Feb 25 2004
Forgiveness is something that I constantly find eludes my grasp in understanding. I think that some of that is because people seem to mean different things by it and not all of them seem to 'fit' easily with God's forgiveness which is what I hope to appreciate better by doing this.
My own experience of forgiveness is of the utter sense of not being able to change something bad that I have done and the only hope for a restoration of relationship is the mercy of the other person. Of Forgiving I remember most prominently that in my teens, becoming a follower of Christ asn realising that I was called to forgive others and realising that I had a 'hit list' of people I would like to pay back for hurts inflicted on me [bullies mostly] and finding that mentally I was able to tear up that list -I can't now even remeber most of the people on it or what the hurts were.
I think I need to tryto process these things [and no doubt others that will be triggered by the reflections here] alongside the stories of others and then the theology.
My own experience of forgiveness is of the utter sense of not being able to change something bad that I have done and the only hope for a restoration of relationship is the mercy of the other person. Of Forgiving I remember most prominently that in my teens, becoming a follower of Christ asn realising that I was called to forgive others and realising that I had a 'hit list' of people I would like to pay back for hurts inflicted on me [bullies mostly] and finding that mentally I was able to tear up that list -I can't now even remeber most of the people on it or what the hurts were.
I think I need to tryto process these things [and no doubt others that will be triggered by the reflections here] alongside the stories of others and then the theology.
27 February 2004
Paramilitary forgiveness
I note that his own actions were fuelled by anger -at least that is how it reads with regard to the desire to retaliate. There is something of right in this it seems to me: it is not good to simply acquiesce in wrong done as if giving it a blessing; simply forgetting it is not to care, really that a wrong has been done. Anger shows we care about the wrongs done to others, anger is the flip side of love, even.
The interesting thig is that the reaction tends to produce an equal and opposite reaction. Opposite not in the sense of non-violence being meeting violence but of violence pushed in the opposite direction -towards the original perpetrator [or representatives of them or their community]. Perhaps our sense of justice is about wrongs rebounding on the offender and that it would be fitting if *we* did that in the absence of a more automatic nemesis.
Alistair says: "My experience is that people easily turn to violence when their voices aren’t being heard, or when they feel under threat". The wrong of being ignored [accounted nothing] or being [unjustly?] threatened results in feelings that there is a balance to be reweighted or a return to be made.
He writes further; " came to realise that people who use violence – myself included – see things only from one angle only. They don’t see that if you use violence yourself, you encourage revenge and hatred in others. You end up with a never-ending circle of violence. "
The attempt to re-weight the balance or to push back to the perpetrator the wrong thay have done is itself perceived as a wrong and so the cycle kicks off. It is interesting that seeing the wider picture and acknowledging that there may be reason for the other side to have behaved as they did and do can help break the cylce by revealing the cycle to be based on a partial truth. At least that's how I think it goes.
The interesting thig is that the reaction tends to produce an equal and opposite reaction. Opposite not in the sense of non-violence being meeting violence but of violence pushed in the opposite direction -towards the original perpetrator [or representatives of them or their community]. Perhaps our sense of justice is about wrongs rebounding on the offender and that it would be fitting if *we* did that in the absence of a more automatic nemesis.
Alistair says: "My experience is that people easily turn to violence when their voices aren’t being heard, or when they feel under threat". The wrong of being ignored [accounted nothing] or being [unjustly?] threatened results in feelings that there is a balance to be reweighted or a return to be made.
He writes further; " came to realise that people who use violence – myself included – see things only from one angle only. They don’t see that if you use violence yourself, you encourage revenge and hatred in others. You end up with a never-ending circle of violence. "
The attempt to re-weight the balance or to push back to the perpetrator the wrong thay have done is itself perceived as a wrong and so the cycle kicks off. It is interesting that seeing the wider picture and acknowledging that there may be reason for the other side to have behaved as they did and do can help break the cylce by revealing the cycle to be based on a partial truth. At least that's how I think it goes.
Alistair further says: " But I don’t think I have a right to ask for forgiveness. .... asking for forgiveness is more about the needs of the perpetrator than the needs of the victim, or of the family who have lost a loved one."
