Forgiveness is hard to understand and even harder to do. Grownups ask me all the time about what forgiveness is and isn’t, and if it means forgetting and acting like nothing happened or if we can still be careful when someone is dangerous. Learning about the forgiveness from God we have through our King Jesus, and what Jesus told us to do, and how He helps us grow from people who never want to forgive and don’t know how to even begin, to people who are able to forgive, helps us to follow God maybe more than any other thing He asks us to do.

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Hi! I’m Miss Tyler! Welcome to this week’s episode of Context for Kids, where I teach you guys stuff most adults don’t even know. If this is your first time hearing or if you have missed anything, you can find all the episodes archived at contextforkids.podbean.com, which has them downloadable, or at contextforkids.com, where I have transcripts for readers or on my Context for Kids YouTube channel, where I usually post slightly longer versions.

Forgiveness is a really tough thing to understand. It’s even tougher to do, and especially when we are confused about what forgiveness is and isn’t. What about when we are told we need to forgive someone? What about when we want someone to forgive us? Does forgiveness mean pretending like nothing happened or that everything is okay? Does forgiveness mean that everything goes back to the way things were? These are all questions that grownups really struggle with and I get questions all the time. The answer to all of the questions about is—it depends on what happened and why it happened. Like all difficult things in our lives, we need something called wisdom when it comes to dealing with forgiveness. And when things require wisdom, we know that there are never any easy answers or rules that apply to absolutely every situation in the same way. That doesn’t mean that we don’t need to forgive or that it’s going to be easy. Not at all. Forgiveness is something that has to be learned, and true forgiveness isn’t something we can fake. But it is something we can get better and better at as we learn to walk with God and listen to Him, and we can also get better at deciding what forgiveness looks like in different situations. Not all sins are the same and so not all forgiveness is the same either. I guess we should start with looking at the forgiveness God gives us through Jesus.

The forgiveness we have in Jesus is different than all the other kinds of forgiveness that we have here on earth. In the days of Jesus, the Jews were talking about sins in terms of a debt or a bill that needs to be paid. A debt is money that you owe to someone. Like a house payment or a car loan or maybe you borrowed five dollars from someone and promised to pay them back. That’s a debt and the Bible tells us how important it is to pay our debts—especially when someone has done work for us and we owe them money for it, because they have to eat, right? But the Bible also tells us to be merciful when people owe us money and they just don’t have it. Every seven years, the children of Israel were commanded to forgive the debts of anyone who owed them money. That’s right, they had to just tear up those bills and toss them in the fire. God promised to make things right for the people who were generous and kind to people who just couldn’t pay them back.

And you know what? By the time I finally started listening to Jesus, I had such a huge bill from all the sinful, mean things I had done, and all the lies I had told, and even the mistakes I had made that hurt people—well, there was no way I could ever pay God or the people I had hurt back for all the awful things I had done. And I was doing just fine (well, not really) until the day that God told me how much I was hurting people and hurting Him too. Wow. And it took him two whole months of talking to me all the time, poking and prodding me with thoughts about how much I needed Him and that He wanted me to be an entirely different person. Boy oh boy did I put up a huge fight. But it was that last week that was just the worst because day and night, night and day He wouldn’t leave me alone. He was determined to get through to me that He loved me, even though I wouldn’t understand it for many years. I just thought He wanted to be the boss of me and, in fact, when I finally gave my life to Him that’s exactly what I said, “Okay, I get it, you’re the boss of my life.”

And even though I was wrong about that—well, not totally wrong but I sure didn’t realize that God loved me yet—things began changing in big ways in my life. That was twenty-five years ago and I am still changing a lot. I was really messed up, so He is still working on me. So, anytime you think you are hopeless because your life isn’t changing overnight, just remember that God is still working on Miss Tyler to get her to where He wants her to be. No one can go from being like I was to being like Jesus overnight—it takes a lifetime and even then we aren’t exactly like Him. He’s perfect.

