Thorncrown Studios

Chapter Four:

Is Unforgiveness Toxic?

During my career in Hollywood, I went through a series of terrible experiences.  They were brought on by people in power. You’ll be hearing about some of them in future chapters. But as bad as they were, far worse have been things done by people who claimed to be Christians.  One of the greatest challenges of my life has been forgiving them. Could that be true for you?  

I grew up in Wheaton, Illinois during the 1950s and 60s.  At that time, because of the number of evangelical organizations and ministries that were centered in the town including Wheaton College, Wheaton was known as the evangelical Vatican.  The place was full of Christians and I can tell you this.  The many who ministered in my life when I was a child and teenager were wonderful.  What a gift to me they were.  My father, the late Dr. G. Coleman Luck, was an evangelical leader, a professor at the Moody Bible Institute in Chicago. As a young adult, I attended Moody and the teachers there were wonderful as well. They really cared for their students communicating to each of us the love of God. Sadly, none of this prepared me for what was to come.

After the Army, I struggled hard to complete my education while working full time to support my young family.  I thought my career would be spent in Christian ministries of one kind or another.  And it did begin that way. When I was 26, I joined the business staff of the most influential thought journal of the evangelical world.  The editors were elite leaders of their day, well-known men and women.  But within a few months I began confronting a disturbing reality.  The editors discovered that I did not have an undergraduate degree yet and, though my work was going well, because I hadn’t graduated from college, they tried to get me fired. After all, how could anyone be worth anything without a BA and the image of their magazine was most important.

The business executive who had hired me, refused their efforts.  A year later, he asked me to be advertising manager for the publication and I excelled in that position.  But throughout that time, the disturbing reality only deepened.  The editors, whom at the start I had thought were devout Christians, proved over and over that their deepest interest was in maintaining their reputations, and the security of their positions.  People did not matter.  

At that time, I didn’t consider myself a professional writer. That was still years away.  I wrote advertising copy.  Christmas came and I created a card to send to our advertisers. In it I wrote a little four-line poem about Jesus’ birth. I don’t have it anymore, but at the time, I thought it was pretty good. Working with an artist, we produced a beautiful card.  Not long after I sent it out, the woman who was the literary editor of the magazine came to me.  She said that she had seen the card and liked the writing.  I was thrilled.  This was a very sophisticated woman who knew good writing when she read it.  Almost breathlessly, I told her that I had written the poem.  Her reply, “No, no, I meant the calligraphy.”  Oh. We did have a wonderful artist. Such a small, needless cruelty, but it was like a needle in the heart.  That happened over 50 years ago, but the memory is still vivid.  And it has been important to me.  When I became a professional writer, executive producer and television showrunner in Hollywood who guided writers, that experience and others cautioned me to be sensitive in how I talked to them about their work.  But also, that small experience was a real challenge to forgiveness.

Ultimately, my time working for that publication turned out very badly. As ugly as it was, the next Christian organization that I worked for was far worse. I’ve written about that in a short book entitled, The Curse of Conservatism. I’m thankful for those disastrous experiences because, ultimately, they turned me toward Hollywood, where I was meant to be.  Also, they informed me about what was happening throughout the evangelical Christian church in America. An evil plague of arrogance and a thirst for celebrity, money and power was taking hold and has been growing ever since. After I achieved a certain amount of success in Hollywood, I began meeting a few national evangelical leaders.  I have to say that if my faith depended on what I saw in them, I would be a Buddhist. Thankfully, it does not.

Lifelong challenges to forgive. Do you have that list of people I challenged you to make in the last chapter?  My list is very, very long.  In this chapter and the two following we’re going to talk about forgiveness, what it looks like and how it should be applied.  Here is the reality. As difficult as it may be, if we do not forgive those who do terrible things to us, we will bring unspeakable damage into our own lives. This is why I call forgiveness the Iron Discipline.

The love of Jesus Christ flowing through us is the most important weapon in the arsenal of a servant warrior. Is that amazing love flowing through you? Under the power of His Spirit, Jesus’ love protects us by transforming us. And the key to experiencing that love is forgiveness, both getting it from Him for all the evil we have done and giving it to others.  Remember the Lord’s Prayer? “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who have trespassed against us.” When you pray that prayer you are asking God to forgive you just the way you have been forgiving those who have done terrible things that broke your heart.  But here is a stunning truth that has taken me many years to understand. The wounds of a broken heart will be either the source of a spiritual disease that will destroy you, or the nail holes where the Love of Jesus will flow out from you into your world. 

Many years ago, I knew a Christian woman who blamed a doctor for what she thought were serious errors in a particular medical procedure that she had undergone. As time went on it became scientifically clear that he had done nothing wrong, but evidence didn’t matter.  She had made a decision about the man and her heart was full of deep hatred for him.  Though she had no contact with him from the time of the procedure, for decades his name could not be mentioned without rage spewing out. While she could be charming and very sweet and gave so much love to her family, anger deeply damaged her relationship with God which affected her entire life.

Unforgiveness guarantees that we will fall victim to evil delusions that are temptations of Satan. The ripple of unforgiveness will grow ever larger.  As we go through deeply hurtful situations we will seek to justify our anger, bitterness, and self-pity, constantly reconstructing what we think others have done to us to vindicate our self-destructive attitudes and sinful actions. Partial truths become “memories” and we will fight to the death in our belief that all are 100 percent accurate. We will compound the effects of any hurtful situation by demanding that others accept our view as reality. If they refuse, it offers a new opportunity for anger. 

