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Podcast: Am I Really Supposed to Forgive and Forget? (Erika Allen)

September 02, 2024 by: Crossway

This article is part of the The Crossway Podcast series.

Why Is Forgiveness So Hard?

In this episode, Erika Allen discusses the emotional challenge of forgiving someone who has sinned against us and thoughtfully answers questions about whether forgiveness ultimately excuses sin or if full restoration of relationship is required for true forgiveness.

ESV Prayer Journal

ESV Prayer Journal

Erika Allen

ESV Prayer Journals guide your study of forgiveness over 6 weeks and create space for writing and prayer—turning your quiet time into a meditation on God’s Word.

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Topics Addressed in This Interview:

01:00 - Where Do We Begin?

Matt Tully
Erika, thank you so much for joining me again on The Crossway Podcast today.

Erika Allen
Thanks, Matt.

Matt Tully
When it comes to this topic, the topic of forgiveness, I think it can be tempting to jump right into our need for forgiveness and why that’s the case because of sin, or all the passages in the Bible that call us to forgive other people as Christians. We’re going to get into some of that in a little bit, but you open this new devotional prayer journal that you’ve written in a different way, in a different spot, and with a different focus. I wonder if you can tell us a little bit about how you started.

Erika Allen
Forgiveness is one of those topics that we think is so basic, and we think we’ve got a good grasp of it. "Forgiveness? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Got that." But in reality, it is so contrary to our human nature. And C. S. Lewis has this famous quote where he says, "Everybody thinks that forgiveness is a wonderful idea until they have something to forgive." And that’s absolutely true. When there comes a time where you have something to forgive or you desperately need forgiveness from another person, you realize it’s not a simple topic at all. And you realize how contrary it is to our nature. Our default is to focus inwardly and to care about our needs and to dwell on the ways people have hurt us. So if there’s any hope of us actually forgiving another person, we have to have the Lord’s help. It’s the only way that we can do it. And so the starting point, number one, is to see just how central forgiveness is to God’s character himself. That shows us why forgiveness is important, because we know that we’re to imitate him. Te longer that we walk with Jesus, the more and more we should look like the Lord. And so forgiveness is just such an important aspect of that.

Matt Tully
A passage that you explore in that opening section on God’s character is Psalm 103:8–14. And it’s just this incredibly important, probably very familiar passage of the Bible where we see God’s character related to his willingness to forgive us on full, magnificent display. I wonder if you could just help us think through that psalm. What is it specifically in that psalm that you would say helps set the stage for thinking about forgiveness?

Erika Allen
That Psalm tells us that God is merciful and gracious. He’s slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love. And so you see these related concepts, that God’s forgiveness is tied in with the fact that he’s merciful. He’s gracious. He’s slow to anger. And all those things are so helpful to us. They show us character traits that we ourselves should have, that we have to have if we’re going to be able to forgive another person. We have to be able to show mercy and grace. We have to be slow to anger. Because forgiveness is such a complex, hard topic, to me the only logical place to start is with God’s character himself, because then we see why it’s so important. This is who God is at his core. He is a God that forgives because he’s gracious, he’s merciful, he’s slow to anger, and he’s abounding in steadfast love. So that orients us, it tells us why it’s important, and also it motivates us to be a forgiving person when we truly understand that the Lord has shown us forgiveness and why. In the journal we look at Nehemiah 9, which kind of recounts Israel’s attitude—just the fact that they’re stiff-necked and rebellious continually, and it just shows God’s goodness toward them despite that. Most strikingly with the incident of the golden calf, where the mountain is literally God’s presence in the fire and smoke behind them, and they’re worshiping a cow that they made. This passage tells how God cares for them because his love is steadfast and his faithfulness is steadfast. That’s the kind of love that he shows us. So I think when we’re aware of that, it kind of puts the grievances that we have with other people in perspective.

Matt Tully
And this passage, Psalm 103, has some of these very classic verses on this topic. I think of verse 11: "For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his steadfast love towards those who fear him; as far as the east is from the west, so far does he remove our transgressions from us." So it is just this incredible picture of God’s forgiving heart and character towards his people. I want to even go back to that first verse, though, verse 8: "The Lord is merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love." People who know their Bibles might know that verse, actually, is an echo or a restatement of a previous passage in the Bible that we do see going all the way back to that Exodus narrative. Tell us a little bit about that passage and that statement in Exodus 34. Why is that such an important passage for us to be familiar with?

