There are few spiritual teachings that provoke more discomfort than the concept of forgiveness.

Love your neighbor? Some of us aspire to that. Feed the hungry? Care for the vulnerable? Practice generosity? These are difficult, but they at least make intuitive sense.

Forgiveness is different. Forgiveness asks us to approach the very thing we would rather run from.

It asks us to revisit wounds. Betrayals. Humiliations. Violations. Abandonments. Cruelties. It asks us to consider forgiving those who have caused profound harm.

Many of us don’t merely struggle with that idea. We recoil from it. Sometimes we are disgusted by it. Understandably so.

Because there are injuries so deep that forgiveness can feel like a second violation. When we hear someone say, “You should forgive them,” what we often hear is: “What they did wasn’t that bad. Move on. Stop feeling what you’re feeling. Let them off the hook.”

But that is not forgiveness. That’s dismissal. And dismissal is not a spiritual virtue.

Pain deserves to be acknowledged. Truth deserves to be told. Justice deserves to be pursued.

Forgiveness does not require us to deny any of those things. In fact, genuine forgiveness begins with telling the truth. The truth about what happened, about how much it hurt, about what was lost, about the damage that was done. Only then can forgiveness even become imaginable.

Because forgiveness is not pretending the wound never existed. It is deciding that the wound will no longer decide who we become.

This is where many of us have misunderstood the very concept of forgiveness. And who could blame any of us for misunderstanding it when the act of forgiveness is often defined by the very same people who are asking for it? They are also the ones who tell us that we should forgive and forget. How convenient for them if we forget what they did?

We therefore imagine forgiveness as something we do for the person who harmed us. But forgiveness is not really for them. It is for us. It is ours.

The offender may never apologize, make amends or even validate our experience by acknowledging what they did. They may never experience remorse. They may never change. Forgiveness cannot depend upon any of those things because they remain outside our control.

Forgiveness begins when we reclaim our freedom from someone else’s actions. When we refuse to allow their choices to occupy permanent residence within our hearts. When we stop handing them the keys to our emotional life.

Because resentment has a peculiar characteristic. It preserves the injury. It keeps the wound alive. It keeps the rage in the forefront. It allows the person who harmed us to continue shaping our thoughts, our emotions and our future.

The original injury may have lasted a moment. But resentment can extend its life for decades.

Forgiveness does not erase the memory. It erases the ownership. It says: “You may have harmed me. But I refuse to spend the rest of my life carrying you around with me. I refuse to let you keep perpetuating the harm.”

Forgiveness is the solvent. It dissolves the chains. Not because the past disappears. But because the past no longer controls the future.

This is true not only in personal relationships. It is true in human history. Consider diplomacy. Nations go to war. Communities experience violence. Generations inherit wounds from generations before them.

If forgiveness were merely a reward for perfect behavior, peace would never be possible. Communication would be impossible. Collaboration would be impossible. The future would be held hostage by the past forever.

Yet every lasting peace process contains some element of forgiveness. Neither amnesia nor denial. Certainly not surrender.

Forgiveness is a willingness to say: “What happened was real. What happened was wrong. But we cannot build tomorrow if we remain imprisoned by yesterday.”

Forgiveness creates the possibility of a future.

Without it, humanity remains trapped in endless cycles of retaliation. It has been said that the old Hammurabi law of “an eye for an eye” eventually leaves everyone blind.

Perhaps this is why forgiveness stands so near the center of so many spiritual traditions. It is not merely a moral teaching. It is a survival strategy for the human soul.

Which brings us to one of the most extraordinary moments in the Christian story.

Jesus hangs upon the cross. Abandoned, humiliated, tortured, on the verge of death. If there were ever a moment to justify hatred, surely this would be it. If there were ever a moment to curse one’s enemies, surely this would be it.

Yet according to Luke, Jesus says: “Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do.”

Notice what he does not say. He does not say they are innocent or that their actions are acceptable. He does not say justice no longer matters.

Instead, he petitions God for their forgiveness. And in doing so, he reveals something profound. He has already done so.

You do not ask God to forgive someone while simultaneously clinging to hatred. The prayer itself demonstrates that he has released them.

Not because they deserve it or have repented.

And obviously not because they have apologized. But because he refuses to allow their violence to dictate the condition of his heart.

Even on the cross. Especially on the cross.

The executioners can take his body but not his compassion. They can nail his hands, but they cannot possess his spirit.

That is the power of forgiveness. It is the final refusal to surrender our humanity.

Perhaps that is what frightens us so much about forgiveness. Because forgiveness is not passive. It’s not weakness. It’s one of the most radical acts of self-determination available to us.

It is the declaration that our future will not be governed by another person’s worst actions. It is the refusal to become the very thing that has wounded us.

To be clear: Forgiveness does not always mean reconciliation. Some relationships should not be restored. Some people remain dangerous.

Boundaries remain holy. Justice remains necessary. Consequences remain appropriate. Forgiveness does not eliminate wisdom, neither does it require proximity.

Forgiveness does not equal trust. Trust is earned. Forgiveness is given. Those are different things.

Sometimes forgiveness means welcoming someone back into our lives. Sometimes forgiveness means wishing them well from a thousand miles away.

The form varies. The freedom remains the same.

That is the invitation before us today. Not to pretend that our wounds are small or to deny our grief. Not to excuse what should never have happened. But to ask ourselves a difficult question: How much longer do I wish to carry this? How much longer do I wish to allow another person’s actions to determine the shape of my inner life? How much longer do I wish to give them power they no longer deserve?

Forgiveness is not forgetting. Forgiveness is releasing. It is laying down a burden that was never ours to carry forever.

It is reclaiming the future. It is choosing freedom. It is becoming larger than the injury.

That is why forgiveness remains one of the most transformative teachings ever offered. Because forgiveness is the solvent that dissolves hatred, erodes resentment. It renders null the chains that bind us to yesterday.

And in their place, it leaves something extraordinary. Space. For healing. Room for wisdom to enter. Room for peace. Room for a future we would not otherwise have the capacity to imagine.

Wil Darcangelo, M.Div, is an ordained Unitarian Universalist minister of the First Church of Lancaster at the Bulfinch Meetinghouse in Massachusetts, progressive theologian and essayist on optimistic spirituality in the Information Age. Follow him on Substack, Facebook, Instagram and YouTube.