Certainly when I think about my own wanting forgiveness from someone, when it has been from a position of recognising [as with Alistair] the utter wrongness of something I've done and the fact that I cannot un-do it and that there's nothing that can actually make it right again, there is a done-ness to it; an un-call-backableness of it that means that there really is no "right" to ask for forgiveness. It seems to me that the point of real forgiveness is precisely this: it gratuitous nature; it cannot be forced or bought or levered; it is a gracious reponse. If we will only ask for forgivenss if we feel we have a right to it then we won't ask: we'll never have the right; we only ever have a desire and can only ever throw ourselves on the mercy and perhaps, to some extent, the understanding and common humanity of the person we are asking forgiveness from. There is a strong thread of it being about the needs of the perpetrator rather than the victims. The victims have no 'need' to forgive, there is no claim on them save perhaps that of not storing up bitterness for themselves.
Inb fact Alistair in the midst of the piece I have just quoted says that asking forgiveness " places yet another burden upon relatives and family members." It could have the potential to do this. I'm not sure that it would fell to be that unless the family and frineds felt there was some kind of moral obligation to forgive, but if they did then it is probably the case that the asking would be no greater a burden than they already felt ... maybe .... I can see in these words -perhaps- a projection of feeling the lack of anything to 'enforce' a claim on forgiveness onto those who might do the forgiving; a senseo fo the gratuity of what is being asked. And that sense is important because it comes from a real sense that forgiveness is going to cost the forgiver something, and that I find interesting; that forgiveness costs the forgiving party or else it is not forgiveness. [discuss?].
01 March 2004
From Chechnya to UK
This story involves violations that I can only imagine and shudder at and so I am wary. To rework a stock phrase, "tread carefully for you tread on my hurt". Nevertheless I have set myself the task of learning from such experiences and as a no-longer young adult my learning is most effectively done by matching it up with my own learning so far and so my own questions, experience and observations.
Camilla writes: " I will never forgive the act, yet I can forgive the man who raped me" and I find this intriguing and suggestive. Intriguing because it raises for me the question of what we mean by forgiveness. It alerts me to the fact that we seem to operate with a number of definitions not all of which seem helpful or even truly about forgiveness when they are thought through further. What is the difference between forgiving and act and forgiving a person? Apart form grammatical considerations about verbal transitivity! I shall hazard a guess: forgiving an act is about either or both of forgetting it and/or discounting it. Forgiving a person for Camilla seems to be about excusing and understanding and so being able to [re-]create a bond of affirming relationship with the perpetrator [an echo of the idea that to understand all is to forgive all?] -to make reconciliation possible.
And/but for her, clearly forgiveness has a dimension which is about the forgiver finding a sense of inner peace: "I believe forgiveness begins with understanding, but you have to work through layers to obtain it. First you have to deal with anger, then with tears, and only once you reach the tears are you on the road to finding peace of mind.".
I value this because it chimes with my own experience that forgiving is a journey/process of understanding the hurt, the magnitude of the hurt the injustice, the anger ... I wonder whether this needs to be the case because only if we understand what needs to be 'let go' can we actually let go and forgive.
Jon writes: "Like Camilla I’ve come to an understanding of where our captors, and where her violator, were coming from. Not many people in this world do stuff out of pure maliciousness." This 'understanding' is important; I'm still wondering whether it is forgiveness or excusing -in the case of forgivness there is arecognition that a wrong has been committed whereas in excusing we recognise that while something nasty has happened, there is no blame. At a simple level excusing would be letting someone off a blow to the head because you recognised that they did it because they had tripped up and put out their hand to steady themself and it had connected with your head quite simply by accident not design. Forgiving would be letting them off because they did it by design perhaps out of anger or even because they wanted to hurt you.
But this latter scenario maybe helps to connect with Jon's thought for deeply: it is easier, in my experience to forgive when we can understand why something was done and when we understand that it wasn't done with malice than when we understand [rightly or wrongly] that it was done with malice. The malice or lack of care is the hardest to forgive; it is personal. The former is somewhat akin to excusing in that we gain an understanding and we don't take it personally. Perhaps there is a continuum: excusing-understanding-forgiving.