The thing is that God wanted to rip up the bill I owed Him and everyone else so He could throw it in the fire. He knew that I couldn’t ever hope to carry all those terrible sins and make a fresh start. Have you ever heard that expression? To make a fresh start? It’s like those poor people in ancient Israel who owed more money than they could ever pay—maybe because a famine had destroyed their food or their land or enemy soldiers had come in and stolen everything. There are lots of reasons why someone can be too poor to pay their bills. But unless someone tore up those bills, they would be paying them for the rest of their lives and they wouldn’t ever be able to have a chance to be free. We all need to be forgiven sometimes, right? It might not be money—sometimes we need for people to forgive us when we have done something wrong so that we can be friends again or at least not enemies. To forgive someone else is a very great gift. Until we forgive a person, they have to carry their guilt forever and even after they are sorry and have changed.

Have you ever done anything to hurt someone, where you feel really sorry and want to be friends again but they won’t forgive you? That hurts a lot, right? It’s like they are holding you in a prison that you can’t ever get out of until they say so. Maybe they do it because they are hurting and they don’t want to hurt anymore and they are so angry that they want you to hurt as much as they do. They might be angry that they can’t go back and change things to the way they were before they were hurt in the first place. But when we hurt people, or help people, we change their lives. They can’t go back to being the same person that they were before they were hurt or helped—they have that memory in their mind and they were changed whether they wanted to be or not. That’s why, the sooner we give our lives over to God as our King, the better because we can’t ever totally take anything we say or do back. When we agree to let God be our King and believe that Jesus is our King, and let them change us, we will hurt people less and less because we will begin to care more about them and the Holy Spirit helps us to stop being mean, little by little, day after day, year after year. That’s how we learn to love people the way Jesus tells us to.

When we start to understand that Jesus wants us to have a clean slate, meaning a fresh start, by forgiving what we have done in the past, it means that we have the freedom to start living a different way. We aren’t stuck in that ditch of sin forever. God lifts us out of it and we can be different people. Imagine if you owed someone else a bazillion dollars and you had to pay them back a thousand dollars a day. You would know that there was no way you could ever get it done. It would be hopeless. No one has that kind of money. But with God, it is never like that. Sure, we owe Him a bazillion dollars but His favorite thing to do is to tear up bills and throw them in the fire. It’s what He wants most in the world. He isn’t just hoping to be able to punish us—that’s the last thing in the world He wants. He wants us to accept Him as our King so that He can forgive us and show us a new way of living where we can begin to forgive others too, the way we have been forgiven. But we can’t do that unless He forgives us first. That’s one of the ways that we follow Him. But what does forgiveness look like in our lives?

There are different kinds of forgiveness. A lot of people don’t understand that. The first kind of forgiveness is called “turning the other cheek.” In Jesus’s time, reputation was very important and if someone slapped a man, he had to slap them back or he would be shamed and made fun of by the other men. His whole family would get angry at him for making them look like a bunch of wimps. Getting revenge was very important to them so that people would respect them and their family. But Jesus told them to stop doing that—when someone insulted them by smacking them across the face, they had to forgive that insult by refusing to get even. That wasn’t something that anyone wanted to hear. That was the opposite of what they were all doing and had been taught to do. I can hear them grumbling in the crowd, “What? How on earth does He expect us to be respected if we just let people get away with insulting us? Everyone will think we are pathetic weaklings! They will walk all over us and our lives will be ruined!” And maybe they were right, but Jesus was very serious. Not insulting those people back was a way of forgiving them for being mean. Jesus was telling His fellow Jews that it was important to God that they become peacemakers by letting the small stuff go. People insult me on the internet all the time, but if I fight back then I know I will start looking just like them and then people will take sides and it will be a mess. But if I talk to them calmly instead and they keep insulting me, it makes them look bad and people see that they don’t need to take sides at all because I have things under control and I am not hurt at all. When I do that, I am forgiving them and giving them another chance.

