Record Live Podcast

  Hi there, everyone. I'm Jarrod.

And I'm Zanita.

We are your hosts of Record Live, a podcast where we talk about church, faith, and living well.

We believe as followers of Jesus, faith is more than just a set of beliefs. It's a way of life, something we put into practice.

Let's go live.

Hello everyone. And welcome back to another week of Record Live. I hope you are all doing well. Today we have with us, Jesse, who will be hosting with me today. Welcome back Jesse.

You can't keep me away, Zanita. Great to be here.

We are joined with another special guest. We are joined with Catalina, who is a counsellor on the Northern Rivers. She has her own practice called Divine Empowerment. So Catalina welcome to Record Live. This is your first time with us.

It is and it's a very exciting time. So I'm going to try and not be like a fangirl and get all excited to be on here. But thank you so much for inviting me on here.

I love the enthusiasm. Before we get into the topic. We'd love to just hear a little bit about yourself. So can you tell us who you are, where you're from, what you do, all that stuff.

I always say I'm an entrepreneur for the gospel. And I found myself doing a lot of different things, so I don't know if I can give you one thing, but at the moment, my primary focus is I guess just trying to make counseling be a space that's more approachable for Christians. There's a bit of a stigma associated with getting professional help, for things like mental illness, and those kinds of struggles. And God put on my heart this conviction that, if we just had more Christian and specifically more Seventh day Adventist Christian counselors, that at least it was just another option for people to, to reach out to. So that's what I'm doing at the moment.

And also working at Tweed Valley Adventist College part time, so I have private practice and also working at the school.

So many important things. Well today, Catalina, as you know, we are talking about the topic of forgiveness. And to kick things off, I'm wondering if you have any stand out memories when it comes to forgiveness. Maybe it's your first memory of it, or maybe it's something more recent. What comes to mind when you hear the word forgiveness?

this question that you sent through, it really got me thinking because as I kind of thought of forgiveness, there's not one example of forgiveness that I could give you that is the same as any other example.

So I found myself writing a list of the names of people that I've been working on forgiving and, um, do that journey with and every single person that was on that list, what forgiveness looks for them in the situation and I guess in the circumstances that we had looked very different. But there's one forgiveness that I'm going to share.

It's really hard because with forgiveness, it seems like this real simple label to put on the process that we go through, but it's actually really broad and it's so individual and personalized that I'm going to give you an example of forgiveness. Forgiveness for me has looked very different with different situations, but when I was 10, my dad was a mechanic and we had just had a new driveway that had been laid down at our house.

And dad mechanic, there was a car that was coming to get fixed. And dad said to me, he said, Catalina, please make sure that when that person comes to drop their car off, that you ask them to park it on the side of the house where it was dirt. He's like, because it's got an oil leak. Just don't want oil leaking in our driveway.

And it was like, yes, dad. No worries. I'll make sure I let them know. The people came, dropped their car off. And I totally forgot to tell them that we needed them to, so there wasn't this leak. 10 year old me decides, you know, I could totally move this car and park it on the side of the house where it was.

So I decided to do that and I remember my grandma, it was a two story house and I'm I'm in the car, I'm getting ready to move it and my grandma is yelling out to me from the top window and she's saying, Catalina, get out of the car. What are you doing? And I'm like, my grandma. I've got this. Like, oh, it'll be fine.

So I get it and I try to maneuver the car around to the side of the house and it's this awkward driveway entry. Like it's just, an adult would struggle getting it through because of the gate. It's a real tight squeeze. It's a real sharp angle. Anyway, I'm trying to get it through and it hits the front of this car and it gets stuck on the post of the gate that goes into the side of our house.

And I just remember, I'm like, I don't know what to do right now, because if I go forward, I'm going to strike the side. If I try and reverse out of this, I'm going to pull the full bumper off. So I just like, get out of the car, and I'm like, what do we do now? Neighbour comes over, they like, try and get the car out of the way, still end up doing more damage.

Dad comes home. He's like, Catalina, what have you done? I'm like, Dad, it's just that he moaned at the driveway dirty. And he's like, do you realize you've just smashed a car up instead of like, you know, getting oil in the driveway? For that week, Dad is like, Catalina, when the owners of this car come and pick the car up, you're going to go downstairs, you're going to tell them what you did. I tell them how sorry you are for what you did. That week was the most tormenting week of my life. Like it was so bad. And I was thinking of what I'm going to say to these people. And I'm like, I'll probably just start crying. Like, I don't know what's going to happen.

managed to fix all the panels, got all the paint fixed, we managed to find parts, we got the car painted. So the car was like new when they came to pick it up, but dad still, his request was that I go and let them know what had happened. So I'm upstairs, I've come to pick up the car, dad's downstairs.