Camilla writes: " I will never forgive the act, yet I can forgive the man who raped me" and I find this intriguing and suggestive. Intriguing because it raises for me the question of what we mean by forgiveness. It alerts me to the fact that we seem to operate with a number of definitions not all of which seem helpful or even truly about forgiveness when they are thought through further. What is the difference between forgiving and act and forgiving a person? Apart form grammatical considerations about verbal transitivity! I shall hazard a guess: forgiving an act is about either or both of forgetting it and/or discounting it. Forgiving a person for Camilla seems to be about excusing and understanding and so being able to [re-]create a bond of affirming relationship with the perpetrator [an echo of the idea that to understand all is to forgive all?] -to make reconciliation possible.
And/but for her, clearly forgiveness has a dimension which is about the forgiver finding a sense of inner peace: "I believe forgiveness begins with understanding, but you have to work through layers to obtain it. First you have to deal with anger, then with tears, and only once you reach the tears are you on the road to finding peace of mind.".
I value this because it chimes with my own experience that forgiving is a journey/process of understanding the hurt, the magnitude of the hurt the injustice, the anger ... I wonder whether this needs to be the case because only if we understand what needs to be 'let go' can we actually let go and forgive.
Jon writes: "Like Camilla I’ve come to an understanding of where our captors, and where her violator, were coming from. Not many people in this world do stuff out of pure maliciousness." This 'understanding' is important; I'm still wondering whether it is forgiveness or excusing -in the case of forgivness there is arecognition that a wrong has been committed whereas in excusing we recognise that while something nasty has happened, there is no blame. At a simple level excusing would be letting someone off a blow to the head because you recognised that they did it because they had tripped up and put out their hand to steady themself and it had connected with your head quite simply by accident not design. Forgiving would be letting them off because they did it by design perhaps out of anger or even because they wanted to hurt you.
But this latter scenario maybe helps to connect with Jon's thought for deeply: it is easier, in my experience to forgive when we can understand why something was done and when we understand that it wasn't done with malice than when we understand [rightly or wrongly] that it was done with malice. The malice or lack of care is the hardest to forgive; it is personal. The former is somewhat akin to excusing in that we gain an understanding and we don't take it personally. Perhaps there is a continuum: excusing-understanding-forgiving.
01 March 2004
From Chechnya to UK
This story involves violations that I can only imagine and shudder at and so I am wary. To rework a stock phrase, "tread carefully for you tread on my hurt". Nevertheless I have set myself the task of learning from such experiences and as a no-longer young adult my learning is most effectively done by matching it up with my own learning so far and so my own questions, experience and observations.
Camilla writes: " I will never forgive the act, yet I can forgive the man who raped me" and I find this intriguing and suggestive. Intriguing because it raises for me the question of what we mean by forgiveness. It alerts me to the fact that we seem to operate with a number of definitions not all of which seem helpful or even truly about forgiveness when they are thought through further. What is the difference between forgiving and act and forgiving a person? Apart form grammatical considerations about verbal transitivity! I shall hazard a guess: forgiving an act is about either or both of forgetting it and/or discounting it. Forgiving a person for Camilla seems to be about excusing and understanding and so being able to [re-]create a bond of affirming relationship with the perpetrator [an echo of the idea that to understand all is to forgive all?] -to make reconciliation possible.
And/but for her, clearly forgiveness has a dimension which is about the forgiver finding a sense of inner peace: "I believe forgiveness begins with understanding, but you have to work through layers to obtain it. First you have to deal with anger, then with tears, and only once you reach the tears are you on the road to finding peace of mind.".
I value this because it chimes with my own experience that forgiving is a journey/process of understanding the hurt, the magnitude of the hurt the injustice, the anger ... I wonder whether this needs to be the case because only if we understand what needs to be 'let go' can we actually let go and forgive.
Jon writes: "Like Camilla I’ve come to an understanding of where our captors, and where her violator, were coming from. Not many people in this world do stuff out of pure maliciousness." This 'understanding' is important; I'm still wondering whether it is forgiveness or excusing -in the case of forgivness there is arecognition that a wrong has been committed whereas in excusing we recognise that while something nasty has happened, there is no blame. At a simple level excusing would be letting someone off a blow to the head because you recognised that they did it because they had tripped up and put out their hand to steady themself and it had connected with your head quite simply by accident not design. Forgiving would be letting them off because they did it by design perhaps out of anger or even because they wanted to hurt you.