But what if someone robs my house or attacks me with a weapon? Do I get them back by robbing their house or going after them with a weapon? Jesus says no. I should call the police to let them know that there is someone dangerous out there who needs to be stopped, but if I go after them then I am just getting revenge and revenge is the opposite of forgiveness. And I won’t be happy no matter how much I hurt the person who has hurt me, scared me, or robbed me. I will just keep hurting them over and over again because my hurt will never go away. As long as we are getting even, we will always be angry and hurting because nothing will ever be enough. We have to know when to say enough is enough and so enough has to be before we get even in the first place. Justice is very important to God and so it should be important to us too. People do need to be caught when they have done bad things, by people who will hold them responsible—the Bible teaches us that. But it’s about impossible for us to do it and still be merciful when what we want isn’t justice but to get even. Getting even with someone else is always about doing something worse to them than they did to us. That’s why we call the police because hopefully they will be fair.

Jesus told His disciples that they need to be willing to forgive or they wouldn’t be forgiven and that scares a lot of people but I don’t want you to be scared. Jesus knows how hard it is for us to learn to forgive, and that we have to be taught how to do it and how to be gentle and loving. He is very patient to teach us all those things and He understands that it isn’t something we can just decide to do and suddenly be good at it or wise about it. The best place to start forgiving is to be kind to the people who have hurt you and are really very sorry and want another chance. Maybe someone lied, or maybe there was just a misunderstanding and they got mad at you for something you didn’t do, and they said something mean. That happens to all of us, and we all do things that hurt other people. We want people to forgive us and give us a hug when that happens and to understand that it wasn’t because we hated them. That happens in families all the time, right? We get frustrated and cranky and we say something nasty just because we want someone to feel hurt, but then we come to our senses and realize that it just made things worse and we want a clean slate to start over again. So, we say we are sorry and do nice things to try and make up for it. Forgiveness means that the other person decides to be kind and understanding and accept you again. But if they hold a grudge and don’t forgive you for even the small things, that can feel worse than anything you did to them. That’s another way to get revenge—by not forgiving.

That’s a very dangerous kind of unforgiveness because we are all guilty of sinning that way. I have apologized to my kids and my husband for being mean—a lot! I want them to know that I love them and that I am sorry and that I was wrong to be mean. I want them to know that they deserve an apology. I want them to know that they are important to me, and that I owe them an apology. I don’t apologize to get them to forgive me. I can’t make them do that. I apologize because I was wrong and they didn’t deserve what I did to them. I can’t make it so that my sin never happened, but I can let them know that I was wrong. We won’t all steal or hit someone with a stick, but we have all said and done things that are hurtful. If we aren’t willing to forgive others when we do the same things that they do, then how can God forgive us for doing the exact same things? Fortunately, He is very patient as we learn how to forgive. It takes a long, long time. But it also gets easier the more we do it.

It’s funny, in a way, that God tells us that we have to forgive BUT we can’t force anyone to forgive us. All we can do is ask, and whether they forgive or not is up to them. That’s why we need to learn not to sin against other people because we never know what will be the last straw for them—the thing that they decide is too much and they never want to be around us again. We owe it to God to forgive people, but that isn’t the same thing as us being able to force people to forgive us. Honestly, when we do that, we aren’t looking like we are very sorry or understanding about what we did to hurt them. And some people will get angry over a misunderstanding and won’t forgive us even when we didn’t do anything. We can’t do anything about that either except to be kind and leave them alone. That’s really hard, let me tell you. I had a really good friend in the 8^th grade and we were close all through the summer before our first year of high school. One the first day back, she looked at me with hatred and hurt in her eyes but to this day I don’t know why. She would never tell me. I wouldn’t have hurt her on purpose, but I guess she thought I did and never forgave me. I had to be kind because the only other thing I could do was be mean. I wasn’t a Christian then, but I knew that being mean back to her wasn’t going to solve anything. I couldn’t make her tell me what was wrong and I couldn’t force her to forgive me. But I could learn to forgive her. It took a long time.

