Confession and Forgiveness

In preparing for the Disciplines Class that I am leading on wednesday nights, the following was very helpful from Richard Foster's book on "A Celebration of Discipline".
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Confession is a difficult Discipline for us because we all too often view the believing community as a fellowship of saints before we see it as a fellowship of sinners.

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To clarify forgiveness and what it means. Here are 4 things forgiveness is NOT…
1. Some imagine that forgiveness means pretending an injury doesn’t really matter. We say, “Oh, that’s all right, it really didn’t hurt me anyway.” That is lying, not forgiveness. Love and lies do not mix well. What we need is not avoidance but reconciliation.

2. Some think that forgiveness means ceasing to hurt. There is a belief that if we continue to hurt we must have failed to forgive completely. That is simply not true. Hurting is not evil. We may hurt for a long time to come.

3. Many would have us believe that forgiveness means forgetting. Just “forgive and forget”. The truth is we cannot forget. The difference is that we no longer use the memory against others. The attempt to force people to forget what cannot be forgotten only puts them in bondage and confuses the meaning of forgiveness.

4. Many assume that forgiveness means pretending that the relationship is just the same as it was before the offense. The relationship will just not be the same…that is just the fact. By the grace of God, it may be a hundred times better, but it will never be the same.