But this latter scenario maybe helps to connect with Jon's thought for deeply: it is easier, in my experience to forgive when we can understand why something was done and when we understand that it wasn't done with malice than when we understand [rightly or wrongly] that it was done with malice. The malice or lack of care is the hardest to forgive; it is personal. The former is somewhat akin to excusing in that we gain an understanding and we don't take it personally. Perhaps there is a continuum: excusing-understanding-forgiving.
Camilla writes: " I will never forgive the act, yet I can forgive the man who raped me" and I find this intriguing and suggestive. Intriguing because it raises for me the question of what we mean by forgiveness. It alerts me to the fact that we seem to operate with a number of definitions not all of which seem helpful or even truly about forgiveness when they are thought through further. What is the difference between forgiving and act and forgiving a person? Apart form grammatical considerations about verbal transitivity! I shall hazard a guess: forgiving an act is about either or both of forgetting it and/or discounting it. Forgiving a person for Camilla seems to be about excusing and understanding and so being able to [re-]create a bond of affirming relationship with the perpetrator [an echo of the idea that to understand all is to forgive all?] -to make reconciliation possible.
And/but for her, clearly forgiveness has a dimension which is about the forgiver finding a sense of inner peace: "I believe forgiveness begins with understanding, but you have to work through layers to obtain it. First you have to deal with anger, then with tears, and only once you reach the tears are you on the road to finding peace of mind.".
I value this because it chimes with my own experience that forgiving is a journey/process of understanding the hurt, the magnitude of the hurt the injustice, the anger ... I wonder whether this needs to be the case because only if we understand what needs to be 'let go' can we actually let go and forgive.
Jon writes: "Like Camilla I’ve come to an understanding of where our captors, and where her violator, were coming from. Not many people in this world do stuff out of pure maliciousness." This 'understanding' is important; I'm still wondering whether it is forgiveness or excusing -in the case of forgivness there is arecognition that a wrong has been committed whereas in excusing we recognise that while something nasty has happened, there is no blame. At a simple level excusing would be letting someone off a blow to the head because you recognised that they did it because they had tripped up and put out their hand to steady themself and it had connected with your head quite simply by accident not design. Forgiving would be letting them off because they did it by design perhaps out of anger or even because they wanted to hurt you.
But this latter scenario maybe helps to connect with Jon's thought for deeply: it is easier, in my experience to forgive when we can understand why something was done and when we understand that it wasn't done with malice than when we understand [rightly or wrongly] that it was done with malice. The malice or lack of care is the hardest to forgive; it is personal. The former is somewhat akin to excusing in that we gain an understanding and we don't take it personally. Perhaps there is a continuum: excusing-understanding-forgiving.
03 March 2004
Forgiving misdiagnosis
This seems to be an instance of forgiving because not doing so would add to the sum of ill in the world and would have been kind of self-defeating by making it harder for people to practice medicine. It was a recoil from being vindictive. Here it seems to be that forgiveness is about putting the past behind because it would get in the way of a better future. Then there is also something about recognising that it was a mistake [rather a series of mistakes] so a lot of it falls at the excused end of the scale [see last entry]. Has anything been done with malice, it may have been harder to simply lay things to rest and make a positive out of it?
The issue that this couple wrestle with seems to be somewhere in the middle of individual vs corporate responsibility. It would likely have been the the NHS thhat was sued had they done so yet it would have been the individuals concerned who would have been responsible. The difficulty here is how far the corporate is responsible and how far the individuals. Is it easier to forgive individuals who are part of a system that is bigger than they are and in whose name they operate? If so, is this because we actually acknowledge that coporate bodies involve some kind of 'pooling of sovereignty'? And if so, what of the Geneva convention?
The issue that this couple wrestle with seems to be somewhere in the middle of individual vs corporate responsibility. It would likely have been the the NHS thhat was sued had they done so yet it would have been the individuals concerned who would have been responsible. The difficulty here is how far the corporate is responsible and how far the individuals. Is it easier to forgive individuals who are part of a system that is bigger than they are and in whose name they operate? If so, is this because we actually acknowledge that coporate bodies involve some kind of 'pooling of sovereignty'? And if so, what of the Geneva convention?