What do we do when someone hurts us and apologizes and then hurts us again and apologizes again and it just keeps going on forever? Well, there is the kind of forgiveness where we are friends again just like we were before and then there are sad times when we forgive the person who is hurting us but have to keep them away from us. When we can go back to normal with a person, that’s called reconciliation. Reconciliation is like a hug after an argument, okay? Where there is still love there and trust and the relationship you have with a person has been hurt but can get better again and you want to work on it. But what about when someone is dangerous? You can forgive them by not getting back at them and by being kind to them instead when you see them, but that doesn’t mean they should be a part of your life. Someone once told me a story and I wish I knew where it came from because it was a good one. Someone came up to Jesus once and asked him how many times he should forgive his brother for sinning against him—seven times maybe? Jesus said, seventy times seven times! And that doesn’t mean you keep a score sheet for every time you forgive a person—that’s messed up. It means that we keep on forgiving forever. But what does that look like in real life? Here’s where the story comes in–

A friend knocks at your door and you open it and they punch you right in the face and walk away. Then they come back later, knocking on your door and saying they are sorry, so you open the door and after forgiving them and talking a while, they punch you in the face again. And this happens again and again. Opening that door was reconciliation, okay? Trying for things to be good again. But there comes a time when forgiveness is all we can give because the other person doesn’t want the relationship to be good—they just want us to open the door so that they can punch us again. At some point, when you hear the knock at the door and the person says sorry, you leave the door closed and say, “I forgive you but I am not going to open the door again to give you any more chances to punch me.” I really like that story because it shows the difference between forgiving someone and letting them hurt you forever. You don’t have to let anyone hurt you forever. You can leave the door closed when it is dangerous to open it. That doesn’t mean you aren’t being forgiving, it just means that you are done with being punched. And, if anyone is doing something like that, I would suggest calling the police. You don’t deserve to be hurt. Forgiveness means that you don’t hurt the person who hurt you, but it doesn’t mean you have to let them hurt you forever.

Forgiveness is really hard to learn. I don’t want you scared that God is going to like send a lightning bolt at your butt for not being able to forgive perfectly and especially not right away. There are times you will feel like you have forgiven a person totally and then something happens and you feel all the terrible anger and bad feelings for them all over again. That’s normal. It makes me angry when someone hurts me and especially when they don’t even care or never apologize. But when I don’t forgive, my mind starts thinking of all the terrible things I wish would happen to them. I don’t want them to change. I want them to be bad so that they can be punished forever. That’s what happens in my brain when I am unforgiving. But when I am forgiving, I start to understand that I do want them to change. I don’t want them to keep being bad just so that I can have my revenge against them. I want them to change to be good so that they won’t hurt anyone else and so that the world will be a better place. I want the people who have hurt me, to stop hurting others too. If they never change, then how many other people will they hurt? Satan wins when that happens. I want God to win. I want God to take the people who have hurt me the most and to change them into the kinds of people who are sorry for all the bad they have done, and help people instead. When we forgive them, and we don’t get even, we get out of their way and it makes it easier for God to reach them and change them.

There are people who did that for me, even though I didn’t understand it at the time. They didn’t get back at me when I hurt them—if they had, I would have just gotten back at them even worse because sometimes I didn’t think I had done anything wrong in the first place. But they were patient with me because God was patient with them. They showed me a different way and as they were kind even when I was mean, I started to feel bad when I would hurt them. God was using their forgiveness to teach me how to start loving others as they were loving me. I wanted people to forgive me. I needed people to forgive me. Sometimes, I needed people to walk away from me so I could understand that I can go too far. Without forgiveness—the forgiveness of God and other people in my life—I would still be who I was twenty-five years ago and the world would be a worse place than it is now, at least for the people who know me.

People didn’t keep me in a jail by not forgiving me, and when they were wrong they said they were sorry. That showed me a different and better way. I liked how it felt when they said they were sorry when they had hurt me. I wanted other people to feel that way when I hurt them and knew I was wrong. And the more I did that, the more God could trust me and show me the other things I was doing that hurt people. And He showed me how to make things better. I still hurt people sometimes, but I know that making things right again is an easy way to help someone else’s heart heal. And I give people space when they don’t know how to forgive me yet. I can’t force them to forgive me. I also can’t force them to apologize. That’s God’s job. It’s good to learn to say sorry, but no one can make us mean it. God wants us to say it and to mean it. And He wants us to be able to learn how to forgive too.

