Apart from accidents, most problems in life can be traced to genes inherited or bad experiences — the latter in childhood. Medical and behavioural experts describe the first as Nature and the second as Nurture.
We’re familiar with human nature: we only have to look around us at the increasingly graphic news that comes to us through the media. Or inside ourselves. Thank God for Jesus, whose shed blood on the cross paid in full for our sins! Not sins inherited but a nature inherited and prone to sin and so predisposed to temptation. When we first did what we knew to be wrong we broke God’s law, and it was then that we became sinners.
But when we submitted our lives to Jesus and accepted him as our Lord, we received a new nature, one that cannot sin (1 John 3:9). The old nature can, but having “buried” it in baptism, we count it as dead and ourselves as “a new creation” in Christ (2 Corinthians 5:17). So much for Nature!
Nurture is another thing altogether. Research shows that most personal problems stem from damaging environments or from experiences we were associated with during our formative years. One of the most damaging of these is deprival of a normal Father and Son relationship.
Psychological manifestations can be so intense they can appear demonic. Rage. Hatred. Envy. Bitterness. Resentment. Out they come — often noisily– in the Name of Jesus! When the power of the Holy Spirit touches inner problems, such manifestations can be, to say the least, dramatic.
Christian psychology (the latter word has its origin in the NT Greek word translated “soul”), plus loving pastoral care, and healthy social relationships, all minister grace and love to people with longtime problems of the soul.
Knowing and experiencing God as Father is the key to recovery. Moving from memories of a manipulative or abusive childhood relationship to God as an ever-present, caring, heavenly Father who loves unconditionally is the key to forgiving and forgetting.
God says, “Your sins will I remember no more. ” (Hebrews 10:17) Only when we have experienced the love of God as a heavenly Father, can we forgive the sins and mistakes of our earthly one. “For behold, I create new heavens and a new earth: and the former things shall not be remembered, nor come to mind.” (Isaiah 55:17)
So, with this in mind, how can we who love God not forgive those who damaged or ignored us, either by what they did or did not do? Nothing of the past will be remembered in timeless eternity, so why not forgive them and consign things to the past now rather than then? It’s a good question, one that invites an answer.