06 March 2004
After Alder Hey
It's the last two paragraphs that interest me most in this account.
"There was a lot of anger among the Alder Hey families, because no one was prosecuted. Justice hadn’t been done, and people felt betrayed and let down." I find myself reflecting on the relationship between justice, anger and forgiveness. Ange here because justice has not been done. Implying that had justice been done, then the anger would not be there [though of course there are cases when justice may be done and it isn't felt to be justice in which case the anger remains]. Doing justice appeases anger and brings forgiveness, though is it really forgiveness if it is the meeting of the claims of justice? I think I ask this question because I think I was starting to believe that forgiveness is most fully about relinquishing a claim upon another for 'justice'? So is this another candidate for the continuum of forgiveness? -Excusing-justice- understanding-forgiving. Justice acknowledges a wrong and so is not excusing. But there is not necessarily a dimension of understanding that is of making a connection on the grounds of human compassion.
And this leads me to wonder whether there is not a need for 'letting off' in there somewhere? -Letting off acknowledges a wrong and decides not to hold onto the wrongedness, yet it also implies that the letting off has come about because either the wrong is not important or because the wrongdoer is not important enough to the one wronged.
"Forgiveness was a not a word I used at first, but hearing the bitterness and anger I knew I didn’t want to go down that road. So I prayed to be able to forgive. In the end I came to forgive the surgeon who did the illegal stripping, and the hospital management. I chose forgiveness because I did not want to be destroyed by bitterness. What happened was out of my control, but how I respond is within my control."
Clearly here 'forgivness' is antonym for '[holding on to] bitterness'; so whatever else it is for this writer, it is something about having potential for relationship with the wrongdoer that is not based on bitterness, that is on a desire for retribution or on hatred or wvwn perhaps on a claim for justice [which may be the same as retribution?].
I'm also interested that forgivness is a process that one can pray to be able to undertake...
"There was a lot of anger among the Alder Hey families, because no one was prosecuted. Justice hadn’t been done, and people felt betrayed and let down." I find myself reflecting on the relationship between justice, anger and forgiveness. Ange here because justice has not been done. Implying that had justice been done, then the anger would not be there [though of course there are cases when justice may be done and it isn't felt to be justice in which case the anger remains]. Doing justice appeases anger and brings forgiveness, though is it really forgiveness if it is the meeting of the claims of justice? I think I ask this question because I think I was starting to believe that forgiveness is most fully about relinquishing a claim upon another for 'justice'? So is this another candidate for the continuum of forgiveness? -Excusing-justice- understanding-forgiving. Justice acknowledges a wrong and so is not excusing. But there is not necessarily a dimension of understanding that is of making a connection on the grounds of human compassion.
And this leads me to wonder whether there is not a need for 'letting off' in there somewhere? -Letting off acknowledges a wrong and decides not to hold onto the wrongedness, yet it also implies that the letting off has come about because either the wrong is not important or because the wrongdoer is not important enough to the one wronged.
"Forgiveness was a not a word I used at first, but hearing the bitterness and anger I knew I didn’t want to go down that road. So I prayed to be able to forgive. In the end I came to forgive the surgeon who did the illegal stripping, and the hospital management. I chose forgiveness because I did not want to be destroyed by bitterness. What happened was out of my control, but how I respond is within my control."
Clearly here 'forgivness' is antonym for '[holding on to] bitterness'; so whatever else it is for this writer, it is something about having potential for relationship with the wrongdoer that is not based on bitterness, that is on a desire for retribution or on hatred or wvwn perhaps on a claim for justice [which may be the same as retribution?].
I'm also interested that forgivness is a process that one can pray to be able to undertake...
10 March 2004
Forgiving his torturer
I have never been physically tortured and I have never sufferd sustained mental cruelty; those little instances of cruelty and pain I have suffered mean that my imagination can take me into some pretty unpleasant places especially when helped by descriptions of things such as the interrogation chambers of Saddam Hussein's regime. The combination of pain -both as mental anguish and physical abuse- and hopelesssness in the face of apparent malice and lack of common humanity must be so hard to process afterwards. And indeed the story here gives some insight into that.
