Several years ago just outside of Tucson, Arizona, an isolation experiment was conducted in which a team of four men and four women lived inside a glass-enclosed biosphere, entirely shut off from the outer world. The idea was to see if humankind might one day be able to exist on another planet by recreating a portion of the earth. Consequently, the scientists were expected to be completely self-reliant, producing everything they would need for survival—including their own oxygen.

Within the biosphere, they had access to fields and forests, jungles and deserts. There was even an ocean (on a much smaller scale, of course). I guess you could think of it as a second attempt at the Garden of Eden, and actually, that may not be such a bad analogy, because they ended up encountering some of the same difficulties that Adam and Eve ran into the first time around.

Three months into the project, the team began to splinter into two distinct factions. Apparently, a minor misunderstanding led to mistrust among some of them, which quickly spiraled into accusations of misconduct, and before long, the two groups weren’t even speaking. Eventually, the situation became so tense that the experiment had to be called off. In the final report, it was concluded that unless we learn how to forgive each other, it’s not likely that we will survive on this planet, much less any other.

However, despite hundreds of thousands of sermons on forgiveness down through the centuries, most of us still find it to be awkward, painful, and in a word—difficult! Like it or not, we live in a very ungracious world. After all, it’s dog-eat-dog out there … not dog-forgive-dog.

Moreover, society seems insistent on forever pointing out our shortcomings. When exam papers are handed back in school, for example, it’s never the correct answers that are highlighted, only the mistakes. When advertisers make their daily sales pitch on TV, invariably the message is that something is lacking in our lives. We’re not popular enough, or powerful enough, or prosperous enough. It’s no wonder we are so quick to find fault with one another—that’s precisely where we’re all taught to focus.

The Old Testament solution was “an eye for an eye.” In other words, when you have been hurt, seek revenge rather than forgiveness. However, the obvious problem with this approach is that it never actually achieves what it’s after. The taste of revenge may seem sweet, but when dinner is served, we’re the ones who end up being eaten alive. That’s why it’s sometimes called the all-consuming passion.

When Jesus taught forgiveness, he wasn’t just offering us a different way. I am persuaded that he was offering us the only way to be released from the self-inflicted punishment of resentment and the self-destructive path of revenge. Frederick Buechner put it like this, “When somebody you’ve wronged forgives you, you’re spared the dull and self-diminishing throb of a guilty conscience. When you forgive somebody who has wronged you, you’re spared the dismal corrosion of bitterness and wounded pride. For both parties, forgiveness means the freedom again to be at peace inside their own skin and to be glad in each other’s presence.”