I’ve had the privilege of traveling to many conference centers and retreats to speak on forgiveness and reconciliation. Inevitably someone will come up to me in each setting and ask, “Where were you twenty years ago?” Then they tell me that if they had understood what I was teaching about the difference between forgiveness and reconciliation they would have approached relationships far differently.
My teaching on the subject has especially helped those who tended to enable others under the feeling that forgiveness required forgetting the wrongs that were committed. It was liberating for these people to learn that (unlike forgiveness) reconciliation of a broken relationship is a process conditioned on the attitude and actions of an offender. Those who commit significant and repeated offenses must realize that their responses and actions affect the timing of the process. Those who are genuinely repentant will accept this fact with brokenness and humility.
In view of the benefit this has been to others, I’ve provided summaries of my teaching on the links below:
Steve Cornell
