of Love is broken, a critical distortion takes place. The humans who broke that law begin to die. The universe itself starts to decay. Permanence requires purity, and purity can only exist where the law of love is constantly obeyed. The law of love is broken whenever a human expresses any hate toward God, a fellow human or himself, because hate results in death. Hating is the absence of loving, because loving a person is the intent and deed of meeting a person’s need. When an individual’s needs, determined by their God-given design (blueprint) are not all met, they die. Love and hate cannot co-exist. Hate results in impurity, imperfection and therefore decay.

Humans were given a freedom to choose either to know God or ignore Him, to love or to hate. If they choose to love, they grow in purity and permanence. Since love can only come from God, humans can love when they have the Spirit of God within them. They must first become a child of God, and that can be only through his perfect son, Jesus Christ. When humans hate each other, it always results in a disruption of relationships. They hate God when they centre on themselves and exclude him. They cannot exist without the life that comes from Him, and therefore if they have hated God, their neighbour or themselves, they must engage in a process of reconciliation with God, with family, with neighbours and with themselves.

The bible is a description of how humans went astray, and how God has patiently sought to bring them back to Himself. This process is reconciliation. God has fully explained and exemplified that process. His way of reconciliation is the right way. It is the only way that will work for humans. Therefore when humans hurt each other, they must reconcile in the same way that God urges humans to reconcile with him. That process is discernible and doable, but it is difficult. It starts with knowing harsh truths. Humans also have the choice of reconciling or continuing to hate. If there is reconciliation, there is healing and the mutual benefit of loving. If they continue to hate, they can only end in mutual destruction.

1. If we forgive, we are forgiven by God. God makes it clear that He won’t forgive us until we forgive others.² He commands us to love our neighbour as ourselves.³ Part of that loving is to forgive our neighbour.
   
   
2. If we forgive others, we can forgive ourselves, since we are inextricably involved by contributing to the same episode of hating. If we don’t forgive our neighbour, we cannot forgive ourselves. Every tragedy I know of is made up of a triangle of Perpetrator, Victim and Observers, with each contributing in some measure to the behaviour of the other. In this way, victims may and often do contribute to their own victimization. They do so by: being in the wrong place at the wrong time, not protesting loudly enough, not asserting themselves as a human, not fleeing, not loving, not praying for their enemies, etc. This tragic triangle rotates with time and circumstances, so there is an arbitrariness to who is designated one part or the other.
   
   
3. If we forgive, we will forget. The human brain retains painful experiences in order to learn from them, and so that they will not repeat. Until those painful experiences are acknowledged, expressed, understood, and all those involved are forgiven, the human brain will not forget it. Once reconciliation has taken place, the mind basically goes ‘delete’, first slowly and then quickly; first beginning with the painful emotions, and finally the event. When God forgives, he also forgets.⁴
   
   
4. When we forgive and accept forgiveness, we will heal. The psychophysiology of the human requires harmony and balance in its components; body, mind and spirit. Reconciliation harmonizes not only human relationships, but restores the harmony within the mind. This occurs partly because the person is no longer constantly at war with the image of the person’s enemies in their mind.
   
   
5. When we forgive and reconcile we are mentally healthier and physically more vibrant. Interpersonal conflict eventually becomes intrapsychic conflict. This creates disharmony and a disequilibrium that consumes energy needlessly. God has constructed the mind so that it will normally seek to resolve conflict. It does this by: thinking a lot, or talking a lot to others, or contributing to the re-enactment of the unresolved conflict. Once harmony is restored, the spirit, mind and body function more efficiently and more harmoniously. Having reconciled, a person becomes more vigorous, healthy and lives longer.
   