Eric writes: "My turning point came in 1987 when I came across The Medical Foundation for Victims of Torture. For the first time I was able to unload the hate that had become my prison."
This picks up the Desmond Tutu contribution about forgiveness tying us to perpetrators and forgiveness as a becoming free. I wonder too whether here we are seeing something of the process of naming and 'owning' the hurt?
In the next bit I actually had tears in my eyes as I read it, as Eric finally comes face to face some forty-odd years later with his former torturer whom he had fantasises about killing after giving him a taste of what he had inflicted ... "He was trembling and crying, and he said over and over again: “I am so sorry, so very sorry.” I had come with no sympathy for this man, and yet Nagase, through his complete humility, turned this around. In the days that followed we spent a lot of time together, talking and laughing. It transpired that we had much in common. We promised to keep in touch and have remained friends ever since."
I think that there is something here about having a sense of compassion and shared humanity which helps us to forgive; when we see the other as a fellow human being, as not malicious towards us, as repentant perhsp even deserving our pity [?], then we are more able to consent to absorb the hurt ourselves rather than to attempt to discharge it onto the other
Eric writes: "My turning point came in 1987 when I came across The Medical Foundation for Victims of Torture. For the first time I was able to unload the hate that had become my prison."
This picks up the Desmond Tutu contribution about forgiveness tying us to perpetrators and forgiveness as a becoming free. I wonder too whether here we are seeing something of the process of naming and 'owning' the hurt?
In the next bit I actually had tears in my eyes as I read it, as Eric finally comes face to face some forty-odd years later with his former torturer whom he had fantasises about killing after giving him a taste of what he had inflicted ... "He was trembling and crying, and he said over and over again: “I am so sorry, so very sorry.” I had come with no sympathy for this man, and yet Nagase, through his complete humility, turned this around. In the days that followed we spent a lot of time together, talking and laughing. It transpired that we had much in common. We promised to keep in touch and have remained friends ever since."
I think that there is something here about having a sense of compassion and shared humanity which helps us to forgive; when we see the other as a fellow human being, as not malicious towards us, as repentant perhsp even deserving our pity [?], then we are more able to consent to absorb the hurt ourselves rather than to attempt to discharge it onto the other
13 March 2004
and restorative justice
For me the final paragraph has the most to reflect on:
" haven’t forgiven anyone, because I have no one to forgive. No one was charged with this crime, and so for me forgiveness is still an abstract concept. But if I knew that the people who sent my bomb were now prisoners in themselves, then I’d happily unlock the gates – although I’d like to know that they weren’t going to make any more bombs."
There is clearly something here about the need to feel that some kind of repentance has taken place, that there is an admission of wrongdoing and that in so doing there is some kind of commitment to not repeating the wrong. I'm not sure from this how conditional Fr Michael is being in his feeling towards forgiveness and I'm not saying that it would necessarily be wrong to be conditional since this is partly what I'm trying to get my head and my guts around ... I know that I have felt similarly about wrongs done to me in the past: that I find it easier to forgive if I know that there is repentance of some kind; now why is that? I guess some of it may be that unrepentance would seem malicious; the refusal to recognise that harm had been caused and damage done or the justification of it in the name of a supposed greater-good that I do not acknowledge to be a greater good or even if I did to cause me to sacrifice without my consent. All of those seem wrong and to forgive might seem to condone or to agree with the wrongdoing. I certainly know people who have refused to forgive where they believed that in so doing their hurt would go unrecognised and the wrong would be condoned in some way....
Michael goes on to say: " I believe in restorative justice and I believe in reparation. So my attitude to the perpetrator is this: I’ll forgive you, but since I’ll never get my hands back, and will therefore always need someone to help me, you should pay that person’s wages. Not as a condition of forgiveness, but as part of reparation and restitution."
There's some interesting question her about forgiveness and justice. SOme versions of forgiveness would surely be about not seeking reparation but simply letting the offender go free, so to speak. I think I need to think more about the relationship between forgiveness and reparation. I am very warm to the ideas of restorative justice. Perhaps my unease at this part of what Michael says is that is seems to make forgiveness dependent on performance and so keeping the offended person potentially in thrall to the perpetrator's lack of response for as long as they don't make reparation. But we need to be able to move on. I suspect he isn't actually proposing that, given what he says in the first part of his piece about becoming a victor not just a survivor. But it is easy to see how the conditional forgiveness couold creep in -which is not forgiveness in the sense that it is a seeking of some kind of revenge?
