Day 13

What do you do when someone asks for forgiveness for something small they’ve done, but never recognizes the greater misdeed they’ve committed?

I ask because a friend has recently asked for forgiveness for dragging me into a conflict she was having with another mutual friend. While I am certainly ready to forgive her for dragging me into it, I’m not ready to forgive her for the hurt she caused to my other friend. The gracious thing for me to do is just to tell her I forgive her for the wrong she has committed towards me. After all, it’s not even my place to forgive or not forgive for wrings she committed towards another. However, she has yet to acknowledge that she did something very wrong to our other friend, and has yet to apologize to that friend for what she had done. On the contrary, the last time she spoke to our other friend regarding the situation, she spent more time accusing my other friend of wronging her without ever admitting her own fault in the situation.

Now I truly believe that she is at greater fault in the conflict, and is too selfish and stubborn to admit that, and I believe that she is apologizing to me so she can feel better about herself, so that she can feel clean about the situation. I want to tell her that she doesn’t need to apologize to me for this little thing that I’ve already moved past; rather she needs to apologize to my other friend for the bigger infraction. But in truth, I have little faith in her. How can one be so concerned about small matters, meanwhile glossing over much more important ones? We’ve all heard that we need to be more concerned about removing the planks in our eyes before we concern ourselves with removing the splinters in others’ eyes, but how can one be so aware of the splinter in one of their own eyes while completely and willfully disregarding the plank in the other eye? How can she carry on, self-righteously accusing my other friend of wronging her when she has a proven pattern of relational destruction, a pattern that has been pointed out to her on several occasions by several different people? What good could I possible accomplish by telling her I forgive her for this minor thing when I truly believe she is only trying to distract herself from confronting the major thing?

The more loving thing to do, it would appear, would be to point out that she need not apologize to me, but to my other friend. Trouble is, she will argue this point, insisting upon her own hurt being justification that it was really my other friend who wronged her, even when all logic and all facts point otherwise. In other words, that conversation would be pointless, and would only reopen wounds we are all trying to heal. My other friend, despite her own hurt and despite never receiving the apology due her, is trying to move on. I’d rather not make things harder on her by stirring up this conflict again.

So that still leaves me with this dilemma, needing to give some sort of a response, all the while knowing that anything I say will be inadequate to provide closure. Oog…