The greatest and most painful betrayals come from people very close to us, and it hurts so because those are the people we least expect betrayal from. It also becomes very difficult to forgive such persons. Ironically, especially because of their closeness to us, we should rather find it easier to forgive them, but forgiveness doesn’t come so easily.
One of those who will offend in very unexpected ways is a spouse. Because of their proximity, spouses can offend and take offense very easily. In such cases, it is easier said to forgive and forget than actually forgiving and forgetting. Their constant presence in the space we share with them makes things harder as their very breath is a reminder of the offense; there is even no cooling break!
Depending on the weight of the offense, if the couple feels that they can no longer bear being in the same space with their spouse, they resort to separation or divorce. It is no wonder that the rates of dissolution of marriages have increased in recent times: we seem to have a very low tolerance for offenses from those who are very close to us.
Howbeit, what if we were to apply the ‘seventy-seven times seven’ principle? The principle states that forgive a person seventy-seven times seven times (77 x 7 times, totaling 539 times). Wow, right? This principle stems from a conversation between Simon Peter and Jesus of Nazareth after the former asked the latter how many times one should their neighbour when their neighbour offends them. The response Jesus gave was to forgive seventy-seven times seven times (or seventy times, according to some translations; for this article, we will use seventy-seven). By this, given that there are seven days in one week, one is expected to forgive each person who offends them seventy-seven times in a day. Wow!
It was not strange for Peter to have asked such a question because, in those days, revenge was the norm. Their first leader, Moses, had taught them that revenge was acceptable and that if one took their eye, they should take out that person’s eye too in revenge. If they did not realise that an eye for an eye will leave the world blind, we do now, don’t we? If we were to go by ‘an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth’, many of us would be deaf, blind, dumb, amputated, and worse, dead. How would our world be if we were all handicapped in some way because we could not forgive someone who offended us?
Jesus of Nazareth was showing us a better way: that we should let go of offenses for the sake of our physical and mental well-being. Would you be able to keep track of the offenses committed against you by one person in a day, given the number of people you know intimately, and your acquaintances? Even if there was software for logging in errors, would you honestly be able to steadily and religiously record each person’s offense till they hit the seventy-seven limit before we exact our revenge on them?
What are we to do then? Let trivial matters go. Decide what you think is important enough for you to be angry over. As much as possible, when big conflicts arise, do your best to resolve them amicably. Some of such resolutions may take a while – trust the process and take as long as you need to see it to the end. By this same principle, forgive yourself. If some people or situations trigger the offense, learn to be tolerant (if they are completely unavoidable) or avoid them altogether.
An eye for an eye will leave the whole world in darkness. Learn to let it go seventy-seven times seven times. Shalom.