   
6. When we forgive, especially when it is difficult, we reap all the blessings of those who are merciful. God has promised special blessings to those who forgive others, especially those who are determined to dehumanize and destroy us. Following Christ’s example, we must pray, “God, forgive them for they don’t realize what they are doing.”⁵
   
   
7. When we forgive, we can be loved by those whom we forgive. The victim becomes a perpetrator by hating the perpetrator in their heart, not praying for them, not trying to meet their needs, often besmirching their reputation, and holding them in a state of unforgiveness. God makes it very clear, that what we bind with unforgiveness on earth is bound in heaven.⁶ When we forgive the perpetrator they are freed and in a position to love us.
   
   
8. As we forgive, we understand better. Unforgiveness results in ignorance and self-imposed blindness. If we forgive, we are not afraid of truth. To know the truth, we must be courageous. By knowing the truth, we become more courageous and more able to know the truth.
   
   
9. When we forgive and are reconciled to others, we find it so much easier to reconcile with God. That’s why He insists that before we come to church, we make it right with our brother.⁷
   
   
10. When we forgive, we are like God. His loving spirit within us can freely express His love through us; we become more loving. As we become more loving, the better we are loved, and the better our needs are met. In love, the better we grow and mature. When we are loved and loving, we heal.
    
    
11. When we are healed, we can be a better, more fruitful servant of Christ. We can participate in his healing others and the world.

The Results of Unforgiveness

1. We are not forgiven by God.
   
   
2. We cannot forgive ourselves.
   
   
3. We remain sick. Healing is subsequent to reconciliation.
   
   
4. We will go on remembering sick, sordid and painful history. Those memories will eventually poison our mind, producing a dismal outlook on oneself and life.
   
   
5. You become like those you do not forgive. The mind, through transacting, invariably becomes more like the things that it concentrates on. When one is concentrating on a perpetrator, trying hard to resolve the problem or expressing angry thoughts, one becomes like that person. You become like those you hate.
   
   
6. Until we forgive, history must repeat itself. Because humans are constructed to be as efficient as possible, people will automatically tend to help recreate unresolved conflicts. Therefore their history will continue to repeat in tragic re-enactments. That history becomes foisted onto one’s family. Now they have to be part of that painful re-enactment to at least the third and fourth generation.
   
   
7. Because of the powerful tensions of intrapsychic conflict, unforgiveness tends to result in mental dissociation, depression and sometimes psychosis.
   
   
8. If we don’t forgive, we feel guilty. Guilt creates projection and suspicion - we retreat within ourselves, and tend to be more paranoid, expecting at any moment there will be some recompense for our not having forgiven.
   
   
9. Until we forgive and reconcile, we will not forget. Until we forget, the brain becomes increasingly stuffed with sordid material, distorting our personality and interfering with our ability to see the truth, discover and to invent beautiful things.
   
   
10. If we don’t forgive, we become alienated from our true selves, and the true selves of others. We cannot see clearly who we are and who they are. We are more likely to be trapped into false relationships. We are more likely to be seduced and used by others.
    
    
11. Unforgiveness leads to bitterness. Bitterness is related to increasing rates of cancer. People who have been sexually abused and cannot forgive are more likely to have cancers of genital organs.
    
    
12. If we don’t forgive, we miss the blessings for those who are merciful.
    
    
13. Without forgiveness, people become hard-hearted.
    
    
14. Without forgiveness, people become more dishonest, and involved in dehumanization of other people.
    
    
15. Without forgiveness, people are difficult to love. Until they forgive the perpetrator, they cannot be blessed and loved by the perpetrator.
    
    
16. Without forgiveness, the person will go on hurting the perpetrator, damaging their reputations, holding them at a distance, and not praying for them.
    
    
17. Without forgiveness, it’s hard to accept forgiveness.
    
    
18. Without forgiveness, we can’t appreciate what God has done to forgive us.

The Process

The process of reconciliation is difficult and can be dangerous. If you wonder how hard it is, ask God. It was the most difficult he did. It cost him the life of his son. It appears that humans would rather go to war and kill each other than engage in the arduous process of reconciliation, but it is the only option.

