I Was Wronged!

by Lane Moore*

I was wronged. Severely wronged. I mean, literally “half-a-million-dollars-and-counting” wronged. By my closest friends, by fellow Christians, by people I had known for 20 years, with whom I had even spent Christmas and Thanksgiving with. It seems money really can call off all bets.

I was in deep depression, and felt intense anger and resentment for what they had done to me. Like king David in the Psalms, I prayed for curses and for the Flores* family to get “what they deserved.” I seethed in my desire for “justice” for an entire year.

I knew I couldn’t hold on to these feelings without jeopardizing my spirituality, so I prayed and struggled to “forgive” them. And in my mind, I did. After a year of struggle, the burden was lifted. However, while I “forgave” them, all the tender feelings I had had for them were gone. I wanted nothing to do with them, and I could care less about their welfare. After all, they had wronged me.

After a year of this cold, sterile “forgiveness”, the Spirit spoke to my heart. My beliefs all center on unconditional love, and I often use the example of wedding vows to show how the carnal heart promises to love forever, but the divorce rates testify to the fact that the carnal heart doesn’t have the ability to love unconditionally. Only when we let God exchange our stony hearts for hearts like his can we perform this amazing and beautiful feat.

And yet I was being a hypocrite. Sure, I had “forgiven” them, but where did the love that I supposedly had for them for 20 years go? It was a farce, it was not true love, because it was dependent on circumstances. Sure, love is a principle and not merely an emotion, but if the feelings aren’t there, you can bet the principle isn’t either.

So to my knees I went. And I pleaded with the Lord: I don’t want to avoid them on the street, I don’t want to paste a phony smile when I see them and make excuses to leave as quickly as I can. I want to love them as much as I did before. I want to love them more than I did before. I want to love them as though they had never wronged me. I want to love them the way you do.

And he did it! Praise the Lord, hallelujah, baruch haShem!!! Not merely in principle, but in my heart, God replaced the love for them which I had lost. Now, rather than avoiding them, I missed them. Now, rather than being indifferent as to their well-being, I sincerely prayed for them. Now, rather than pasting on a forced smile when our paths crossed, I could give them a sincere, warm hug and a kiss. I love them. It took three years of spiritual agony, but what an incredible spiritual breakthrough!

Obviously, this isn’t where this story ends. For I was wronged again. In a very similar way. My best friend Jenni* broke my heart. When Jenni fired me (over the telephone!) after 4 years of intense friendship and involvement in each other’s lives, I lost not only my job, but also lost all my friends (who all worked for her). I had never trusted anyone in my life more fully than I had Jenni; I thought she would be in my life until the day I died, and yet abruptly, everything was taken away from me.

And it only got worse. Over money (again! I don’t think “the love of money is a root of all evil” is an exaggeration), Jenni took actions that are almost unspeakable. She made threats to reveal personal information I had trusted her with to my family, friends, my church and former employers. She threatened to accuse me in a court of law of embezzeling money from her company. She spent over 19 hours planting pornography on a computer workstation that only I had access to and threatened to tell everyone that I had viewed this at work. She said she would convince my coworkers to testify that I did nothing productive during the 4 years I worked for her. All OVER MONEY.

I felt I could never trust anyone again. I felt that I was a fool for loving and decided to become callous and unfeeling for the rest of my life when Jenni wronged me. How could I be so wrong about someone? Obviously, my judgment was unreliable, so I should stop trusting.

I knew I had to forgive her, but even after my experience with the Flores family, I couldn’t even get past this basic step. I wished her ill. I wanted her to get what she deserved. I felt her depraved actions were unforgivable. Of course, I knew these feelings were wrong, but I can’t change my feelings. I can only change my actions, I can only consent for God to change my feelings.

But I didn’t want to do this. I held on to my unforgiveness for one long, miserable year. Praying Saint Patrick’s Breastplate regularly kept any vengeful actions in check. Although I could justify them in my mind, when I prayed, “Christ in the heart of everyone who thinks of me”, the Spirit would point out that if I took vengeful actions, even if “justified”, would that person think of Christ when they thought of me? So I behaved.

During this year, my greatest question was, “Why was God making me go through the same experience again?” I had had one of the greatest spiritual breakthroughs in my life with the complete forgiveness of the Flores family, but it was also a very long and very painful process. Why was I being brought through the same exact experience? Lord, I already travelled this ground! Hadn’t I suffered enough?

The struggle within me was the knowledge that if I didn’t love Jenni—I mean really love her, as much as I did before—then all my claims to understand unconditional love were phoney. To continue to tell people that I want to love like my Lord does was a fraud.

After one year of the misery that unforgiveness and not loving unconditionally brings, I decided to lay it on the altar. I didn’t want to be a hypocrite and teach unconditional love and yet not live it. I didn’t want sin to have dominion over me. I wanted Jesus, not Satan, to sit on the throne of my heart. I wanted to expereince the freedom that forgiveness and loving brings.

Then God answered my question as to why I was brought over the same ground twice. I was mulling over how this time, I only went through one year of misery rather than three, and that’s when the Spirit asked me, “Do you realise that you could have avoided this year of pain if you had surrenedered your heart to love a year ago, rather than waiting?”

It hit me like a ton of bricks—a ton of beautiful, heavenly, revelatory bricks—God was trying to teach me that any pain we experience because of unforgiveness and a refusal to love is self-inflicted. I realised how foolish I had been in holding on to resentment and letting go of the love I had felt for Jenni, especially since I knew I would eventually have to truly, completely forgive her like I had the Flores family.

I don’t want to invite more trials, but I can confidently say, “Lord, I’m ready: if someone else wrongs me again, I’m going to let you heal me right away, not a year later.” And that, friends, is called freedom.

Friends, my prayer is that my experience will help you when you are wronged. I hope you make the decision to forgive and love immediately, rather than put yourself through the pain that resentment and unfogiveness brings. Someone once said, “unforgiveness is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die.” Unforgiveness hurts you—the offending party may go to bed without a care in the world over what they did to you, but unforgiveness will eat you alive. It’s the spiritual flesh-eating bacteria.

So FORGIVE! LOVE! You know you’re going to have to eventually!

I was wronged; but God’s love righted me.

*The names in this story have been changed to protect the identities of the guity—including the author (only Jesus is innocent)