Without the humiliation that comes from brutal honesty and the true conviction of our own sin, there is no sense of need for repentance and forgiveness.  When our understanding of God’s forgiveness is shallow, our forgiveness of others will be shallow or nonexistent. We forgive in the same way that we have experienced the need to be forgiven.   I will tell you that I have a desperate need to experience Jesus’ forgiveness every single day.

In this series eventually we’re going to talk about spiritual wolves because the church across America is choking with them and very often servant warriors are called to confront them.  Wolves are master legalists in part because they are masters of unforgiveness. What may appear to be forgiveness in them is simply waiting for the right moment to exact revenge or execute a quid pro quo.  They’ll “forgive” if the offender does something for them. Wolves do not forget the sins of others. They catalog them for future use.  In this, they are like their father, Satan. He uses his wolf attacks to bring wounds that he hopes will never heal, taking away all joy and leaving nothing but bitterness, anger and self-pity.  In that state, we are susceptible to even deeper wounds and greater delusions.

Take a good look at yourself. Are you carrying a deep emotional and spiritual wound? Whatever the source, left untreated it will destroy your life.  The only healing for such wounds is to forgive those who have caused them.  But I’m afraid most people, including many who claim to be Christians, don’t have the slightest idea what forgiveness really looks like.

Back in 2012 there was a striking interview on the U.S. television program 60 Minutes.  The subject was a most unusual man. His name is Michael Morton and he had been released from prison after serving 25 years for a crime that he didn’t commit.  He had been wrongly convicted of murdering his own wife.  The Innocence Project had spent five years trying to get the courts to re examine his case based on new DNA evidence that proved conclusively that he was not the killer. During the long battle to reopen the case, it was discovered that during his trial the district attorney, in a criminal act, consciously withheld exculpatory evidence that very likely would have kept him from being convicted.

So an innocent man full of horror and sorrow over his wife’s murder went to prison due to a false accusation and conviction.  But that wasn’t all.  His little son had been three years old at the time of his mother’s death and had witnessed the terrible crime.  He had told what he saw, at that young age even accurately describing the real murderer.  But his testimony was part of the evidence that had been withheld.  To add even more sorrow, as the years passed and the little boy became a teenager, he wrote to his father telling him that he didn’t want to visit him in prison anymore.

The 60 Minutes interviewer asked this poor man, “How did you deal with all of that? So much was taken from you. It seems more than a person could bear.”  The man replied that he had spent years brokenhearted, enraged, full of hate, wanting revenge. But one day he woke up and realized that carrying this awful burden was destroying him.  He couldn’t live with it any longer.  He didn’t want to be the man that he was becoming.  There was only one answer.  He had to forgive all of the people who had done such terrible things to him.  Apparently, he came to this conclusion before there was any hope that he would be exonerated and set free.  So he did it.  He told the interviewer that when he forgave everyone it was as though a giant weight had been lifted off his heart.  As the camera came in close, it was very clear.  His eyes were filled with peace.

Your challenge this week? Take a good look in the mirror, my friend. Are your eyes filled with peace or with something else? The peace of God in your heart is essential for the battle of your life.  That list of people who have wounded you, beside each name write exactly what they did.  After that, lay the list before the Lord, forgiving each person.  Then burn it.

Bible Study and Small Group Discussion Questions

1. What does genuine forgiveness look like in practice?
   Passage: Matthew 6:12–15, Jesus ties God’s forgiveness of us to our forgiveness of others.
   Question: How does this passage challenge the way you currently forgive?
2. Have you ever carried a wound so long that it reshaped your personality or spiritual life?
   Passage: Hebrews 12:14–15, bitterness is described as a “root” that grows and defiles many.
   Question: Where have you seen bitterness distort someone’s life or your own?
3. The chapter describes unforgiveness as a “spiritual disease.” Do you agree? Why or why not?
   Passage: Ephesians 4:31–32, Paul contrasts bitterness with kindness and forgiveness.
   Question: What symptoms show up when unforgiveness is taking hold?
4. How do you respond to the idea that the wounds of your heart can become “nail holes where the love of Jesus flows out”?
   Passage: II Corinthians 12:9–10, God’s power made perfect in weakness.
   Question: Can you think of a time when God used a wound to make you more compassionate?
5. The chapter warns that unforgiveness opens us to “evil delusions.” What might that look like today?
   Passage: James 3:14–16, bitterness leads to disorder and “every evil practice.”
   Question: How does unforgiveness distort our perception of reality?
6. Have you ever been wounded by Christians or Christian institutions? How did it affect your faith?
   Passage: Psalm 55:12–14, David laments betrayal by a close companion.
   Question: Why do wounds from believers cut so much deeper?
7. What do you think of Michael Morton’s decision to forgive before he had any hope of vindication?
   Passage: Romans 12:17–21, “Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.”
   Question: What does it take to forgive when justice has not yet come?
8. The chapter describes “wolves” as masters of unforgiveness. How can we discern this spirit in ourselves or others?
   Passage: Matthew 7:15–20, Jesus on recognizing wolves by their fruit.
   Question: What “fruit” reveals a heart that refuses to forgive?
9. What keeps you personally from forgiving certain people?
   Passage: Colossians 3:12–13, “Forgive as the Lord forgave you.”
   Question: What part of that command feels hardest for you?
10. The chapter ends with a challenge: make a list of those who wounded you, forgive them, and burn it. What would it take for you to actually do that?
    Passage: Psalm 139:23–24, “Search me, O God… see if there is any offensive way in me.”
    Question: What fears or hesitations rise up when you imagine taking that step?