If one is hurt, there are three possible ways of dealing with it.

1. To try and ignore it: You may pretend it didn’t happen. When you find you can’t forget that it happened, you will attempt to distract yourself with activity, pleasure, travel, numb yourself with alcohol, drugs or medication, or harm yourself through risk taking.
   
   
2. Go on re-enacting the unresolved conflicts, repeating the tragedy and ingraining the deep pain even deeper.
   
   
3. Engage in a futile process of getting even through revenge or court action. You soon find that nobody gets even. One time, riding a taxi to the airport out of war torn Belfast, I asked the driver when the two sides of that sectarian violence would stop killing each other. “Oh,” he said, “when we get even.” Can you ever get even? I doubt it very much. So the only reasonable option is reconciliation. But people know reconciliation is difficult. They will try to avoid it by avoiding the basic problem, denying the necessity, becoming ill, go to war, or becoming unwell.

The process has the following steps:

1. You must walk into the light of truth, not away from it. As you approach the light, you may be blinded by painful memories for a while, but eventually, you start to see what really happened more clearly.
   
   
2. You must accept the truth of who you are and what you have been doing. Jesus said no one should criticize the other, trying to point out a speck of problems when you have a whole plank of them in yourself.⁸ Your unresolved problems occlude your vision. If you cannot see yourself clearly, you certainly are not in a position to see clearly anybody else. We have all sinned and come short of the glory of God.⁹ In the tragic triangle, everybody contributes. In matters of life and death, there are no innocent bystanders.¹⁰ You are either striving to prevent or correct the effects of the problem, or you are contributing to them. You can never say, “I wasn’t involved.” If I see a person in individual psychotherapy who has been sexually abused by her stepfather, who is she most angry at? Her mother. Why? Because her mother should have, could have done something. However, if the daughter approaches her mother and says, “Why didn’t you do something?” the mother’s characteristic defense or excuse that has been handed down through the ages in all these situations – “I didn’t see, I didn’t hear, I didn’t know, and besides there’s nothing I could have done about it.”.
   
   
3. Change. We have to become as adult as possible, a pilgrim, setting aside false faces and accepting and mourning the loss of the person we should have become (PISHB). Then only can we engage in the process of reconciliation without distorting things. Then and then only can we be effective in reconciling. Take the initiative. We can’t afford to wait. Time is always of the essence. While you are waiting for somebody to take the initiative and say sorry, people die, people change or die, and the opportunity to love and grow is lost.
   
   
4. One must forgive as Christ forgave us. “You must make allowance for each other's faults and forgive the person who offends you. Remember, the Lord forgave you, so you must forgive others.”¹¹ There are few instances in which we are just the victim or just the perpetrator. In most instances we are predominantly one or the other. If we are mostly the perpetrator, then we must quickly take the initiative and apologize. If we are predominantly the victim, we must rebuke or confront. “I am warning you! If another believer sins, rebuke him; then if he repents, forgive him.”¹²
   
   
5. Forgive and accept forgiveness. If people apologize, we must forgive them as often as they apologize. “Then Peter came to him and asked, "Lord, how often should I forgive someone who sins against me? Seven times?" "No!" Jesus replied, "seventy times seven!” ¹³ “Even if he wrongs you seven times a day and each time turns again and asks forgiveness, forgive him." ¹⁴ “If you forgive those who sin against you, your heavenly Father will forgive you. But if you refuse to forgive others, your Father will not forgive your sins.” ¹⁵ We have the prerogative of discerning whether the apology is genuine or not. If it is not, we may decline. But in doing so, we must encourage the other person to try again and give them hints about how they should apologize fully and correctly. We must remember that we cannot go to church until we are reconciled with our brother. “Therefore, if you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there in front of the altar. First go and be reconciled to your brother; then come and offer your gift.” ¹⁶
   
   
6. Rejoice. When all is said and done, so much more is said than done, especially in the area of reconciliation. However, when reconciliation is accomplished, there is very good reason to celebrate and rejoice, thanking the Lord. First of all, thanking Him for His effort to reconcile us by sending His son to die on our behalf.
   
