Ask Dr. E: What advice do you have for someone who finds forgiveness difficult?

Dear. Dr. E: I am having a hard time with forgiveness. There are just so many vile things going on in the world that I can’t bring myself to forgive people (some even within my own family) for their selfishness, arrogance, and the harm they do to others. Do you have any advice for someone like me who finds forgiving difficult? — Willing But Not Able from Tulsa

Dear Willing But Not Able: If you want to learn to forgive, you need to quit looking at others and take a look at yourself. The question isn’t whether someone else deserves to be forgiven, but rather, do you?

Surely you agree that no one is without sin, foremost the person you see looking back at you in the mirror. Forgiveness is a universal need. You need it. I need it. Everyone needs it. There isn’t a person who has ever lived, save one, who doesn’t need to be forgiven.

In addition to the need, there is also an expectation. You expect to receive forgiveness when you ask for it, don’t you? In other words, your admission of being wrong comes with the presumption that your apology will be accepted so you can move on without the guilt and judgment hanging over your head.

So, with both the need and expectation acknowledged, shouldn’t you hold yourself to the same standard that you set for others?

Jesus said: “If you forgive others when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive others their sins, your Father will not forgive you yours.”

This is why Christ teaches us to pray, “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.”

The bottom line is quite simple. You expect to be forgiven, and the expectation, in turn, is that you will forgive.

In the economy of the Kingdom, unforgiving people are unforgiven people. Their souls are so consumed by their sins that they become the very thing they despise. They are like the woman C.S. Lewis describes in “The Great Divorce” who had grumbled for so long that she became little more than a perpetual grumble.

Here’s how Lewis describes it: “The question is whether she is a grumbler or only a grumble. … The whole difficulty of understanding Hell is that … it begins with a grumbling mood, and yourself still distinct from it. … But there may come a day when you can no longer [distinguish it from yourself]. Then there will be no you left to criticize the mood, nor even to enjoy it, but just the grumble itself going on forever like a machine.”

People who need forgiveness must be people who extend it. Otherwise, they become little more than a soulless “machine” — an artificial intelligence robot, if you will — that knows nothing of forgiveness at all.

And let’s not forget that without knowing forgiveness, we are all damned. “For it is by grace that you’re saved. .. It is not of yourselves, lest any man should boast.”

The heart of the Gospel is forgiveness. None of us are worthy. None of us are good. All of us are sinners, and you and I are chief among them. We are all broken, and if we think we are justified more than others, we stand condemned already.

But the good news is that all of us can rise above resentment and revenge and become new creations in Christ. We don’t have to let others control us. We don’t have to be enslaved by perpetual grumbling, victimization and resentment. We do not have to be held in bondage by the sins of others or the sins we find in ourselves. We can forgive. We can be forgiven. We can be saved! Saved from anger. Saved from vengeance. Saved from self-righteousness and saved from self.

Martin Luther once said, “For still our ancient foe, doth seek to work us woe; His craft and power are great, and armed with cruel hate, on earth is not his equal.”

The cycle of “cruel hate” is broken only by grace: God’s grace toward you and yours toward others. And grace is made real only through the act of forgiveness.