A Closer Look at Suffering
The option of forgiveness and the choice to face suffering are inseparable. It is impossible to forgive without a willingness to also suffer. This is very likely why real forgiveness has so few serious takers. Yet because Jesus presented forgiveness very close to, if not at the very center of salvation, we have diluted the word in ways so as to make it appear that we practice it in order to be able to claim that we are Christians. But when it comes to suffering we have quite a different disposition. Suffering has even less willing participants than forgiveness. We think that we can somehow separate the two and we try to figure out ways to forgive without having to experience any suffering. But in attempting to do so we irreparable damage or obscure the very definition of the word forgiveness. Forgiveness without suffering, or at least a willingness to suffer, is a denial of the very essence of true forgiveness. Peter really grasped this truth some time aft...