Explaining Forgiveness to a Seven-Year-Old

It’s a challenge to explain forgiveness to a seven-year-old. I well remember an attempt to do so. I was his family’s pastor at the time. And fortunately for us both, he was a very bright boy, who really wanted an answer he could grasp and apply. He said he had difficulty knowing how to forgive himself, and what he had to do in order to accept the forgiveness of others, including God. And so, at both his and his parent’s request, we had a little chat.

I asked him if he like baseball. He smiled and said, “I play baseball; I love baseball.”

I said, “What would happen if you struck out and the coach said, ‘You are done; you can’t play baseball anymore’?”

Raising his eyebrows, imaginatively picturing the scenario, he said, “There would be no more baseball for me.”

I said, “What if the coach said that to every single player on your team, once they struck out like you did?”

Frowning, he said sadly, “There would be no more baseball for my team.”

Again I said, “And what if every coach of every team said that to everyone of their players who struck out?”

He said, with some amazement, “There would be no more baseball at all!”

I said, “You are right, there would be no more baseball at all. But here’s the thing: God invented baseball; God loves baseball. So God says, ‘Play ball! Go to your next at bat!’ To forgive means to get another at bat – does that make sense?”

He shook his head up and down with understanding and said, “Yes, because maybe I won’t strike out next time.”

I said, “You’ve got it, you understand. The next time or two, you might get a hit, or even a home run. But if you didn’t get the chance for another at bat, you would never know what help you might have been to your team. Without forgiveness, the game of life would not keep on going.”

Now that he seemed to understand the why of forgiveness, this bright young boy, about to turn seven, wanted to know the how. He wanted to be given a process or procedure to carry out in order to forgive himself, and others.

So I gave him the “three R’s” of forgiveness, writing them down as I spoke. I told him that the words were adult words, but that I would try to make them understandable. The three:

1. Recognition. “What this means”, I said, “is just this: you say, ‘I see what I did.’ The first thing is, you have to learn that you have hurt someone, like your mom or dad or sisters.

2. Regret. “The second thing is, you have to say, and really mean, ‘I’m sorry.’ If you are not sorry you did something that hurt another, you are not going to ask for forgiveness.”

3. Repentance. “I know that this is a big word, but what it means is this: you say, ‘I won’t do that again.’ When you say that you won’t do something again, you mean you will work hard on your next at bat being better.”

I told him that when he understood what he had done to hurt another, when he felt sorry he had done it, and said he would work on not doing that again, he had to forgive himself. Otherwise, I said, “You can’t play baseball anymore. And remember, God loves baseball.”