I'm waiting for my dad to come up and get me, to tell me to come down and to tell the people what happened. And he never came. And I'm waiting and I'm waiting and I'll leaves the people leaves my dad come up the stairs and just look at him and he's like, Catalina I told them that I crashed the car. I told them that I did it, and that we fixed it and if they weren't happy with the repairs that we would happily refix anything that wasn't you know, up to their standard. They said it was fine. And when you ask the question, like, when's the first time that you experienced forgiveness? As I perceive forgiveness now, and what has been the most difficult type of forgiveness to actually partake of, it's that. It's where someone was willing to take the punishment for something that I had done, And yet I didn't deserve it.

Um, so yeah, that's my earliest memory. And I think the one that's really left a massive impact on me as an adult, as I navigate through having to forgive people, throughout my life.

Such a sweet and such a powerful story. I was definitely not expecting it to end in that way. And just as you mentioned, forgiveness can look different in so many circumstances. I know I experienced a lot of hurt a few years ago. And was having to figure out how to actually forgive someone.

Like, for me, I said the words in my head, I said the prayer, but I wasn't really feeling like I'd actually forgiven. And I was like, well, I don't know what. I don't know what to do. What is the process? What does this actually look like? And I just really had to grapple with it. So can you go into that? What does forgiveness. Actually look like, is it. Just saying it, praying it. and it's done, or is it more of a process than maybe we think?

Yeah, so, as we get more into this discussion, I wanted to really just put out to your audience That there's no cookie cutter template for what forgiveness should look like.

And, in the therapeutic space, when I sit with someone who has experienced some sort of trauma or, some sort of like traumatic incident or event, or, you know, just relationship with health, it's very hard for me to assume that The steps that I give are going to be the best steps for everyone.

So as we go into this conversation, I guess there's a part of me that also wants to put like a disclaimer that as much as we're going through some key points, it's still very individual to everyone experience. And, I guess we can take some of those skills with us and try to implement them however we can into our specific situation.

But there's also a part that. Yeah, you have to journey in a way that's very individual to what, what you've experienced and also what that looks like for you long term. For example, if someone's, you know, experienced sexual abuse, what one person experience of sexual abuse might be very different to someone else.

And so even that has its complexity in trying to kind of, yeah, help people through that journey. But, if we look at it in terms of like a psychological perspective and a psychosocial approach, forgiveness is generally like the absence of negative feelings and emotions towards someone, so not having resentment, bitterness, anger towards people.

That's generally like a definition you would find in the American Journal of Psychology or the American Association of Psych, like it's a very clinical definition, which sometimes doesn't really give us enough To personalize what forgiveness actually looks like, given our specific circumstances and the details of kind of what we have to work through. Biblically, it's kind of, there's more details, but then it's also more complicated is, um, you'll find there's like three main words that are used for forgiveness.

When we read it in the Bible, it just forgive, forgiven. But in terms of, like, the original Greek or the original Hebrew, there's actually three different types of forgiveness. Um, and how they look is very different to what we would just assume forgiveness looks like. So there's a forgiveness for, like, straight out rebellion.

There's a forgiveness that comes from evil and wickedness. And there's a forgiveness that comes from, like, That comes from offending. So then, yeah, what does that look for us? Again, super different to what we would have.

And I guess in a spiritual sense as well, we have the, you know, I forgive you for something that you've done to me, but then there's an existential sense of forgiveness for large scale. I mean, we would call it sin in a Christian sense, uh, evil, suffering, things that have happened existentially in our world.

And we feel a sense of guilt for that. I also want to just quickly ask, you know, maybe this is obvious for you or for most people, but why is forgiveness, I don't know if necessary is the right word, but why is it good for good health, psychologically? Or even physically, potentially. Why is it important for us to forgive, or is it?

It's super important, but I do believe that trying to work through forgiveness can be more painful than actually addressing what's happened to us. So you'll often find people who struggle to forgive. It's because it's even more painful for them to address what's happened. And that might be just to really sit down and assess what the offense is.

