Unclench the Fist

In her memoir Searching for Sunday, Rachel Held Evans wrote about returning to church after years away, carrying wounds inflicted by people who claimed to speak for God. She didn't find healing by pretending those wounds didn't exist. She found it by refusing to let bitterness have the final word.

Colossians 3:13 invites us to "bear with each other and forgive one another if any of you has a grievance against someone." But for those of us in Progressive communities, forgiveness can feel complicated. We have learned — rightly — to name harm. We insist on accountability. We refuse to let "forgive and forget" become a tool that silences the vulnerable or shields abusers from consequence.

And yet. Paul's invitation still stands, not as a demand to bypass justice, but as a recognition that carrying someone else's sin in our bodies will eventually consume us from the inside out.

Think of forgiveness as unclenching a fist. The fist was necessary — it held the truth of what happened. But a clenched fist cannot receive anything new. It cannot reach out toward the Beloved Community we are trying to build. It cannot break bread or embrace a stranger.