It may be a feature of one or more of my behavioral pathologies that I tend to think of the “Craig Keen” of the past as one of the people who have contributed to the life that I am in the middle of these days. There are only a very few people whom I struggle still to forgive, people whose words and deeds hurt me or people that are close to me. Those tend to be holders of power, like university or church administrators, but there are a few others.
One of the persons with whom I associate personal pain was a General Superintendent of the Church of the Nazarene. But I think I have learned by graced time—especially of the last few years—to forgive him, too, and even (in a pretty unqualified way) to love him. That’s partly because I love his family, but also because he and his actions have become a means of grace for and into my complicated life. And so, I tell his son sometimes to greet him for me . . . and I mean it.
However, the person I have the hardest time forgiving is me. I too often remember the moments I have spoken unkindly or foolishly and have hurt people. I remember the times I have done things to hurt people. It doesn’t matter much that I didn’t plan to hurt them. I still wince, sometimes at night before going to sleep. That’s not a good time to feel remorse, to wonder if those whom I hurt . . . hurt still.
What helps me to forgive—especially to forgive the “Craig Keen” of bygone days—is that the gospel is concerned from beginning to end with a new creation in which the old is made something it never was in itself. The New Jerusalem, the Kingdom of God, the Reign of God, is an apocalyptic moment in which all the old hurtful words and deeds are set free, that they are all embraced in a love that is beyond good and evil, a yea-saying that bursts through the confines of the wine skins that are good only for leaving everything as it always has been. That’s why the New Jerusalem has gates that are always left agape, like the wounds of the crucified body of Jesus that walks out of the tomb with the radiance of God’s glory.