17 March 2013

Retelling Atonement forgiveness-centred (2)

In this post (prior one here) it's time to consider how forgiveness tends to work (or not) in human relationships and in particular to pay attention to the way that love and anger are involved.

Forgiveness in human life

In looking at some of the stories on the Forgiveness Project website, one of the things that became clear to me is that 'forgiving' covers a range of things in everyday language. In some cases people use the term to speak about putting aside differences, in others it can be about accepting in good faith what they have come to believe is someone's 'honest mistake' and recognising that no ill-will lay behind the act. Sometimes it seems to be mostly about recognising a shared humanity and ones own frailty and prone-ness to err as much as the one being forgiven. And sometimes it is a costly putting aside of hurt and anger and a refusal to allow such woundedness to continue to define a life or attitudes.

With CS Lewis, I would say that forgiveness proper is about putting aside a righteous anger and that we should be wary of mere excusing which is actually about finding that there is actually nothing to forgive. That said, excusing, finding common humanity, awakening to humility, reframing ones sense of proportionality are all clearly, from the stories on the Forgiveness Project website as well as the simple experience of listening to people in the struggle to forgive, are all part of dealing with our own inner sticking points on the way to forgiveness. Sometimes we have to clear away closely related issues and emotions in order to face the central task of forgiveness. Sometimes doing that clearing away makes the central task easier and reframes it in such a way as to diminish the struggle, perhaps considerably. Sometimes it simply makes clearer the next part of the struggle.

The central task, then, is about the putting aside of anger and its alienation, but that needs putting in context to grasp more fully the various dimensions involved. We'll do that by considering more carefully in relation to human actualities.

Forgiving in life

Perhaps it would be well to start by asking why there is a need to forgive at all; what is it about human life that raises the issue of forgiving? When our family had a dog, I would sometimes do something accidentally that caused pain to the dog. My automatic reaction was to say sorry but then to chide myself because the dog couldn't understand 'sorry'. What was more effective was making a little bit of a fuss of him to reassure that I was still well-disposed towards him and to try to say that the pain was not any fault of his. I was also conscious that he didn't seem afterwards to carry any resentment, or any apparent need to re-establish a good relationship: the incident was forgotten as far as I could tell and in a sense, perhaps, 'forgiven'.

In mentioning that human-canine interaction I have in mind by implication a contrast or at least comparison with human interpersonal transactions. As more fully meaning-making creatures with a marked interest in reading the attitudes and intentions of others, we tend to add further layers to an incident where one may inflict pain on the other. We interpret the intentions and 'messages' of the hurt using contextual clues, subsequent actions and/or memories of prior 'transactions' with our conversation partner. So, for example, if I step on my friend's toe, she may take stock of several things to understand what I might have 'meant' by it -or at least what it might mean.

My friend might note contextual clues. Different clues might tell different stories about the meaning of my stepping on her toe. If we've been ballroom-dancing together she may have in mind two hypotheses: one being that I've mis-stepped and her foot was in the way, that is it was an accident, a mistake, a clumsiness on my part. Another hypothesis could be that I did it deliberately. The latter hypothesis might be considered to be confirmed if she saw a smirk on my face and/or we had just been talking about how I never stepped on toes. That might be interpreted as deliberate and probably playful on my part.

My friend might weigh subsequent events. If I said sorry it would be taken as a sign of the accidental nature of the incident -unless my tone of voice was sarcastic or in some other way appeared to be insincere. Alternatively, if I went on to collapse onto the floor, my friend would probably assume that my treading on her toe was a first sign of my seizure or my loss of balance. Though it could be read as an inadvertent accompaniment to a piece of clowning on my part, particularly if I bounced straight up and said “Ta da!”. Though in the latter case it would probably be read not as a simple accident but as misadventure for which I would be somewhat blameworthy because of attempting a risky manoeuvre.

My friend could call to mind incidents from the history of our interactions. She might recall I had done this a lot but normally, apparently, not deliberately and so her first thought is likely to be that this is yet another example of my clumsiness. On the other hand she might recall that we had recently quarrelled about my clumsiness and suspect that I had sought revenge for a perceived slight by doing deliberately what she had commented on as clumsiness.

What these interpretive cameos begin to show is that our understanding of what happens to us plays a key role in our response to them and especially when other human agencies are involved and we try to read the intent in mind behind the action. What is implicit in the cameos is that it makes a difference whether we perceive someone's action to be deliberate or with some degree of intention. And if with intention, whether that intention is malign, careless or relatively benign.

If the action is not deliberate, we may not be pleased but we tend to excuse it and our anger is diffused. Sometimes we might perceive the actions of others as careless and feel some degree of affront that the potential for harm or slight to us was not given sufficient weight. In such a case we will tend to be angry but recognise that there may not have been bad intentions behind it or that even there may have been good intentions. In such cases we may relatively readily put the incident behind us.

At other times we will suspect or even know that the other person hurt us deliberately. At such times it is much harder to put the incident behind us: the personal detriment weighs as heavily or even more heavily in the hurt taken. That is to say the fact that person-to-person ill-will is involved and that harm was intended adds a further dimension to the matter. As the advert for at least one film has it “... and this time it's personal”, meaning that the matter is of holding someone personally to account for a wrong done to a particular person (the chief protagonist of the film in this case) and of feeling the need to find some recompense or even revenge. Yes, it is a matter of perceived justice but it is personally felt and not some impersonal or abstract principle.

We should remember that our justice systems are arguably not really there first of all to administer impersonal justice but to stop personal justice being administered because 'personal justice' has a much greater tendency to become revenge and to overstep the bounds of proportionality and so to fuel cycles of violence. They stop personal justice by substituting impersonal, 'blind' justice in a similar way to how bureaucratic systems attempt to stall prejudicial procedures, bribery and croneyism in corporate life. I would like to put down a rhetorical marker at this point to note that modelling a theory of Divine Atonement on a deliberately-impersonal model may be less than satisfactory -forgive the pun.

Next post here...