Group Forgiveness

             Now instead, you ought to forgive and comfort him, so that he will not be overwhelmed by excessive sorrow. I urge you, therefore, to reaffirm your love for him. (II Corinthians 2:7-8)

 

            We don’t do forgiveness well, but today’s verses highlight an area of particular weakness. Paul was told about a man who was sleeping with his father’s wife, and the church was proud of it. Paul corrected them and told them how to deal with him and his stepmother. Apparently, the church had responded – possibly a little too vigorously. He had repented, but they were maintaining their distance from him. Even more than individual forgiveness, group (family, church, society) discipline and forgiveness are a challenge.

            Part of the problem is that discipline and forgiveness are similar to the Kubler-Ross Five Stages of Grief. With a situation needing discipline, there is denial, anger, bargaining, and depression, and not all members of the group are in the same place at the same time. The fifth stage of the Kubler-Ross paradigm is acceptance, which is a nice parallel to forgiveness.

             The person to be disciplined faces his/her own struggle. This is further complicated by larger groups that also think themselves involved in the discipline, even if they aren’t. No, group discipline and forgiveness isn’t easy. It’s messy, and often poorly handled.

            But once the person has repented and done what was necessary, it doesn’t seem unusual for the church to have no process in place to reintegrate the person into their midst. If there is forgiveness, there is little in terms of comfort. The person who has somehow failed (whether through sin or misunderstanding) is disciplined and then gently told, effectively, to go sit off to the side somewhere  where no one will notice them. Reintegration, forgiveness, and acceptance are slow and often much quieter than the discipline was.

                There may be cases when reintegration isn’t possible, and adjustments must be made, but making that the rule rather than the exception seems to fall short of what Paul described.