" haven’t forgiven anyone, because I have no one to forgive. No one was charged with this crime, and so for me forgiveness is still an abstract concept. But if I knew that the people who sent my bomb were now prisoners in themselves, then I’d happily unlock the gates – although I’d like to know that they weren’t going to make any more bombs."
There is clearly something here about the need to feel that some kind of repentance has taken place, that there is an admission of wrongdoing and that in so doing there is some kind of commitment to not repeating the wrong. I'm not sure from this how conditional Fr Michael is being in his feeling towards forgiveness and I'm not saying that it would necessarily be wrong to be conditional since this is partly what I'm trying to get my head and my guts around ... I know that I have felt similarly about wrongs done to me in the past: that I find it easier to forgive if I know that there is repentance of some kind; now why is that? I guess some of it may be that unrepentance would seem malicious; the refusal to recognise that harm had been caused and damage done or the justification of it in the name of a supposed greater-good that I do not acknowledge to be a greater good or even if I did to cause me to sacrifice without my consent. All of those seem wrong and to forgive might seem to condone or to agree with the wrongdoing. I certainly know people who have refused to forgive where they believed that in so doing their hurt would go unrecognised and the wrong would be condoned in some way....
Michael goes on to say: " I believe in restorative justice and I believe in reparation. So my attitude to the perpetrator is this: I’ll forgive you, but since I’ll never get my hands back, and will therefore always need someone to help me, you should pay that person’s wages. Not as a condition of forgiveness, but as part of reparation and restitution."
There's some interesting question her about forgiveness and justice. SOme versions of forgiveness would surely be about not seeking reparation but simply letting the offender go free, so to speak. I think I need to think more about the relationship between forgiveness and reparation. I am very warm to the ideas of restorative justice. Perhaps my unease at this part of what Michael says is that is seems to make forgiveness dependent on performance and so keeping the offended person potentially in thrall to the perpetrator's lack of response for as long as they don't make reparation. But we need to be able to move on. I suspect he isn't actually proposing that, given what he says in the first part of his piece about becoming a victor not just a survivor. But it is easy to see how the conditional forgiveness couold creep in -which is not forgiveness in the sense that it is a seeking of some kind of revenge?
31 March 2004
CS Lewis on forgiveness
It's been a week since I last blogged on forgiveness though in between I had a conversation in which I was sharing what I've been learning with a friend. I also felt that I really wanted to engage now with some thinking about forgiveness rather than the case studies -perhaps with a view to looking at some more case-studies after some reflection.
So here we look at CS Lewis. He links forgiving with loving ones enemy. I think it is Lewis' deistinction between loving the sinner and hating the sin that has stuck with me and lies behind somewhere the way that I have reacted to the stories of forgiveness I have been looking at. He applies the notions to forgiveness so that it becomes clear that forgiving someone does not mean we have to agree with what they did [or do] and it does not mean that we have to like them. In this piece we close on the words "Christianity does not want us to reduce by one atom the hatred we feel for cruelty and treachery. We ought to hate them. Not one word of what we have said about them needs to be unsaid. But it does want us to hate them in the same way in which we hate things in ourselves: being sorry that the man should have done such things, and hoping if it is anyway possible, that somehow, sometime, somewhere, he can be cured and made human again."
And I certainly feel that the themes that come in the article here have been seen in the stories we have looked at so far: forgiveness doesn't mean calling what is bad good nor pretending that we like it. It is about humanity and finding or refinding humanity.
So here we look at CS Lewis. He links forgiving with loving ones enemy. I think it is Lewis' deistinction between loving the sinner and hating the sin that has stuck with me and lies behind somewhere the way that I have reacted to the stories of forgiveness I have been looking at. He applies the notions to forgiveness so that it becomes clear that forgiving someone does not mean we have to agree with what they did [or do] and it does not mean that we have to like them. In this piece we close on the words "Christianity does not want us to reduce by one atom the hatred we feel for cruelty and treachery. We ought to hate them. Not one word of what we have said about them needs to be unsaid. But it does want us to hate them in the same way in which we hate things in ourselves: being sorry that the man should have done such things, and hoping if it is anyway possible, that somehow, sometime, somewhere, he can be cured and made human again."