Next week, we are going to start learning how to be more like Jesus and I am very excited about this. Before we move on to more of the life story of Abraham and Sarah, and then to Isaac and Jacob and his sons, we need to look at Jesus so we can see the difference between being perfect and being really messed up and in need of Jesus!

I love you. I am praying for you. And I know that you can change your life and the world around you by learning to forgive.

This week, something happened to me to make me very sad and so I want to talk to you about what to do when you are sad and what forgiveness is and is not all about. Hopefully this program will also help you to be a better friend when others are sad.

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Hi! I’m Miss Tyler and welcome to another episode of Context for Kids where I teach you guys stuff most adults don’t even know. If this is your first time hearing or if you have missed anything, you can find all the episodes archived at contextforkids.podbean.com, which has them downloadable, or at contextforkids.com, where I have transcripts for readers or on my Context for Kids YouTube channel.

This episode is very different because something kinda bad happened to me that I want to talk about and I bet you have bad things happen to you too. Everyone does. And sometimes when bad things happen, we feel so alone and as though no one understands or cares or even loves us. And sometimes, and this is terrible, no one does care for this or that reason and that is very sad. When I say “no one” of course, I don’t include God in that or Jesus or the Holy Spirit. When “no one” cares, it never includes them. And so, sometimes the only thing you can do is pray. I hope there is never a time when you get picked on, or bullied, or insulted and no one cares but if it does happen then I want you to know that you aren’t alone and you don’t have to be sad all by yourself.

Now, before I talk about all of that I am going to tell you that if someone touches you someplace where they should not, there are always people who care about that. I always care about that. The police care about that. That’s illegal and people go to jail for that. That’s where they belong if they touch you like that. And they might try to trick you and say they will hurt other people if you tell but they are telling you that because they are scared that people will find out because they know they are wrong. They know that if you tell, then you have all the power. If you don’t tell, they get to feel powerful and they will never stop. It’s the oldest and most evil trick in the book, to hurt a kid and then tell them not to tell anyone about it. If someone has to tell you not to say anything, it means that what they are doing is 110% wrong and they know it.

Also, if someone punches you, or breaks your bones, or make you bleed, or leaves marks on your body that don’t go away quick, that’s illegal too. And I care about that. I care a lot. You tell someone about it, okay? A lot of people care about that. Unfortunately, there are really mean things that people can do to you that aren’t illegal even though they are wrong. I am talking about words. I am talking about the people who are cruel with their words or people who like to scare other people for fun. And because it isn’t against the law to do that, some people just don’t care and the shocking thing is that even people who say they love Jesus can be very cruel and unkind about what they say to other people. They are just mean and critical, meaning they criticize you for everything you do no matter what, they don’t say nice things, they don’t notice when you do something right, they will be mean about how you look, or maybe they will be mean because you are a girl or because you are a boy. Maybe they won’t like how you dress or what kind of house you live in.

Believe me, people who are mean and who want you to feel bad about yourself will use anything they can to make you feel like there is something wrong with you. Even if the stuff they come up with is silly.

But just because it is silly doesn’t mean it doesn’t hurt a whole lot and especially if you love the person who is hurting you. Not all bullies are in school, and sometimes bullies are at home too. Grandparents, aunts and uncles, cousins, brothers and sisters and even parents and step-parents can be cruel. Even teachers and pastors and people at church can be really mean. And when you get older, there might be bullies at work—they just don’t usually beat you up once you get older. That part does tend to get better! So, if you have bullies in your life, keep your chin up. Once they become adults, they can go to jail. Because they know they can go to jail, mostly they stop beating people up because they aren’t really brave enough that they want to be locked up with people even worse than they are!

