What does Sorry really do?

Sorry is a simple yet powerful word. The utterance of it can stop a marriage from breaking; it can prevent a war from starting; it can prevent murder from being conceived. It can do a lot of things to a lot of people. However, I think the word has been misused both by the people who say it and those who receive it. When my children were much younger and they did something wrong (often time this is something which warrants that they be punished) of course I’d punish them. I normally let them know in advance that the act would be deserving of punishment when it occurs so the punishment never comes as a surprise to them.

While they are serving out the punishment and I go to check on their progress, they are mostly at that time broken, and they are weeping as they say, “Daddy I am sorry, Daddy I am sorry”. Of course I know that at this time, they are sorry and even though it’s difficult for your heart not to melt as you watch those kids genuinely repentant, I still ensure that they mostly serve out their time. If I had said they will kneel down and face the wall for 10mins, they will still have to face the wall for that 10mins. The reason for this is that I don’t want them to think that sorry is a magic wand; like some kind of utterance that can simply take everything away.

Fast forward: This scene happens at the home of one of my sisters, and I am sure she will not like me to say this but her kids have learnt that once they say sorry, all is forgiven, so they now use the sorry as a kind of get-out-of-jail card. They do something wrong, and as soon as their dad sets out a punishment for them you can immediately hear them crying, “Daddy I am sorry, Daddy I am sorry…” and they actually expect to be let off! When daddy refuses to let them off, they are shocked that they are not let off. This is because their mum lets them off once they say sorry.

So I was watching a movie one day and as usual, I don’t know the title as I just bumped into it midway. This guy had done all kinds of things; he had hurt all sorts of people, jilted ladies, broken their hearts and minds and self-esteem. After he’s hit the rock (not that he ever meant to come back to apologise), he comes back to say sorry to this one lady. An aside, most people carry on with what they were doing until they hit the rocks and they are compelled to say sorry and most times, that sorry is forced not felt because they never really meant to say it.

So this guy, when the lady would not bulge, he became angry and kept saying, “But I have said sorry now…I have said sorry now, what else do you want, what else do you want me to do?” So I thought to myself, “What does this guy think? Does he think just saying sorry is enough?” Later, the lady eventually grudgingly forgives him but in a short while, he is back at his old tricks…and things play out all over again. When this time the lady refuses to forgive all hell broke loose. I suppose this time, Sorry was not enough!

Let me digress again here and say that a lot of us humans have the same attitude towards God… We keep saying sorry with our mouth but our hearts are never sorry. We have learnt that God said He will forgive us for as many times as we say sorry yet we ignore the fact that what He also wants is for us to repent in our heart… and not just be remorseful. A lot of people are only temporarily remorseful, we are never truly convicted of whatever it is we are saying sorry for. That’s why soon enough, we return via the same route and often find out at some point that grace is ended from God and He gives us up as sons of perdition to reprobate minds, to begin to do the things that are not convenient.

So back to the word SORRY. What emotions does the word sorry evoke in the mind of the hearer? Here, the hearer is the one who has been hurt, or who has been wronged. A broken heart, a broken pride, or a broken ego is a difficult thing to fix. So when the wronged person is being told sorry, what emotions do they go through? Honestly, I don’t know the answer to that for sure but let me hazard some guesses.

The first thing that comes to my mind is that when a wronged person hears sorry, then he thinks his anger is justified. He feels vindicated and mollified that the person who wronged him has realised his wrong and is now working on making amends. Some people are quick to forgive the moment the object of their wrath comes to grovel before them mouthing sorry. Whether or not the sorry is heartfelt is inconsequential. They just feel that they can now be pacified to forgive simply because he has come to say sorry. Often times, the recipient of the sorry then goes about boasting that the person who said sorry has realised his/her mistakes and has now come back to their senses.

The second thing that I think happens when the act of saying and receiving sorry is witnessed is this: the recipient looks at a truly broken fellow and their heart go out to them. They feel mercy towards the person who is saying sorry, and because of this, they can easily forgive.