Erika Allen
It’s important because it’s the first time that God actually tells us about himself and his character. And those are the words that he uses. "I’m gracious and merciful. I’m slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness." And that’s the refrain. We see that again and again in Scripture. So that’s the best place we can go if someone asks, "What’s the Lord like?" That’s what he tells us himself.

Matt Tully
He’s defining himself for Israel in a very central way in the story.

Erika Allen
That’s right. This is the character of the God that you serve. And so again and again he’ll say, "This is what your character should look like, because this is who I am. You’re my people. You’ve been set apart to point the nations to me." And so that’s why he reveals that, or a big part of why he reveals that. So yes, some Psalm 103 echoes or picks up on the Lord’s revelation of himself to Moses in Exodus.

Matt Tully
You write, "We never look more like our heavenly Father than when we are forgiving others." I wonder if you could unpack that a little bit more.

Erika Allen
I think true forgiveness is just so distinctively Christian because it runs counter to everything that’s naturally in us. It forces us to be concerned about others and to put others first, to put the Lord’s demands and requests above our own. And we need his help to do it. We just cannot truly forgive other people without the Spirit empowering us to do that. And so because forgiveness is so distinctively Christian, when the world sees it, it looks so different than anything they have to offer. There’s a therapeutic forgiveness, sure, but a lot of times that’s even focused on how anger and bitterness will eat away at you, so you need to let go of it, forgive and forget, move on. And that’s kind of the motivation at times for that, not that forgiveness is the way to honor the Lord and to imitate his character. And so it just looks very different from anything that the world has to offer because it runs so much deeper. It’s so much more complex. It’s not flippant. It’s not cheap. It’s not a cheap forgiveness. And so in that way, I think it points so clearly to Jesus, because like I said, it’s utterly dependent on him.

08:24 - “Forgive and Forget”

Matt Tully
I want to get into some tricky situations that we might face or difficult dynamics with forgiveness that we might sometimes wonder about in just a few minutes. But maybe before we do that, speaking about the contrast between a truly Christian, a truly biblical view of forgiveness that is, as we’ve said, rooted in God’s character versus what the world often thinks about forgiveness. I wonder if you could respond to a few common quotes or aphorisms (you’ve actually already mentioned a couple of them) that we sometimes hear related to forgiveness in our culture today. So the first one is "forgive and forget." Is that a good way to think about what forgiveness means?

Erika Allen
That’s a great question. I think it really needs to be unpacked. When it’s said flippantly, it’s really not much more than a platitude if you don’t really think about what that means. So going back to Psalm 103, there’s an emphasis there that God does forget our sin. He chooses to forget. And what that means is he never holds those over our heads. He doesn’t constantly bring those up. And so we have to do that. And so one of the problems that I think the world has, and maybe even some believers, with the concept of forgiveness, especially in recent years, is it seems to be at odds with justice. We’re really focused on justice, which is a good focus to have. Again, justice is so central to who God is. He is a just God. So it’s not that we don’t want to have that emphasis, but we see the two sometimes as in conflict with one another. If we forgive, then that means somebody’s just let off the hook.

Matt Tully
They’re getting away with it.

Erika Allen
They’re getting away with it. There’s no consequences. We’re saying that what they did didn’t really matter. And that couldn’t be further from the truth. We have no greater example than the cross than to see how much God hates evil. He hated it enough that he had to send his Son to the cross to pay for that. And so we want to be able to call out evil and to recognize it and never minimize it in any way. But forgiveness and justice are not in conflict with one another. And what I think "forgive and forget" simply means is that we forget our quest for justice and revenge, that we’re leaving that in the Lord’s hands. We trust that he is going to make everything that’s wrong right, and that we can trust him and his ability to do that. Again, our desire for justice, our pursuit of it is right and good. But the problem is that we’re sinful, and so we get it wrong. We confuse sometimes (a lot of times) justice with revenge. We think that what we’re after is justice. Well, it’s more that we’re angry and we’ve been hurt and so we want the person that hurt us to be hurt themselves. So I think the forgetting part is just that we’re saying we’re not going to hold this over your head. We’re not going to keep bringing it up. We are going to imitate the Lord in that way. We’re going to forget it. We’re going to forget our quest for justice and for revenge.