   
7. We have found that it is much better to engage in the process of reconciliation by writing letters. We have a standard format, but we discourage people from using that format until they are as much an adult or pilgrim as possible. It is for that reason that this short essay doesn’t contain the outline of that letter. However, if people feel that they have engaged in all the other parts of reconciliation apart from writing the letter, and they are truly forgiven by God, and understand themselves, they should write to us and we will be happy to send them the outline of this letter. The Letter of Reconciliation is business-like, but after all this is serious business. Our results in Hope Alive group therapy shows that approximately one third of the people who receive a letter of reconciliation respond with, “Yes, you’re right, I’m sorry, I won’t do it again and I would like to fix the problem or compensate you.” One third of the people want to argue about the details. One third of the people either don’t respond or respond negatively. It doesn’t sound very successful but don’t forget that the best reconciler in the universe is not always successful.

Important Points to Remember In the Reconciliation Process

1. We must first reconcile with God. We must admit we have sinned against Him, our neighbours and ourselves, and are inclined to do so for the rest of our lives. Therefore, we apologize for the harm done, for the time wasted, for our lack of love and praise. Having confessed our sins, we then ask Christ to become our Saviour and Lord.¹⁷ Immediately He will respond and grant us His Spirit which is the seal, the stamp that ensures that we are His children and will remain so for eternity.
   
   
2. We cannot forgive others until they repent,¹¹ In order to forgive as Christ forgave us, we must remember that God doesn’t forgive us until we repent. Some will point to the fact that Christ asked God to forgive those who were killing him because they didn’t know what they were doing.¹⁸ Did God forgive them at that point in time? There is no indication. In Chapters 2, 3 and 4 of Acts, it is recorded that Peter, in particular, made them acutely aware of what they had done. Then they asked what they should do. Peter told them to repent,¹⁹ and then they were forgiven, but not at that moment Christ asked God to do it. This reminds us that if Christ’s requests were not immediately met, then it’s quite likely ours may take the timing God knows best.
   
   
3. We must rebuke in order to elicit repentance. Rebuking means telling people how they have hurt, frustrated, discouraged, frightened us, and how those hurts have resulted in deep damages. Rebuke must include a request for an apology and a request for compensation. Compensation, after all, was deeply ingrained in Jewish law and tradition. In the Old Testament, if a man accidentally killed another’s sheep, he had to replace that sheep plus six more. If it was a cow, replace the cow, plus one more. Zacchaeus told Jesus he would repay all those he had defrauded during his tax-collecting. I’m sure this impoverished Zacchaeus because he had probably defrauded almost everyone. However, Christ understood the sincerity of that, and his response was “Today salvation has come to this house.” ²⁰
   
   
4. We must accept the rebuke and repent when we are confronted. When somebody tells us we hurt them, there is no point in arguing, “Don’t be silly, I didn’t hurt you.” Since we were not in their skin, we could not possibly have experienced what they experienced. Having apologized, we can later try to explain that we were in fact trying to help them, or we didn’t realize, or it was accidental, etc. There is no point in arguing they were not hurt.
   
   
5. We cannot reconcile until we forgive and are forgiven. The process of reconciliation includes forgiveness, but it goes beyond that to becoming brotherly. This may take a long time, because even though the reconciliation has taken place, trust must be rebuilt.
   
   
6. God forgives us as we struggle to forgive others. He reads our hearts. When we reach out in an effort to reconcile, He forgives us, not waiting for the other person to apologize so that we can forgive them. He sees our intention is to forgive, and on that basis He forgives us.
   