So, what are the silly sorts of things people make fun of other people for? First of all, how you look. As though you had a choice in the matter. Like, somehow they think it is like choosing an avatar in a video game. “Oh, I want this color hair and eyes and I want to be 6’ tall and to have big muscles instead of being skinny or whatever.” I don’t know about you, but I popped out looking like this. I didn’t choose to be so tiny, or unathletic—you know, bad at sports—or a girl. I didn’t choose some of the health problems I was born with—why would I choose to have something wrong with me? I mean, duh! I didn’t choose my nose. I didn’t choose to have legs that are too long for my upper body so that my pants go all the way up past my belly. And you didn’t choose the way you look either. We are stuck with ourselves. And that’s not a bad thing. I mean, just think if we could all choose how we looked—we’d probably be like those video game people, looking pretty much all the same. BOOORRRINNGGG…

And think if we could choose whether we were a boy or a girl. I’ll tell you that everyone would have been looking at what life was like in a certain culture and everyone would choose to be whoever had it better. The human race would have died out really quick. It’s dangerous to be born a girl in some places. In China for a very long time now, baby girls were and are being killed because people only want sons. That’s also true in ancient Rome and a whole lot of other places. In some Islamic countries today, women have no rights at all and men can actually kill them if they want and the police won’t do anything about it. And no one would have chosen to have dark skin during the times when they could be enslaved and stolen away from their families and sold to people who were white skinned!

But think of the fact that no matter if we are boys or girls, or what our skin, hair or eyes look like, we were all created especially by God. Although humans might think that certain kinds of people are better than other kinds of people and should have more rights, it wasn’t that way in the beginning when two people shared the Garden and all the responsibilities for caring for it and worshiping God. After sin entered the world, everything changed. People began to be mean to one another for a lot of really stupid reasons. Some people decided that they deserved to be powerful and they decided that other people were too weak to matter as much as they did. Do you remember when we talked about Lamech? He was the very first bully in the Bible. He would kill you even if you just hit him. And then he said he deserved much more revenge than Cain would ever get if someone touched him. Bullies are generally very touchy people and very weak on the inside even if they are strong on the outside. If they were strong on the inside then they wouldn’t feel like they need everyone else to feel small.

God made me the way I am—not to be more special but just to be unique. You are the same way—special but not more special than everyone else. You are an amazing work of art and you don’t need to compare yourself to everyone else because what good would it do? All the surgery and hair dye in the world won’t change who you are on the inside—and that’s what God cares about. What you look like on the outside doesn’t do anyone a lick of good but who you are on the inside is important to everyone you will ever meet. Now, bullies will never care about who you are on the inside—they won’t get to know you well enough. They are going to miss out on who you really are because all they can see is what’s on the outside. They don’t care about getting to know you. You aren’t a real person to them. In fact, bullies are generally only interested in themselves. That’s all they think about, no one else is real.

That’s so important to understand. They aren’t trying to hurt you because there is something wrong with you. They just want to hurt someone and you happen to be there. But they will make you think there is something wrong with you because, guess what? If they can convince themselves that there is something wrong with you and you deserve it, then they won’t notice what horrible people they are. They don’t want to feel guilty about what they are doing so they are going to make it all your fault. But it’s a lie. It’s a fairy tale. It’s all an illusion. It just isn’t true.

I have been dealing with a bully in my life since I was a little girl. And he really hurts me. He still hurts me and I am fifty-two years old now. It doesn’t hurt as bad as it used to because now I know God and God helps me, but I would be lying if I said that it doesn’t make me very sad and hurt when he does it. He doesn’t hit me but he always says cruel things to me. He even says bad things about me to other people. He even says them to my sons and it makes them very angry when he does it. And I wanted this person to love me more than I ever wanted anyone in my life to love me, but he just doesn’t. He loves my brothers. He says nice things about them. But not about me no matter how hard I try so at one point, I just stopped trying. I tried everything to get him to love me. I tried to be what he wanted. I tried to change to be more like him—which was like the worst idea of all time! Great googly moogly! Why do we think it’s a good idea to try and get mean people to like us anyway? As though them liking us will make us more special? Heck no, it usually makes us worse people ourselves. No, we need to be kind and to be like Jesus but you never saw Jesus trying to act like the bullies. No, He only ever acted like God.

So, I want to teach you about how to deal with the things you can’t change and I want to talk to you about forgiveness. I don’t want you to be a bunch of old guys and old ladies like me before someone teaches you this stuff. And I am not going to tell you to just walk it off or that it will be easy because that just doesn’t help at all and it’s actually pretty insulting and it isn’t true. Being tougher isn’t the answer, that just makes us more likely to become mean people ourselves. And mostly, being tougher just means we are pretending it doesn’t hurt. And pretending doesn’t help us to be healthier people, right???