Matt Tully
I have a question about that and the forgetting dynamic, but before I get to that, I want to go back to just the idea of justice and forgiveness not necessarily being in conflict with one another. It kind of makes me wonder if we think that and if that’s our default to thinking that forgiveness, even God’s forgiveness of us, is just him pushing it under the rug or just choosing to not deal with it, it actually reveals maybe a deficient understanding of what the cross actually was. Because God didn’t just forget about our sins and kind of ignore them as if they didn’t matter. He actually did punish our sins in Christ.

Erika Allen
That’s right. There are so many crucial themes that are tied in so closely to forgiveness that we need to have an understanding of. Justification is one that immediately comes to mind. And atonement. Because God is a just God, he could not just ignore sin or turn a blind eye to it. That’s the reason for the cross and for Jesus’s substitutionary atonement. Because Jesus was completely without sin, he was able to be the perfect sacrifice for our sins. And so in the cross, God’s perfect mercy and his justice are met. And so our sin is dealt with, but it’s not dealt with by us. We couldn’t do it. There is no way. And so Jesus deals with that. And so sin being just let off the hook or undealt with is never an option. There’s no concept for that in the Bible. God takes evil and sin very seriously. So we never have to worry about that ever as Christians.

Matt Tully
Even if not in this life, we can be confident that God is just and that sin that was maybe committed against us will be paid for, whether by Christ or by the person.

Erika Allen
That’s absolutely right. The Scripture makes it equally clear that Jesus will save all that are his, and that those who aren’t will be held accountable for their sins. That’s always such a concern for us, that we’re not seen or understood or cared for. And all those things can be put to rest. God understands more fully than we do our hurt and the ways that we’ve been wronged. And again, this is one reason that the concept of forgiveness is so hard and so hard to talk about is because there’s such a huge spectrum. There are the hurts and the need for forgiveness if we’re talking about a time somebody said something that was upsetting or that was mean-spirited. And then you have actual criminal acts. And so there’s a huge spectrum there.

Matt Tully
One other question about the idea of forgetting. I think sometimes when we use a phrase like "forgive and forget," or we even just think of those passages in the Bible where God is described as forgetting our sins, we can wonder if there’s an issue, say, that I have with my spouse where we had an argument and there was a sin done against me and I want to forgive that person, does that mean I can literally never bring that sin up again? I can never maybe bring up that pattern of sin or pattern of action that is happening? We can’t ever talk about that again because I’ve "forgiven and forgotten it"?

Erika Allen
That is so difficult. I think that is one of the most important and also most difficult questions that we can ask. Here again is why we’re so dependent on the Lord to get this right, and I think we’re always going to, unfortunately, get it wrong sometimes. And then here’s why forgiveness and grace and mercy are so important: our motives matter. I think if we bring an instance up again, it needs to be with a lot of prayer and very careful wording. We need to be very sure that it’s the Lord wanting us to do that—"It’s important at this time to bring this up so we can talk about it." Sometimes you need clear examples. If you just go to someone and say, "You’ve hurt me," that’s so vague that it’s not really helpful, and then you can’t work through something. So I think there’s a right way to bring that up, but again, we better be sure that we’re doing it with the Lord’s help and not just in our anger.

Matt Tully
In a vindictive way.

Erika Allen
That’s right. I have recent examples in my life of where I just brought something up because I was angry, and ironically, right in the midst of working on writing on forgiveness. I’m like, "Well, there’s the example of how not to do." Because the reason I brought it up was I was mad, and that’s not the right way to do that. That is the exact opposite of how the Lord treats us. But I think there can be a way to bring it up where you say, "Okay, let’s look through this pattern if we’re going to get to a place of healing and reconciliation." And there’s an important conversation—the relationship between forgiveness and reconciliation. So I think you can make a strong argument that for true reconciliation to take place you need to talk through these things together, but in a way that honors the Lord and that is directed by him.

16:35 - “Forgiveness Is the Best Revenge”

Matt Tully
Another phrase that we sometimes hear related to forgiveness in the broader culture is "forgiveness is the best revenge." And I think we can probably assume that we are generally not going to be super excited about this idea, but I wonder if you can just unpack what you think are the problems with that way of thinking.