   
7. We must keep trying to reconcile until it’s obvious there is no hope the other person will change their position. God gave us choice. We can accept His offer of reconciliation or go our own way. So it is with others. Eventually, refusing to admit they have hurt us, and refusing to apologize, people have made a choice not to reconcile and we must recognize that choice. How often we attempt to reconcile depends on the nature of our relationship. We should follow God’s example. He keeps on trying to reconcile with us through many centuries, with many kinds of teachers, preachers and prophets.
   
   
8. Eventually we must accept the other’s choice not to reconcile. God recognizes a person’s choice not to reconcile, and that choice eventually ends them up in hell, because that is the natural outcome of their choice.
   
   
9. When a person refuses to reconcile, we must say goodbye. We must say goodbye because the time is up. We cannot remain in a distorted relationship because it will distort us. God doesn’t want that to happen. Yet, even as we say goodbye, we must leave a crack in the door. We tell them although we will dissociate from them because they refused to respond to our attempts to reconcile, we will certainly respond if they attempt to reconcile with us.
   
   
10. If you have been hurt, you must seek an apology. It does you no good to say, “Well, it wasn’t a big thing, and maybe its effect will go away.” It does not. Besides which, the process of reconciliation is as good for the perpetrator and the observer as it is for the victim. When you engage in the process of reconciliation, the Law of Mutual Benefit must apply. Remember, you cannot benefit at the expense of another. When you hurt them, you are hurting yourself. When you forgive them, you love yourself.
    
    
11. If you say goodbye prematurely, dissociating with a person before you have really done your best to reconcile, it will leave you feeling guilty. You don’t want an accumulation of guilt in your mind, so keep trying to reconcile.
    
    
12. The laws of love and reconciliation are encoded in the instincts and intuitions of humans and in the words of God. They are not in human religion or ethics. These instincts are reinforced by the laws of physics and God’s interventions in the affairs of men. Is it wrong to think of God’s commands spoken by Moses, the prophets and Jesus, God’s son, as good advice? These are real laws and you must live by them. You cannot defy or ignore any without great peril to yourself and to others.
    
    
13. We must spend our lives repeatedly rebuking, repenting, and forgiving, so that we can go on healing and loving. We cannot fall in upon ourselves and become self indulgent, self protective and self abnegating.
    
    
14. You cannot forgive in your heart – Christ says we must forgive from our hearts.²¹ You forgive as Jesus did, genuinely, warmly. It is wrong to believe you can forgive whether or not the other person repents. God does not, and we should not.
    
    
15. We use a form letter God wrote to us. He understood it was better for many reasons:

i)  We could read His letter repeatedly and understand it more thoroughly.

ii)  Our first angry reaction mellows as we read it repeatedly. So it is with human letters.

iii)  Copying God, we now have a way of responding. So it is with humans. The Letter of Reconciliation (LOR) outlines how humans must respond.

iv)  The letter provides a person the opportunity to say all the painful things that need to be said without interruption. In conversation, it soon deteriorates into an argument that results in even more hurt.

v)  The letter is a record showing what we have stated. When the apology is given and the forgiveness given back, there is a record of that and it cannot be brought up again.

vi)  When we write carefully as a pilgrim, we can have the opportunity of a trusted friend correcting our grammar, etc.

vii)  The LOR makes it possible to communicate without the overload of harsh emotion. From the other end, the recipient of the letter can read it many times, gradually cooling down and comprehending what is really at stake. The letter also contains an invitation for them to state their hurts and engage in reconciliation from their end.

Summary

Reconciliation works. In human bodies, minds and spirits, it is the only process that does. Reconciliation heals, invigorates, enlightens and stops wars. It may be that because it confronts a person’s pride and robs him of the “satisfaction of revenge,” it isn’t popular. It may be that few will find the remarkable benefits arising from engaging in reconciling and being reconciled. Maybe you will. As for me, I know “God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself” and “has given to me the ministry of reconciliation.” ²² With that task and that honour, I am content.

References