For my birthday this year, God taught me something wonderful. A few days ago, someone really disagreed with me about something and they called me some horrible names on social media and accused me of some horrible crimes—if they were true. Then she came back in my private messages and insulted me some more. So, I prayed about it and asked God to show me if she was right or wrong because we always have to be willing for God to show us if we are right or wrong and God showed me something very important. Something I want you to know too. When someone is mean to you, look at how they are acting. Look at how they normally treat people. If someone who is normally very kind, patient, loving, peaceful and gentle is angry at you then chances are you have done something wrong, okay? It doesn’t mean that they way they are handling it is good but they are more likely to be on to something, okay? That’s when you have to really think about what you might have done and pray about it.

But what about when a bully comes after you? Should you take what they say seriously? Should you believe that what they say is the truth? Or should you realize that that is just how they treat everyone or at least enough people that they can’t be trusted. It’s good to look at what the Bible says about people who can be trusted and measure the person being mean up to that standard. Are they humble or do they brag all the time and make other people feel badly about themselves? If they brag a lot, then what they are doing to you is just another way to brag about themselves—if they make you look worse then they don’t have to make themselves look better. Jesus called that “exalting yourself” and He said that sooner or later, the people who do that will get taken down a notch because no one should make anyone but God out to be all that and a bag of chips.

Are they generous or greedy? Do they give or do they take? Are they quick to take care of people or are they quick to hurt people? Do they give all the blame to others and take all the credit for themselves? Are they liars about people they don’t like and are they willing to ignore the bad things that are done by the people they do like? Do they make excuses for themselves and come down really hard on others? If they are doing those wrong things, then whatever they say about you can’t be trusted because they aren’t fair. In fact, you might not be wrong to assume that the opposite of what they say is usually the truth.

Are they kind? When you have a problem are they the first or last person you would ever want to go to? If they are not a safe person to take your problems to then they aren’t safe people to take advice from either or to want opinions from. Whatever they have to say about your life just isn’t worth listening to. Would you send a person to them for advice about their life? If not, then they shouldn’t be telling you anything that you are willing to hear about your life either! Oh, they have something nasty to say? Gee, what a shock. I am telling you that you will always come across people in this life who don’t feel the slightest bit bad about saying whatever they are thinking and with those people, the things they are thinking often have nothing to do with reality.

Do they ever apologize? People who don’t apologize are people who do not care about you as a human being. Hopefully someday they will change but until they do, you have no reason to think that they think much about what they say before they say it or after they say it.

Who do you want to listen to? People who are kind. People who don’t enjoy saying unpleasant things to or about others. People who don’t go around gossiping—talking about other people behind their back whether it is true or not. People who only say the things that are absolutely necessary. People who aren’t always getting angry and lashing out and hurting others. People who don’t judge based on appearances or over things that can’t be controlled. People who don’t pick on every little thing and who aren’t criticizing people for things that aren’t actually sinful. People who are merciful when folks are struggling with their sins. People who know they aren’t perfect either. People who are kind when they get disagreed with. Now, sometimes even people like this are wrong but it is safe to listen to them because they really think about what they say before they say it and they have decided it was worth it. People like that really care about you and want what is best for you. They won’t say they are “speaking the truth in love” when they are actually just being mean all the time.

If only everyone was so careful and loving! But they aren’t. And so what do you do when you come across someone who is mean and hurtful? Hopefully, you have friends and family who will listen as you talk about what happened. Talking about it is important. Talking about why what happened was wrong is important because we shouldn’t pretend that things are okay when they are not okay. Then talk about your feelings because they are important too. Don’t pretend like you are okay when you aren’t okay. If the people in your life aren’t willing to listen, you can always talk to Jesus, alone in your room or while you are walking or in your head in bed at night. Jesus is always there to listen. He cares about you being a healthy person on the inside. He isn’t going to tell you to get over it. He isn’t going to get bored or call you a big baby or tell you to just ignore it. People do that sometimes when they just don’t want to hear someone else’s problems or when they feel like they will have to choose sides or say that someone else they like is wrong. I’ve had that happen before—have someone do something terrible to me and tell a friend and have that friend get angry at me because they don’t want to have to say their other friend was doing wrong. It’s sad but it happens. Hopefully you have someone else to talk to but maybe not. But Jesus is always there.