Erika Allen
I think all these phrases maybe started in a good place. I don’t know the origin. Like I said, they’ve become kind of cliché or platitudes now. Maybe the heart behind them originally was helpful, but now they’ve just become so flippant that they tend to minimize the seriousness of forgiveness and how much it requires of us.

Matt Tully
And even misunderstand the concept. This one strikes me as saying forgiveness is weaponized.

Erika Allen
That’s right. Again, your motivations are so important. Your motive is to look like Jesus and to live a life that honors him. And so if you’re coming at it from the standpoint of revenge, that’s very problematic. I wonder if maybe that originated in the Scriptural concept of heaping burning coals.

Matt Tully
Yeah, I had that written down. Proverbs 25:21–22: "If your enemy is hungry, give him bread to eat. If he’s thirsty, give him water to drink, for you will keep burning coals on his head and the Lord will reward you." How does that relate to this?

Erika Allen
Yeah, and the Gospels pick up on that proverb. I think pastors and theologians kind of come at that verse to explain what that means exactly, to heat burning coals, differently. But what we can say with certainty is that it doesn’t mean this is our revenge. So again, that platitude of "forgiveness is the best revenge" is wrong, but what it seems to mean is that your kindness towards someone who is sinning against you will hopefully convict them of their sin and lead them to repentance and then reconciliation. Again, that’s always the goal. The goal is always reconciliation. And by that we mean reconciliation is a restored relationship and peace with a person that you’ve become estranged with or that you’re hostile to. So our goal as Christians is always for reconciliation and repentance and never revenge. So I think that’s one of the ones that we could just throw out the window. Let’s just not use that one.

18:58 - “Holding onto Anger Is Like Drinking Poison”

Matt Tully
Here’s another one that you’ve also alluded to, this idea that holding on to anger or refusing to forgive is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die. Unpack that for us. What do you think about that?

Erika Allen
I think there’s truth there. Like I said, just as there are all these wonderful virtues that are connected to forgiveness—mercy, grace, and being slow to anger—the reverse is true too. Unforgiveness has all these terrible things that are attached to it—anger, bitterness, resentment. So if you’re hanging onto a sense of unforgiveness, then you’re going to experience all these other things that are not Christ honoring and that will eat you away. And the truth is there are some people that wound us that don’t care, especially if you’re talking about a non-believer. And so I can see where people would say that you’re only hurting yourself by holding on to unforgiveness. But again, I think one of the dangers of using phrases like that, especially for the Christian, is we minimize the hurt. Pain and trauma are deep, and it just makes forgiveness seem like a flippant kind of issue. It just doesn’t capture the gravity of it. And so it’s hurtful. It adds trauma on top of trauma if you just say, "Forgive and forget" or "Don’t hold on to this for your own sake." Like I said, there’s a kernel of truth there, but I think the helpfulness of those phrases are very limited.

Matt Tully
It also seems like, again, if that posture is all that’s there in your mind as you think about forgiveness, it does miss that others-oriented, the love side, of this where that is a big part. God doesn’t forgive us because it’s going to help his mental health.

Erika Allen
Right. Exactly.

Matt Tully
He forgives us out of a selfless love for us. And so that feels like it’s kind of missing that.

Erika Allen
It takes us away from the motivation of forgiveness, which, again, is rooted in the character of God and how he treats us, how he relates to us. We want to emulate that with other people.

20:58 - Is Forgiveness Required by God?

Matt Tully
I think sometimes we can link forgiveness and repentance together, and rightly so. They are both necessary for, as you said, reconciliation and restoration of a relationship. But I think sometimes we can maybe fall into thinking, "I don’t really need to forgive somebody if they’re not willing to repent, if they’re not willing to admit that they did something wrong against me." What do you think about that? Is that the right way to think about our need to forgive?

Erika Allen
That’s an incredibly good and hard question. Again, I was surprised when I really started delving deeply into this issue of forgiveness how many differing opinions there are between really trusted Godly pastors and theologians. This is a hard issue. And so if you feel like you’re the only person that doesn’t understand this or is confused, that’s not true. There are really godly people that are wrestling with this.

Matt Tully
Especially when you get beyond the theoretical and get into the question, How does this work itself out? Things get really tricky really quickly.

