Step 8 – Made a list of all people we had harmed and became willing to make amends to them all…
As you may have noticed, I have a rough time writing on the steps because there isn’t much new to say. I write for two audiences: those who are working the steps while living with the church, and those in the church that have little or no exposure to the steps and may misunderstand them. It is hard to write with one foot in each world, especially when the step seems to be self evident, but I need to push through because there are other things I want to write on. And I need to finish what I started before starting something new. I need to try to finish well.
Biblically we first bump into Step 8 in Genesis 3 & 4. God confronted to Adam about his choice to eat of the tree of “Good and evil.” Instead of owning his actions and admitting them, he blamed both God and his wife for his choices, “…the woman you gave me gave it to me and so I ate…” Later the pattern is repeated by his son.
Abel and Cain both brought sacrifices to the Lord. Cain brought some of his crops and God rejected the sacrifice. Abel brought the best of his flock and God accepted his sacrifice. Cain was unwilling to make amends to God for bringing an unworthy sacrifice. Instead, he killed his brother.
Not much has changed in humankind’s story. Unwilling to own our own missteps, faults, failures, and poor choices; we point our finger at other people, blaming them for our screw ups or deflecting the accusation, “I didn’t do anything differently from anyone else!”
How things are different when we are willing to own our actions, our faults and our failures to say, “I was wrong to do what I did. I know it hurt you. I hope you’ll forgive me.” That willingness to acknowledge our own finitude, brokenness, and incompleteness gives the opportunity to no have to carry any shame.
When I say that, I don’t mean that the hurt and guilt are erased, but the shame can be. Shame is always self-centred. It is about feeling badly about “me.” Guilt is feeling badly for the harm I have done to another and is “other-centred.” When I hurt someone else it is healthy to hurt over the pain I caused them, to empathize with them and acknowledge the wrong I did. It is not healthy to hurt over the fact that I am not perfect and should be better than I am. Shame is merely warped and twisted pride, turned inwards and angry; often at God for screwing up and making me less than I ought to be.
There is a Spiritual mystery at work in this step, and this step can take a life time to take. Notice it says, “became willing to make amends to them all.” I do not know why, but it takes my forgiveness of another for me to truly acknowledge my wrongdoing to them without any demands. This step does not demand that people respond well to our amends. It does not demand that they ask us forgiveness for the role they played in the event. It requires us to be willing to make an amends – to clean our side of the street; even if most of the wrong belongs to them.
Illustrations of what this look like abound: A husband yells at his wife for spending money they don’t have endangering the financial well-being of the family. The wife’s actions may well have been wrong, but the husband must disregard his wife’s wrong-doing and only consider his own if he is successfully complete this step. The arrogant smart, and rich dorky kid who got framed by his classmates and gets suspended from school for something he didn’t do, needs to forget all the wrong that was done to him in the event and own the arrogant pride that was his in the first place to successfully complete his eighth step.
The eighth step does not discount the wrongs done to us. It is not that they are unimportant or to be trivialized. Rather, it focuses on the things that are wrong in me. It tries to set those wrongs straight. “I was wrong for blank.”
I have no excuses. I will not deflect. I was wrong. I can’t excuse my wrong actions or attitudes if I want to be successful here. The whole earth may conspire against me, but that does not excuse the choices that I make toward selfishness and destruction of another. I need to own what I do to be free of it. And the wonder here is that when I do, I find myself being willing to forgive others that wrong me as well. That is true freedom.
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