So if there's like infidelity in a relationship, some people might hold on to bitterness and resentment because it seems like a more protective emotion than to have to deal with the vulnerability of what it looked like to actually recognize, acknowledge, um, and accept. The betrayal that came through infidelity.

So I understand what forgiveness can be hard for some people and why they would avoid it because it's. It's the better of the two, I guess. But when you are working through the process of forgiveness, it's just, you have a different perspective on life.

Um, in terms of like the risk factors that come from not being willing to forgive or struggling to forgive, um, there's a high rate of mental illness, depression, anxiety, like this constant worry. You'll find often people that struggle to forgive, they'll often have low confidence, low self worth, low self esteem.

It does a lot to us as people. Not forgiving how we replay that in our mind is actually super impactful. And Has a lot of negative effects on us. Then biologically, physically, just the sense of having high levels of cortisol, constantly stressing, constantly being worried, like that does something to us. You have a higher rate of fatigue heart disease among people who hold on to bitterness and resentment, who are angry. There's just, yeah, there's a lot of negatives to not forgiving, even though it can be quite painful to work through the process of forgiveness.

Yeah. I know from my experience, it's the bitterness and that mindset of like wanting vengeance is probably the thing that I found the hardest to move through. Like you can forgive, but then oftentimes you've got to go through this difficult period of healing those wounds. In your experience as a counselor, I'm sure, probably most of the people who come to you have been hurt by someone in a grappling with forgiveness. What is some of the advice that you often give to people who are either trying to forgive or who are trying to heal those wounds even after they've forgiven?

Yeah. There's some real practical things. And then also, I'm going to give a shout out to the book by Dr. Dick Tibbetts. Forgive To Live. I helped facilitate some community workshops with the book, not realizing that, you know, like just a few years later, there was going to be something massive that was going to happen in my life.

That was going to call for me to literally put into practice, everything that I kind of let out with in that book. But, that's a really helpful book. And one of the big things that you'll find within that book is even allowing yourself to consider forgiving someone a massive step, and acknowledging that and being willing to consider forgiving someone actually helps to soften our heart to do the rest of the work that comes with forgiving someone.

And, you know, even if you don't want to forgive them for their sake, understanding the benefits that come from forgiving someone for your sake can be a great motivator to get you to work through forgiveness. Because the way that our interpersonal relationships are affected when we're holding on to bitter and resentment, the way that we're getting our day to day life because we don't want to forgive because we haven't worked through that can have really detrimental effects, just on our day to day existing.

So considering the possibility of working through forgiveness, then practically, when we have a look at the Lord's Prayer, in Luke 11, he specifically does this prayer of like, forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. And the Lord's Prayer in essence is, is almost a daily prayer.

Prayer that we should be making to God, for his will to be done for the kingdom to come. All those key elements that are within the Lord's prayer are something that we should desire daily and forgiveness is part of that. Forgiveness is a daily thing. I'm daily committing to the fact that I'm going to try and consider forgiving this person.

And as you slowly work through that, there are people work through my list of people that I've had to forgive in my life. There are people that I think of them. I actually feel quite sick. Like my gut just sinks. And when I think of them and have that somatic response, I find myself. I've kind of trained myself to say a prayer for them.

Because there's obviously still something that's lingering there between me and that person. And so if I can say a prayer for them, I'm recognizing that God, I haven't fully forgiven, and I'm still quite raw and fragile when it comes to even thinking of the person. Understanding how you feel when you think of that person can also help you to be at a place where you can be like, okay, I think there's some work that needs to be done.

It's interesting. You say that I'm not sure where it says this in the Bible, but. Somewhere in the Bible, but it says that Jesus throws us in, into the depths of the oceans and he just forgets about them, which is awesome, and that's great for us, but I feel like as humans, we don't really have that ability to just completely forget something. And put it at the bottom of the sea, away from our minds..

And so I guess what you're saying is sometimes forgiveness is an ongoing thing. Like it's a journey. It doesn't always just happen. And many of us have probably experienced that, where we've said it and we prayed it, but we still haven't really felt like we've truly forgiven. And so yeah, sometimes it needs to be done again and again.

And with that point, Zanita, you bring up something that's really interesting, which is this idea of forgiving and forget. And we can talk about that a little bit more. But when you look at the three types of forgiveness that we see throughout the Bible, and primarily through the Old Testament, that's where there's this clear distinction of the three.