Erika Allen
There’s no cookie cutter situation or approach. Everybody’s situation is so different. So when we’re talking about God’s forgiveness of us, the way that we take hold of that is through faith, through turning to Jesus in faith and repentance.

Matt Tully
Repent and believe.

Erika Allen
Repent and believe. That’s right. When it comes to God’s forgiveness of us, that is necessary for us to experience his forgiveness. But then when you’re talking about our forgiveness of other people, there’s a difference between if you’re talking about another Christian or if you’re talking about a non-Christian. There’s so much nuance here and so much care that has to be taken. Pastors normally come at this as seeing forgiveness as a two-step process. You’re talking about your inward heart’s posture toward another person, and then how they experience that forgiveness—that’s an outward forgiveness. Tim Keller will talk about inward forgiveness versus outward, and that’s a kind of a helpful way to look at it. And different people word that differently, but that’s kind of always the gist of it, that when we can forgive someone in our heart, we cannot be wallowing in the sin that they committed against us by constantly thinking about it, constantly mulling on, What are we going to do about it? How are we going to deal with this? How are we going to make them pay?

Matt Tully
How much I hate this person.

Erika Allen
How much I hate this person. We can let go of that. But then how they respond to us does have an effect. There are some people who will kind of equate forgiveness with reconciliation. I don’t think it’s quite that clean. I don’t think we can do that because reconciliation requires two people to be in agreement. You can’t reconcile with someone who still hates you and who has no desire for that whatsoever. So God’s forgiveness of us always results in our reconciliation with him. That’s one of the main things that accomplishes. And so again, that’s why that’s always our goal with another person, but unfortunately I think the reality is that because we’re still on this side of eternity, that’s not always where that’s going to end up. In a situation where the other party refuses to admit that they’ve done anything wrong, especially where you’ve got this spectrum, if you’re talking about someone that has abused you, that has hurt you, you have to forgive them. Here’s what we can’t get away from: not forgiving someone is just not an option for us as believers. Scripture makes that very clear. So here’s what I think—

Matt Tully
And you’re not saying right now that it’s not incredibly difficult and hard. These things are, especially when there is serious, grievous sin like that. But you’re just saying that the Bible doesn’t have a carve-out for certain kinds of sins that might be committed against us.

Erika Allen
That’s right. Where you don’t need to forgive that one. So there’s where we need to really understand what we are talking about exactly when we say forgiveness. And I think at the most basic level, it means that we are intentional about letting go of our feelings of hatred and that quest for revenge. We’re saying we’re going to let go of that. And that is, again, just a very intentional decision. So that’s on the most basic level. What it’s not saying is that we don’t think that person should be held accountable for their sin and that it doesn’t matter and that we’re letting them off the hook and we’re acting as if this never happened. I also don’t think there’s anywhere in Scripture that would justify that kind of attitude.

Matt Tully
That’s a helpful distinction, just that basic one between our decision and our effort to forgive somebody in our heart from full reconciliation or restoration of the relationship, which requires their repentance. And honestly, maybe in certain situations, when it’s a certain type of seriousness, it might not be possible this side of glory. And I think that helps to maybe give a little nuance to those very serious situations where we can wonder, If I forgive this person, does that mean that I can’t tell the authorities about something that’s happened or tell the right authority about this serious thing that’s been done? And I think sometimes, sadly, that the idea of forgiveness has been used to justify not speaking up when it’s necessary.

Erika Allen
And that’s terrible because those governing bodies, those positions of authority, are God-ordained. He’s put them there for our protection. And so I don’t think there’s any way to justify that. That’s not what forgiveness means. Forgiveness never means making light of sin. Again, the cross is our best example. God himself does not do that. He does not take sin lightly. He doesn’t turn a blind eye to it. But again, we’re leaving it in his hands. We’re saying, "You are the perfect judge, completely trustworthy." But that looks very differently played out from situation to situation.

Matt Tully
It requires so much wisdom.

Erika Allen
It does! And discernment and just a constant coming before the Lord. Such a difficult thing is how do we gauge forgiveness? I think we’ve all had these situations where you think you’ve forgiven something and you’ve moved past it, and then something will trigger you and all of a sudden, all that hurt and that anger just comes to the surface again. Well, there it is. And what do you do with that? Well, we give it to the Lord again and ask for his help. I don’t think it’s a one and done.

Matt Tully
We can think that. We can say, "I thought I processed that."

