Forget It or Forgive It?

A couple of years ago a friend said something that really hurt my feelings. Instead of forgiving him like I should have I convinced myself that he really didn't do anything, that it was no big deal. I decided to just forget about it you know, it hurt my feelings but he didn't sin against me so its not like I'm supposed to forgive him. I mean how can I, he didn't do anything. I tried to forget about it for two years but I couldn't it kept on resurfacing. It was supposed to be gone, but it wasn't. I hadn't forgiven him. Forgetting may be similar to forgiving but its not the same. One definition of forget is to omit mentioning or leave unnoticed. That means its still their you just ignore it. Forgive is defined as to remit or cancel. So it is no more it no longer exists. One way to look at it is to imagine something written on a piece of paper. You don't want it their so get some white out and cover it up, but white out doesn't remove the words, their still there. Or you could take an eraser and totally remove them. Now there's no chance of those words coming back. Don't convince yourself that someone doesn't need to be forgiven, that you can just forget about it. You can't only God can.

For if ye forgive men their trespasses,
your heavenly Father will also forgive you

(Matthew 6:14)

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