Forgiveness is a difficult doctrine, both to understand and to practice. There will, unfortunately, be situations in all our lives that will require us to extend extraordinary forgiveness to another person. And when those times come, the Lord will be near to help us process our pain and grief, and his Spirit will gently and faithfully get us to a place where we can forgive. 

Understanding Forgiveness
The biblical concept of forgiveness is so rich and multifaceted that there are a million aspects of the doctrine we could spend years pondering and trying to fully understand. Likewise, if we are talking about forgiveness as it relates to one person forgiving another person, the spectrum on which the need for forgiveness falls is vast. Some of us are struggling to forgive something harsh said to us—others of us have suffered horrific abuse and are trying to figure out what forgiveness even looks like and where to begin.
What we’ll reflect on here relates primarily to the former: those of us who are having a hard time forgiving someone who has misunderstood or misrepresented us, who holds a different view theologically or politically than we do—or who frankly just gets on our nerves. Psalm 103 helps us navigate such situations by revealing key attributes that characterize God, and that by extension, should be true of those who bear his name. These characteristics help us by putting our frustrations and disappointments—our need to forgive— in perspective.
Psalm 103:8 uses a refrain found throughout the Old Testament to teach us what God is like:
The Lord is merciful and gracious,slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.
Throughout the Bible we are told that the Lord is “slow to anger.” We sin and rebel and disobey like petulant children, and yet God’s steadfast love holds us tight. He isn’t perpetually angry with or irritated by us, even though he has every reason and right to be.
But if there is any phrase that does not describe the world we live in—or our own natural, response to offenses—“slow to anger” is it. Left by ourselves, every minor slight is more offensive than it truly is. We get mad fast and our anger lingers. When someone upsets us, we want an apology, and we want it yesterday.
Forgiveness and being “slow to anger” are closely related. The truth is, we would have less to forgive if we weren’t so quick to get irritated. Anger clouds our thoughts and makes us believe that things are true even when they aren’t. Ecclesiastes 7:9 warns us to:
Be not quick in your spirit to become angry,for anger lodges in the heart of fools.
Misplaced or Unjustified Anger
Misplaced or unjustified anger makes us think and act irrationally. In fact, sin is so devious it can even trick us into thinking we are due forgiveness, when in reality we should be seeking it.
People who are quick to get angry tend to also be people who are slow to forgive. This is one reason the Bible emphasizes the link between anger and forgiveness. God’s word exhorts us not to cling to offenses, but rather to overlook them in love.
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The moment I mention the word meditation, however, it is possible that you are immediately drawn to images of people sitting in the Lotus Position: eyes closed, legs crossed, with palms up on one’s knees, with the thumb and middle finger on each hand slightly touching. That’s because our culture is fascinated with Eastern meditation and, most recently, something called “Mindfulness” (although mindfulness experts do not all insist on one specific kind of posture, even though they would say posture is important).
What Biblical Meditation Is Not
This kind of meditation is generally characterized by the use of repeated mantras, the constant act of releasing one’s “bad” or “harmful” thoughts or the clearing of one’s mind of any “thinking” whatsoever. Mindfulness is not meditation per se but is usually achieved through a kind of meditation that focuses on controlled breathing and fixing all of one’s concentration on the “now” of one’s experience. “Mindfulness,” we are told, “is the basic human ability to be fully present, aware of where we are and what we’re doing, and not overly reactive or overwhelmed by what’s going on around us.”
It is not an exaggeration that biblical meditation is almost completely antithetical to the brand of meditation described above. First, we know that biblical meditation doesn’t include the use of repeated mantras, for Christ himself tells us to not multiply thoughtless words in our prayers to God (Matt. 6:7).
Second, biblical meditation is best understood, not as mind-emptying, but mind-filling; not thought removal, but thought replacement. Nor is biblical meditation mere “mindfulness,” for without the instruction of God’s Word our act of being “fully present” may leave us vulnerable to deceitful spirits (Eph. 6:12); and our endeavor not to be “overly reactive or overwhelmed” will merely be an act of our will, unguided and unprotected by divine wisdom.
Finally, the effectiveness of biblical meditation is not dependent on a certain kind of posture. In fact, it’s not dependent on posture at all. You can meditate on your bed (Ps. 63:6), or you can meditate in the midst of your preparations for battle (Josh. 1:8). You can meditate day and night, no matter what you are doing (Ps. 1:1-6).
What Biblical Meditation Is
Meditation, very simply, is ruminating on, thinking over, and pondering God (Ps. 63:6), his works (Ps. 72:12; 119:27, 148; 145:3, 5), and his Word (Ps. 1:1-6; 119:15, 23, 48, 78). In Hebrew, the word for meditation literally means to mumble to oneself; speaking to oneself audibly or in one’s heart. But it is not a mindless activity or the repetition of a mantra. Biblically, to meditate means to ponder, consider, chew on, and mull over the word of God. Biblical meditation is full of content, not void of it; it is thoughtful, not thoughtless.

Why Is Biblical Meditation So Important?

The central reason why meditation is vital in the life of the believer is that meditation is the bridge between knowledge and obedience (Josh. 1:8; Ps. 119:98-100). How many of us have our minds filled with a broad knowledge of biblical truth, but have remained, for the most part, superficial and spiritually immature because we don’t allow the truth to go deep into our hearts through meditation?
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The Chinese government is exploiting the unique ability women have to become pregnant and bring new life into the world. It is doing this to destroy—at least in part—the Uyghur people. Beijing’s abuses against Uyghur women are one of the most significant human rights crises of our time, and we should be talking about that.

Last week, an independent tribunal in the United Kingdom released a judgment that found the Chinese government’s treatment of Uyghur people to be consistent with the legal definition of genocide. Multiple governments have made the same pronouncement, including the United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Lithuania, the Czech Republic, and Belgium. But these countries didn’t release their legal reasoning or factual evidence. The Uyghur Tribunal did—and it is Beijing’s abuses against Uyghur women specifically that resulted in the tribunal’s judgment.
Days of public hearings featured witness and expert testimonies, and a team of international human rights lawyers, professors, and NGO leaders combed through the evidence. The evidence uncovered was then measured against the legal definitions of crimes against humanity, torture, and genocide. The Chinese government was found guilty on all three counts.
The suppression of the Uyghur ethnic and religious minority is nearly all-encompassing. High-tech surveillance watches their every move. Passports are systematically confiscated. At least 1.8 million Uyghurs are held in internment camps, and both detained and “graduated” Uyghurs are used as a source of forced labor. No Uyghur person escapes the consequences of Beijing’s brutal crackdown in the Xinjiang region. Even children are sent to be raised in state-run boarding schools. Yet, notably, the weight of China’s genocide is targeted toward women.
The Uyghur Tribunal determined that China was “imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group,” one of the methods of genocide outlined in the 1948 Genocide Convention. Earlier this year, the U.S. government came to the same conclusion.
Women bear the brunt of Beijing’s violent birth control policies in Xinjiang. One woman who worked at a hospital in Xinjiang in the late 1990s told the Uyghur Tribunal that approximately 100 women came for abortions every day, most sent by the government’s Family Planning Office and many in the late stages of pregnancy. She said that the aborted babies were disposed of in a garbage basket. Even after the end of China’s notorious one-child policy (and subsequent two-child policy), authorities in Xinjiang target Uyghur women for harsh sterilization and forced abortion policies.
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