Erika Allen
Hurt can be so profound, which is, again, why we don’t want to minimize it and act like this isn’t a big deal or it’s something that’s easy. It’s not. It’s hard. And again, just constantly bringing it before the Lord and saying, "Can you help me not wallow and just let this build into resentment and anger? Can you help me trust you to take care of it? Show me exactly what that looks like in this situation and in this exact moment."

27:53 - What If I Don’t Want to Forgive?

Matt Tully
I wonder if you could give some advice to somebody who’s maybe not even there yet. They’re listening to this right now and they’re thinking of some person who’s done some specific thing to them that they just were so hurt by, and they would have to confess that maybe they want to want to forgive that person, but they don’t currently want to forgive that person. They would have to admit, "I want to hold onto and even coddle this anger that I feel because the hurt was so profound and it was so unnecessary, and yet it’s changed my life." What advice would you give to somebody who just doesn’t even have a desire to forgive right now?

Erika Allen
I think that honesty is such a beautiful, healthy thing, and it is necessary. The Lord knows us inside and out. Going back again to Psalm 103 where it talks about his character, and then where that passage ends up is he knows our frame. God knows the things that we’re struggling with. He knows how hard it is and how difficult. To me, that’s the best prayer you could pray: "I understand that I have to forgive. I understand how central it is to your own character. I cannot do it, and I don’t even want it in this minute." That’s so natural for us to want to hang on to it because we have that right desire for justice. That’s so much of who God is too. That’s not wrong for us to identify evil as evil and to want it to be fixed. That is not wrong. But because of our own sinful nature, the way we want it to be fixed and dealt with is wrong. And so I think just bringing that before the Lord. You don’t have to worry about your wording. Again, God knows us inside and out. But just be very honest in your prayers and just say, "I’m really struggling here. I don’t even really want to forgive. So I need you to help me get to that basic point of really desiring to forgive before I can even start taking steps in that direction." It’s not an instantaneous thing. I wish it was. I think all of us do. That somebody hurts you and you just say, "Okay, I forgive you." That’s not what that looks like.

Matt Tully
And I think sometimes we can deceive ourselves. We can even think, Oh, I forgive that person. We can tell that person, "I forgive you." I’m thinking about spouses right now, perhaps, where it’s easy to maybe say that quickly, but really we haven’t actually done that hard work of forgiving. And so this is going to inevitably come back up and come out again in other ways.

Erika Allen
And here’s another place where discernment is so necessary—going back to how the Lord is slow to anger. Sometimes it’s obvious that there is an offense that needs to be forgiven and that needs to be dealt with. We’re so easily offended and angered. The question is, Is this even worth me being angered? Is my anger justified? Like I said, there are some situations where it is so obviously wrong and where that’s not the question, but some of them there are, because we misunderstand people. Somebody could be thinking that they’re loving and caring for us well, but actually whatever they’ve done has really hurt us. And so there are these situations where we need the Lord to show us our own heart clearly. Have I understood the situation? Is there actually a situation where I need to ask for forgiveness or I need to forgive a person?

Matt Tully
In all of this, I’m even struck by our struggles to forgive. So often when we think about the need to forgive someone, we can think about the wrong done to us. And so maybe in this discussion we’re warning against don’t you sin against this person by refusing to forgive them. But I’m just struck, as you’ve drawn out the theological implications of all this and the way that the character of God is really at stake in all of this conversation, that in refusing to forgive someone else, we are, in a very real sense, calling into question God’s justice. We’re questioning God’s character, which is a sin against God himself. Not that that always makes it super easy for us practically to forgive, but if we have that bigger perspective in mind that God is actually another party in the middle of all of this, that could really change the way we think about this issue.

Erika Allen
I think so too. It’s just very high stakes. It’s just such a central concept to our faith. It’s one we better think deeply about and just understand all the implications. We need to understand, too, we’re not alone in that. Like I said, we can just be really honest with one another and also with the Lord just in how desperately we need his help to get it right.

Matt Tully
Erika, thank you so much for offering some of these insights from God’s word and even from your own experience, helping us think through this really important, probably daily issue that we’re all experiencing in different ways but that we can often just not think deeply about. And maybe we need to all check how we think about forgiveness in our own lives.

Erika Allen
Thanks, Matt.

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