Check Yourself - Part 3

Letting Go of Hate: Finding Freedom in Forgiveness and God's Unconditional Love
Check Yourself - Part 3 (The FREEDOM of Forgiveness)
by Curtis Thomas

Thirteen years ago, my wife and I left a very toxic church environment. 

I was a youth pastor in a larger church in Texas. During my first year on staff, the Lead Pastor retired, and the hunt for a replacement was underway. In the absence of that leadership, influential families started to fill the holes of leadership only to press their personal agenda in the church. As the youth pastor to their teenagers, much of that agenda was focused on me.

I’ll be the first to say, as a young ministry leader at the time, I did not handle the conflict well or with integrity. There was much to blame on me. But, honestly, it felt like a battle - not for souls - for control in the church. And, in their eyes, I was expendable.

After a year of conflict, there came a moment when I sat face-to-face with one of the families in an attempt to “manage conflict.” Naively, I walked into this meeting, hoping for a resolution. Instead, it was about what I would do differently to appease them. Then it happened.

“I hate these people,” I thought to myself.

These families, parents of students in the youth ministry, whom I was to be a pastor to, became the greatest enemies of my heart, and I hated them for it. I wanted them to suffer as I had suffered. No! Worse than I had suffered. I wanted vengeance. I wanted justice. 

I was drowning in resentment and bitterness. And my soul burned with fire for them to pay for what they have put me through. The next day, I turned in my resignation.

It’s part of the human condition to demand vengeance. If someone wrongs us, then we want justice. If someone strikes us, then we strike harder. If someone offends us, then to hell with them.

When I turned in my resignation, I felt like I lost the battle. I felt defeated because they won. They got what they wanted, and I was expendable. But my prayers became dark and ungodly. My walk with God suffered. I was hurting, and they didn’t care. And I wanted them to pay.

I carried that hate for a while. It affected my relationship with my family. It affected my next job. It affected my ability to trust the church. And it affected my ability to trust anyone inside the church. The hate I held onto was killing me when I wished it would destroy them instead.

They carried on with their lives, never disrupted by my feelings. No matter how much I tried to hate these people, they never felt a thing. The only one suffering was me. That’s the interesting thing about hate. It destroys the one holding it before it affects anyone else.

I would say that I forgave them, but my heart still held on to the pain. I could reject contact with them, but in my whispers were curses over their household. Something had to shift.

Before anything else, I had to begin with God’s forgiveness. “...forgiving one another just as God also forgave you in Christ.” (Ephesians 4:32)

“Yeah, but God,” I would say, “do you remember what they did to me? Do you remember the pain and hurt they caused me? Do you recall all the stress, anxiety, and worry I had to endure? Do you remember me at all?”

Weeks and months would go by trying to reason with God about my need for vengeance. Yet he always would say to me, “I did remember you. I remembered you in Jesus’ final words, ‘It is finished.’ I remembered you in the following three days of silence. I remembered you when the first breath returned to Jesus’ lungs from the tomb.” 

The sin in my life and the wrongs that I have committed were all forgiven because of Jesus. God had every reason to hate me and reject me. But he didn’t. He remembered me through the pain and hurt, rejection, stress, and anxiety. He forgave me.

Through all my sins, “You, Lord, are forgiving and good, abounding in love to all who call to you” (Psalm 86:5).

It took much time to fully grasp the impact of God’s love for me and wrestle with the truth of forgiveness. My heart had been dismantled because of hate, which didn’t make healing easy. But, as much as I wanted to hate those families, the more God’s love overcame it. As much as I was crushed, I was never abandoned.

Three years later, I sent a letter to the families asking for their forgiveness as I let go of the hate I held against them. I never received a response, but that's okay. I couldn’t hold on to that period of my life anymore. I was forgiving them.

I look back on that season of life 13 years removed from it and am deeply grateful for the Lord’s handiwork in my heart during that time. I was in a very dark place, and he met me there. He reshaped me and revealed something even greater than I could have imagined: his love.

Honestly, it doesn’t make sense sometimes. I don’t think it ever will. But God’s love is more powerful than we could ever imagine. The more that I am in the middle of his love, the less I care to hate anyone. And there is no better place to be.

This post was inspired by the following message.