As you talk to Jesus about what is going on and why it was wrong and how it made you feel, you can decide something very important. If what happened to you was against the Law then you can tell your parents or a teacher or a police officer because it is very important that we hold people responsible for actual crimes. If what happened to you wasn’t against the law, you can choose not to retaliate. That means you aren’t going to do to them what they did to you. That means you are going to decide to be like Jesus. And it’s the hardest thing in the world sometimes, because we want to hit back or call names back, or hurt them like they hurt us. And it might feel good for a minute but pretty soon we aren’t happy about it anymore. For one, we will probably get hit even harder in return and now what do we do? Now we have a total war going on and each side has to do worse and worse until someone gives up. Choosing not to retaliate is called forgiveness. Jesus talked a lot about forgiveness, but I am going to tell you what forgiveness is and is not.

Forgiveness isn’t the same thing as saying that what they did to you isn’t very wrong, or that it is okay or that it didn’t matter. It was wrong, it wasn’t okay, and it matters. Forgiveness doesn’t mean that people who break the law aren’t going to jail. Forgiveness doesn’t mean that someone gets to keep beating you or touching you in bad ways. Forgiveness doesn’t mean that the person gets to be a part of your life. Forgiveness doesn’t mean that they said sorry and decided to be good from now on—sometimes that never happens. Forgiveness means that you aren’t going to take revenge and keep taking revenge for the rest of your life. Forgiveness means that you are not going to think about them 24 hours a day for the rest of your life. Forgiveness means that you don’t get stuck being hurt and angry forever even though you will still be hurt and angry sometimes. Forgiveness means that you get to walk away and leave them behind—and hopefully you can do that. If not, then you need help so that you can get away from them. I know that can be hard with bullies at school. Believe me, I know. Forgiveness also doesn’t mean that things go back to how they were before you got hurt. I wish it did. But I can tell you that God can heal our hearts and our minds when we choose to forgive. When we stay angry and vengeful, we get worse and worse and more and more miserable. When we hate them, something inside us becomes darker. Everyone gets hurt sometimes, in big ways and small ways. But not everyone gets their hearts healed afterward. God does that for people who forgive and who keep forgiving. God does that for people who trust Him and try to stop hating.

Yep, I said try. It isn’t easy and it doesn’t happen all at once. Forgiving and not hating is something you have to remind yourself to do every time that anger comes up. And when it does, it’s okay to talk about it again and to talk about how it makes you feel again. It still isn’t right or okay and it still matters. But it gets easier every time. And it’s important—that’s why God helps us. And it is scary to forgive people because the first thing we think of is, “If I forgive them then they will hurt me again and it will just all hurt worse.” And yes, they may hurt you again but I am going to tell you a secret—it hurts a lot worse to be sad and angry all the time and thinking about how they hurt you all the time. It’s like living in jail while they are like wandering the neighborhood free and not even thinking about what they did to you because they don’t care about anyone but themselves. You hurting doesn’t make their life worse. It makes your life worse. When we don’t forgive and move on, they get to win every minute of every day that we spend thinking about what they did and how bad it hurt and how we wish a piano would drop on their heads.

When we forgive we get to be like Jesus on the most important day of His life, when He was crucified and died—before He died He asked God to forgive the people who had betrayed Him, arrested Him, lied about Him, beat Him, and crucified Him. Now, no one is probably ever going to do something so terrible to you or to me. I sure hope not, anyway. But when He was forgiving them He was forgiving us too. Because all of us have done hurtful things to other people. But Jesus, who was perfect and never did anything wrong to anyone, forgave those who hurt Him. You can be sure He will help us do the same thing and when we do, we become more and more like Him and less and less like the people who have hurt us.

I love you. I am praying for you. And I pray you have a wonderful time studying the Bible with the people who love you.