When you have a look at it, that's for the atonement of sins. which is that concept of blowing away, taking away, making them go into the depths of the sea. There's that type of forgiveness. And then there's also forgiveness that just says, you know what, we're just going to move or pardon the punishment that comes with the sin, which is a little bit different to the full atoning, like blotting out of the sin. It's like, okay, let's be gracious in this form of forgiveness, which will then cause the punishment to be slightly different for that offender or for whoever sinned. And so when we look at forgiveness in the human concept, it's very different to forgiveness in the divine form of the forgiveness that God and Jesus have offered through the sacrifice of the son of God. So that's a very different type of forgiveness. Yet there's another form of forgiveness, which is the forgiveness that we can partake of. Which is slightly different to that atoning forgiveness. So completely blocking, blotting out or forgetting what people have done, can actually be more harmful than good. And I, I I put that out there with, I guess with the condition that . But the punishment is still somehow infused with grace.

There's still a way that we relate to them that reflects the goodness of God and what he has shown us. In Proverbs, when it talks about wisdom, wisdom is experience that you've gained that gives you knowledge. So if I have someone who has betrayed me and maybe just give the example at a workplace, if I've seen that someone, lies, makes up things about people, if I was to just forgive and forget them, Then I placed myself in a position where I could then become a victim again, because I'm forgetting what they've done. And therefore I'm actually missing out on the wisdom that I could gain from understanding that that particular person is not the most honest. Therefore, I'm going to be more cautious and be wiser around them to make sure that they don't end up doing what they did previously or whatever that looks like.

So, yeah, carrying the wisdom of what we learn as a result of having to forgive someone is really important. And I believe that that's probably the idea of what forgiving is, is that we hold on the wisdom and the lessons that we learned about ourselves and also about others and use that to go into the next relationship, the next situation, with wisdom.

Talk to us about the relationship between forgiveness and justice. Because I think probably for most people justice is the core issue that we grapple with when it comes to forgiving. But of course, as we know, uh, the world that we live in is not exactly black and white. You know what one person considers a great wrong, somebody else might consider to be a necessary action, a necessary evil, perhaps. are so many shades of gray when it comes to our sense of justice. What I consider to be right might be considered by somebody else to be wrong, depending on, you know, context or culture or situation. So when we grapple with ideas of justice, how is that related to forgiveness?

And how can we work through our own sense of, of justice as we're considering Whether we should be forgiving somebody or whether somebody needs to be forgiving us for stuff that we've done wrong.

Yeah, yeah. There's the example of the servant that was pardoned for like a ridiculous amount of debt, and then by the king.

And then when they money to them, they were like, no, you need to make sure you pay me back. And like, you know, they were really right onto making sure that they made, um, you know, their debt, they reconciled it. And think you always have to think of the heart of God, like the goodness of God and the justice that he gives us for our faults.

And how he treats us. We have to, at some point, try and somehow weave that into what that looks for us with our fellow humans. There's definitely, I guess, an example for us to always keep ourselves in check when we try and work out what is just and what is fair of our dealings with someone else and how God relates to us.

Now, when we look at the concept of forgiveness too, there was one that is more like pardon rather than forgiveness. And when you look that in terms of like a legal application, pardon is much more of the clearing their name. You know, it's much more for the offenders reputation. And then forgiveness is You've done the crime, you can still go to jail and I can still forgive you.

You still are served justice in having to fulfill the conditions of your offense through whether it's a jail time or whatever that looks like. So it's still a part of justice that doesn't take away the consequence. Which, for example, if I had, a friend who betrayed me, and now my full justice and what I believe to be fair is that I'm no longer that person's friend, that's still a natural outcome of a betrayal within a friendship that, wasn't reasonable to the point where I would consider being friends with that person again.

So that might be my form of justice. Now, do I still desire for that person to be in heaven? Do I still pray for blessings on their life? Can I still demonstrate compassion for that person? That's where it gets a little bit harder. That's where, you know, it kind of pulls on some like real painful strings in trying to desire good for them, even though the consequence is still going to be, it's going to be fair and just that I'm no longer friends with them. Um, I think that's still reasonable. And I believe that, when we put ourselves in a position where we have to work out where our boundaries are and how to protect ourselves from getting hurt again.

Sometimes there is You know, it'll be fair for me, but that person might still want to be my friend. But if I have to lay down some boundaries, I think that still falls under, yeah, a fair call because we're trying to work out how to protect ourselves. I don't know if that answered your question, Jesse,

no, it's good. It's good. Very, a lot of food for thought there.