Then there is a third: Sometimes the person who says sorry is not repentant but the recipient has already made up their mind that they will forgive the individual who has hurt them. Often times, they have already forgiven so whether the person who caused the offence comes back or not, they have already been forgiven. For these sort of recipients, they are not waiting for the sorry, or the acts of repentance. They have chosen to forgive the hurt, and move on.

For the first two groups, you wonder, “were they already planning to forgive the person who said sorry, or was it the sorry that turned the tide?” If it was just the act of saying sorry, then how powerful is this word, and what does it do to melt the heart and make one let go of the anger and become so quick to forgive?

If you ask me, I think waiting for sorry is an ego thing for the hurt. They often wait for so long that sometimes, they have to even re-manufacture the anger with sufficient venom to keep them from accepting to forgive without the actual saying of sorry.

Now let’s go to the genuinely sorry. What reactions go on when a genuinely sorry person comes to ask for forgiveness of their sins? How do they really feel in the heart? Are they truly sorry? Do they really understand what they did? Do they really understand how hurtful it was for the other person? I think they do… and that is why these category of sorry sayers know that sorry is not a magic wand, rather the beginning of a healing process for the hearer. People who feel like that also know that it takes more time for the sorry to work. The person who’s been hurt has to relive the hurt, has to relive the shame they must have felt at that time; they have to deal with the burden they have been carrying and the agony they’ve been feeling; and they have to find grace from somewhere to restore the person back.

I see this a lot in ‘wives and husbands’ issues where the wife is being compelled, persuaded or even pressured to forgive or accept his sorry even when her heart is not ready for it. It can be painful and it can be hurting for her and really it doesn’t even matter at that time if the husband was truly penitent or not.

Forgiveness includes the act of saying sorry and the process of restoration. The baffling part for me is the act of restoration. I hope we know that to forgive someone means that we are ready to allow the person to come back into our lives in the original position they were in before they hurt us!

Now that can really be hard yet that is the true meaning of forgiveness. People say, “I forgive you but I will never forget what you did to me” I agree that it is tough and sometimes foolish to expect that we should forget the act of hurt against us. Depending on what the offense was, some of us never forget but this is what I say: when you remember the hurt, what does your heart feel? Does your heart still feel the hurt, the anger or the agony? If your heart still feels all those negative emotions, then you probably are still living with unforgiveness. You may still be holding against them the things they did to you. When you have truly forgiven someone, whenever you remember their act of hurt, it should not bring out negative emotions in you. It should only bring a feeling of satisfaction that you have released them from you mind. In fact, you are able to relate with them without any feeling of rancour and you are able to say to them, “brother, it is all in the past”. If you are able to help them, you will gladly help and in my view, that says you have forgiven and forgotten.

So, in truly forgiving people, you may not forget the act but you will find that you are at peace with the situation and even the person who caused it. When we release the person and move on with our lives even without them apologising or saying sorry, what you have done is to make him now accountable to God for his offenses.

Even if the person who has caused you the hurt does not realise or does not agree to say sorry, you just release him and forget the hurt. Restoration is the more difficult part of forgiveness. It’s mostly difficult for people to allow the fallen person back into their lives in the capacity he/she was before the hurt. However, that is the meaning of forgiveness, and that is what God did for us through Christ.

So when I look at the process of forgiveness and particularly the restoration bit, I always marvel at God and I wonder how tough it would have been for God, if not for the fact that He loved us. The truth really is that I know it was not tough for Him to forgive us, because His love for us is forever greater than our sin against Him. We didn’t say sorry before He forgave us. We didn’t even know that we offended Him, yet whilst we were still in our sin and ignorance, He forgave us!

So SORRY is not the mighty word we take it to be. Forgiveness should already be done by the one who was hurt before the person who caused the hurt appears to say sorry!

What do you think?