the greater evil

"It may be an infinitely less evil to murder a man than to refuse to forgive him. The former may be the act of a moment of passion: the latter is the heart’s choice. It is spiritual murder, the worst, to hate, to brood over the feeling that excludes, that, in our microcosm, kills the image, the idea of the hated." -George MacDonald


This quote amazes me. It's so bold and strong and...true. Yeah, that's it. So true. And so hard to accept. It just kind of goes against everything that we typically believe. Murder is so bad, yeah? We debate whether the death penalty is the appropriate punishment for murder, but no one debates whether it should be severely punished. At least a ton of jail time is called for, right?

But unforgiveness. It's not something we talk about as a serious sin. We hardly talk about it period because it's such a touchy subject. It's so obscure that firefox doesn't even recognize it as a word. Well...maybe that's not relevant. Firefox also sometimes doesn't recognize "doesn't" as a word. The point is, we don't tend to challenge people on issues of forgiveness. Most people have someone in their lives who "shouldn't be forgiven." That person who's hurt them so badly that it's "understandable" that they can't forgive. So we don't touch it. Sure, maybe it's not that great, but it's a little sin. Doesn't hurt anyone. Doesn't make that much difference.

Um...yeah right. Unforgiveness rots your heart. It poisons you against someone who was created in Christ's image. When you murder someone, you kill them once with your actions. When you don't forgive someone, you do so much worse than that. You kill their value as a person every single time you think about them.

That isn't ever okay. Forgive people who hurt you. In the end, it's your heart that is healed, because it's your heart that is damaged when you consistently devalue Jesus's sacrifice for the people around you.

Think about it.