I feel like forgiveness can often be tricky because we hear things like boundaries and justice, and it's not really a step by step procedure and it's done. One of the most common verses that gets cited on forgiveness or the one that I think of is when Peter is asking, how many times do I have to forgive? And Jesus responds, seven times 70. Which is obviously a hyperbole. Um, for, it's never ending that there's no limit. So how many times. I give someone, but it does make things tricky to navigate when we hear these other psychological counseling type words thrown into the mix as well. And I think those are good. But it just yeah brings in complexities like you said.

And straight after that passage where there's like this limitless, forgiveness straight after that passage is when you find this power of the king that forgives a huge debt compared to the servant who doesn't want to forgive anyone. And, when you look at the context of that, it's back to this idea of like this divine forgiveness and human forgiveness.

To try and make it, match up as much as possible to try and make it be as much as a reflection of the divine as we can. And the essence is that, hey, like, don't limit your capacity to forgive people because God's capacity is unending rather than do we put ourselves in a position with the same person to continually be hurt?

endless amounts of time because we've been told that we should be doing this, I think that there might be a slight variation of that, when we look at the context of all the other passages that talk about forgiveness.

I was thinking about this topic of forgiveness earlier this morning, while I was doing my dishes. And I think often when we think about forgiveness, we conjure up all of the really painful things people have done to us, or maybe that we've done to others. We think of the really extreme cases or the times that we've been hurt the most. And as I was doing my dishes this morning, I was kind of annoyed at some very small thing that someone close to me had done. And it was, you know, one of those really petty things that just really frustrated me. And I think the thing that Jesus wants to do in us when it comes to forgiveness is to make us forgiving in nature. So even these small things, we are prone to get upset and angry about. He wants just as much for us to have grace on people for those things and he wants us to forgive people, maybe not always to their face, but at least in our hearts and minds, like have grace on them and let things go .

Just to finish up this conversation because we have run out of time. Is there a way that we can become more forgiving in nature as individuals? What's something practical that we can do to continue to to forgive others for the small and big things and continue to heal after we've been hurt.

I think the better that we understand forgiveness, the more forgiving will become. And I think that is understanding forgiveness, God's forgiveness for each one of us, but also understanding, the freedom that comes in forgiving people. There's a, like this secular quote that says, " not forgiving someone, is like you drinking poison and expecting the other person to die." And so when we see forgiveness in the wrong context and in a way that is quite unhealthy, which is, you know, forgive and forget. Like even that, that was like a quote that was, started in the 17th century by some fictional Spanish author. And then Shakespeare used it in one of his play became a thing. And, When we look at that through, a biblical lens and understand divine forgiveness and then human forgiveness, how we can infuse the two together, I think we'll understand what forgiveness really is, which will give us a capacity to be more forgiving and to be more understanding.

There's so many benefits be gained from experiencing forgiveness and giving forgiveness to others that once you have experienced it, and because it's a journey, and like I said, like the Lord's prayer, it's like a daily, request of God giving us forgiveness the ability to forgive people. As you experience that every day, weekly, monthly, and you see just how liberating it is to forgive people.

Not because you are accepting of what they did, not because you're downplaying what they did or because you're invalidating your experience and the impact that it has had on you. But understanding that in recognizing your pain and recognizing your suffering and recognizing that there was an offense to your own moral law.

Then you can actually sit and be like, yeah, that was totally wrong. And because of that, like I know how to navigate through life better so that those things don't continue to happen in my life. I don't think we can do justice of how much it can do for our lives, but there's definitely a way to kind of work through that. And, Yeah, reframing and then forgiving yourself because there's a part of forgiveness that also comes to us. And again, the Forgive To Live book, I highly recommend it for people who don't feel comfortable going and seeing like a professional and going through therapy, that book was really, really helpful.

Awesome. Well, there are many more questions we could ask you. Maybe we can get you back for part two to go even deeper on this, but thank you, Catalina for joining us today thank you for your wisdom and for your stories. I hope anyone who is listening has found this helpful. I know I certainly have, and yeah, we'll have to get you back on sometime again, Catalina.

Thank you for the invitation. You guys are awesome. I love what you do. I remember as a teenager, looking forward to when The Record would arrive at our church and just reading about all the amazing things that the church is doing around Australia and, yeah, to see you guys expand to the online space and to recognize where the audience is and how to provide in so many other areas is just really cool. So thanks for what you guys are doing. Really appreciate it.