I consider myself a forgiving guy. I actually have a difficult time holding grudges against people, and I can only think of one or two people who have caused me to struggle with the practice.

That is, except for when I think of myself. When I consider Roger Overton, I can be the most critical and unforgiving person you might ever meet. The worst of it led me into a very serious depression for about a month, and that continued as a less serious depression for another eleven months (this was several years ago).

How is it that I can forgive others so easily but I run myself into the ground even for lesser offenses? It’s because I hold myself to a higher standard than anyone else. In my mind, it’s okay for those around me to slip occasionally, but I ought to be better than that. It’s not so much that I think that I should be better than other people, but I hold myself to a high standard regardless of what standards those around me live up to.

I know other people have struggled with this problem as well, so I’d like to share how I’ve been dealing with it in hopes that it might help you. At some point it occurred to me that my inability to forgive myself is actually a pride issue and a source of further sin.

While my personal standards are rather high, God’s standard is much higher: perfection. In reality, I fail to meet His standards far more often than I fail my own. Yet, if Christ has died for my sins (and I believe He has), then God is no longer holding my sins against me (Isaiah 43:25, 1 John 1:9). What does it mean if God can forgive me for not living up to His perfect standard but I can’t forgive myself for failing at a lesser standard? It means that I think my standards are higher than God’s, and that is a rather prideful sin. It also involves disobedience since we are repeatedly commanded to forgive (Matthew 6:14-15, Ephesians 4:32). Certainly those commandments include us under the umbrella of our grace toward others.

Indeed, we are called to forget our past. Philippians 3:13-14 “Brothers, I do not consider that I have made it my own. But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.” We cannot “strain forward to what lies ahead” if we are stuck in our past sins. We cannot press on toward the goal if we are looking backward.

The way forward is marked with repentance; not self-condemnation. I’ve found that the best I can do to practice God’s grace in my life is to avoid wallowing in my guilt and direct my frustrations toward doing better in the future by the power of His Holy Spirit. Withholding forgiveness from ourselves is at best unproductive and at worse sinful. If we truly want to practice God’s grace in our lives, we must forgive ourselves out of humility and submission to God’s amazing grace, and repent toward a life that brings glory to God and enjoys Him forever.

“For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh but made alive in the spirit.” -1 Peter 3:18

“What has been is what will be, and what has been done is what will be done, and there is nothing new under the sun.” Ecclesiastes 1:9

We are far too accustomed to hearing about “new things.” When shopping we are constantly faced with “new and improved” products. Our politicians claim to advance “new” plans and ideas. Even some theologians argue that they’ve got a “new perspective” to offer us from time to time. And now many of us are claiming to be involved in something called “new media.”  Are we really talking about something new, or is there nothing new under the sun?

From the context of Ecclesiastes, we can see that this famous verse refers to satisfaction in life. No amount of human creativity can bring about something so new that it will change where we derive our satisfaction or our salvation. These have always been found in God and they always will be found in Him. The writer of Ecclesiastes did not condemn human ingenuity altogether, but made it clear that all of our attempts to satisfy ourselves are futile.

Still, the claim that there is “nothing new under the sun” is generally true when more widely applied. The voyages to the moon brought man to a new destination, but traveling is something man has always done and will continue to do. Technology simply enhanced man’s ability to travel.

Similarly, new media is nothing more than communication. All that is new is the form of communication. Instead of writing to a local paper hoping to get an opinion published, many people have turned to publishing their thoughts on the Internet (primarily on blogs). Internet technology has enhanced textual communication by allowing just about everyone to publish their opinions. Among other things, this gives people a greater ability to exercise their freedom of speech.

If we were simply to leave it at that, though, we would be uncritical stewards of this new technology. It is far too easy to embrace the intended benefits of new technology without even noticing the unintended consequences. One such consequence is that readers become accustomed to brief, cursory thoughts and lose their appetite for longer, deeper commentaries. We might expect, then, that in the long-run people will generally have a lower tolerance for complex lines of argument and will only give ear to pithy sound bites. So while new media is merely a new way of doing something we’ve done before, it does bring to bear both new opportunities and new consequences.