From Tim Keller's book, Forgive (pp13-14):
When I was a young pastor in a small town in Virginia, I came upon two people almost the same week who were locked in their own prisons of non-forgiveness. It was June and we were sponsoring a "vacation Bible school." We knocked on all the doors in the surrounding neighborhood to invite the residents to send their children for the week. One young father at the door was initially polite and said, "No, thank you." However, when I offered to come by and pick his sons up, he answered with some heat, "My father forced us to go to church. He forced religion down our throats. I will never, ever let my sons darken the door aof any church!" I'm pretty sure he then mumbled something about how unhappy he was that there was even a church so near his house. There was nothing more to say, but it was clear that, because he was still so angry at his father, both he and his parenting were still being directed and controlled by his father.
Not long afterward I had a long talk with a teenage girl who was a member of my church. She too had an overbearing and difficult father, and he had embarrassed her in front of her friends. She told me that she refused to ever forgive him for that. My counterpoint went something like this: "Yes, he did you wrong, but if you don't forgive him the way Jesus forgave you, you will actually give him power over you. You will do things not because they are the best things to do but because in your heart you know your father wouldn't like them. You will not do other things because you know your father would like them. I've seen this happen with other kids. I don't want it to happen to you." To my surprise, it made perfect sense to her. "I never thought of it like that," she said.
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