by ProfDave, ©2021
(Nov. 9, 2021) — November 4 was World Peace Day. Here is a secret: there will be no peace in your world unless and until you are at peace with yourself and with God. If you are in recovery for whatever is broken in your life, have you completed Step 7? Have you cleaned up your own house and connected with the Power line (God)? Are your vertical lines of communication open? Now you are ready to address your horizontal relationships.
Step Eight: We made a list of all persons we had harmed and became willing to make amends to them all. Luke 6:31: Do to others as you would have them do to you.
“We made a list.” Actually, we already have a list in our inventory, but getting right with other people is a major part of our recovery. As we examined out lives, we develop quite a list of people who have hurt us and whom we have hurt. Amends goes both ways: forgive and you will be forgiven.
The genius of the Twelve Step model is that we are not asked to turn over a new leaf all at once, but to deal with our issues incrementally in steps that build on each other – one day at a time. Having done a “fearless moral inventory” of ourselves and faced not only our outward behaviors but our character defects, we can face the wreckage we have caused – and our own hurts – without flinching. Buried hurts and regrets already lie on the surface of our consciences. This becomes a list of issues to be dealt with. But don’t deal yet. Just list.
“We . . . became willing to make amends.” Most of us have been hurt or disappointed in relationships more than once. From earliest memories there have been those we should have trusted who let us down, perhaps abused or abandoned us. There have been broken people whose addictions or misanthropy impacted our lives. Hurt people hurt people.
And we too have hurt others in one way or another. We have regrets and guilts. People we avoid because of what we did to them. Hurt people hurt people.
This baggage of resentment, fear and regret fuels our dysfunctional behavior and/or addictions. It has also blemished our character, warped our relationships and hindered our recovery.
Step 8 calls us to be willing. Don’t worry about how or even if you can ever fix the damage you have done or forgive the damage done to you. Just write it down.
Principle Six: Evaluate all my relationships. Offer forgiveness to those who have hurt me and make amends for harm I’ve done to others, except when to do so would harm them or others. Matthew 4:7,9. Happy are the merciful. . . . Happy are the peacemakers.
“Offer forgiveness to those who have hurt me and make amends for harm I’ve done to others.” Forgiveness and restitution are key parts of the Christian life, too. Especially forgiveness. Christians are forgiven people or nothing at all. “Father forgive them, for they don’t know what they do,” prayed Jesus as they were nailing him to the cross. “Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors,” we pray as he taught us. He told us that we cannot consistently expect God to forgive us our infinite debt to Him if we refuse to forgive each other their finite debts to us. Except that He already has, by the infinite suffering of the cross, extended forgiveness to us all.
Finite debts? Finite does not mean small. Some of us have been raped, emotionally tortured and/or crippled for life by those we trusted. Unforgivable! Some of us have done unforgivable things to others. We cannot even forgive ourselves. But we have been forgiven. God can forgive the unforgivable. At infinite cost, but He does. And in that forgiveness is a power beyond ourselves. Yes, supernatural. Never mind how. For now, just list them. You can do that much.
David W. Heughins (“ProfDave”) is Adjunct Professor of History at Nazarene Bible College. He holds a BA from Eastern Nazarene College and a PhD in history from the University of Minnesota. He is the author of Holiness in 12 Steps (2020). He is a Vietnam veteran and is retired, living with his daughter and three grandchildren in Connecticut.