Devil (2010): Your Words Mean Nothing
Why forgiveness has fallen out of favor
Stop me if you’ve heard this one before. A young man suspects his wife of cheating and confronts her with his suspicions. The wife, cornered, admits to it, explaining through tears why she felt driven to such misbehavior.
The husband, a Christian who loves his wife, offers to work through this together. The wife is grateful and says she is sorry for hurting him.
But…
Her behavior doesn’t change. She doesn’t want to give her husband access to her phone or social media accounts, even though those were the venues of her affair.
“I said I was sorry. I didn’t even have to come clean. You should trust me.” When the husband says that trust is earned, the wife brings out the trump card:
“It’s not very Christian of you not to forgive me when I asked for it.”
This is a heavily simplified conversation, but it happens every day in a variety of contexts. Party A egregiously wrongs Party B. Party A says sorry. Party B is allowed no further discussion of the wrongdoing. After all, “God knows my heart.”
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