And I certainly feel that the themes that come in the article here have been seen in the stories we have looked at so far: forgiveness doesn't mean calling what is bad good nor pretending that we like it. It is about humanity and finding or refinding humanity.
11 April 2004
Forgiveness for a part in genocide
"when he wrote up the story 20 years later, he [Simon Wiesenthal] sent it to the brightest ethical minds he knew - Jew, Gentile, Catholic, Protestant, and irreligious. "What would you have done in my place?" he asked. "Did I do right?"
Of the 32 men and women who responded, only 6 said he had done wrong in not forgiving the German. Most thought he had done right. "What moral or legal authority did he have to forgive injuries done to someone else?" they asked. Some questioned the whole concept of forgiveness."
The incident that caused this questioning was being asked by a German soldier for forgiveness for the part he had played in killing Jews in Russia. There is a theological aspect to this also: how can God forgive wrongs done to others? -I don't fully know how to answer that one but I think it is important to pose it. I suspect that part of the response to it is to note that God is close to and values each human [well each part of creation in fact] and takes a personal interest in each and every. Like when we love someone who is hurt -it hurts us too. Though that doesn't tie it all up it does lay the basis for establishing a link between wronging other people and that being a sin in relation to God which needs God's forgiveness...
Of the 32 men and women who responded, only 6 said he had done wrong in not forgiving the German. Most thought he had done right. "What moral or legal authority did he have to forgive injuries done to someone else?" they asked. Some questioned the whole concept of forgiveness."
The incident that caused this questioning was being asked by a German soldier for forgiveness for the part he had played in killing Jews in Russia. There is a theological aspect to this also: how can God forgive wrongs done to others? -I don't fully know how to answer that one but I think it is important to pose it. I suspect that part of the response to it is to note that God is close to and values each human [well each part of creation in fact] and takes a personal interest in each and every. Like when we love someone who is hurt -it hurts us too. Though that doesn't tie it all up it does lay the basis for establishing a link between wronging other people and that being a sin in relation to God which needs God's forgiveness...
13 April 2004
What forgiveness is not
This a brief but helpful guide to some distinctions that seem to be important in forgiving. The differentiation from excusing is one that I have already touched on in my own comments and I think does come from CS Lewis, for me. I think that distinguishing it from forgetting is important too; for some people I have dealt with, the idea that forgiving means that we forget has been a big barrier to progress. I think that "avoidnace" is perhaps misleading -it certainly was to me but I agree with the content of that section -minimising or making out that something is not important is not forgiving. And again, in pastoral ministy, I have had to disabuse people of the notion that somehow forgiving means to think that the hurt is not important.
To me the point of forgiving is precisely that there has been a hurt caused -if it's not important then there's nothing [or little] to forgive. It relates to the important consideration that forgiveness is about forgiving wrongs done. Minimising seeks to avoid the whole idea of forgiving by turning the wrong into something less wrong or even heading towards excusing. That's not to say that we shouldn't make appropriate allowances for circumstances and accidents etc. It is often important for people to recognise that a wrong has been done in order to retain a sense of their own integrity and to maintain right beliefs about right and wrong. Minimising the wrongs can be failing to recognise the wrongs and undercut justice and love. Properly to forgive means to look the real wrong in the face, square on, acknowledge its wrongness and to move on. In that way we continue to affirm the truth and the good and don't write them off as somehow irrelevant or not quite right, somehow.
To me the point of forgiving is precisely that there has been a hurt caused -if it's not important then there's nothing [or little] to forgive. It relates to the important consideration that forgiveness is about forgiving wrongs done. Minimising seeks to avoid the whole idea of forgiving by turning the wrong into something less wrong or even heading towards excusing. That's not to say that we shouldn't make appropriate allowances for circumstances and accidents etc. It is often important for people to recognise that a wrong has been done in order to retain a sense of their own integrity and to maintain right beliefs about right and wrong. Minimising the wrongs can be failing to recognise the wrongs and undercut justice and love. Properly to forgive means to look the real wrong in the face, square on, acknowledge its wrongness and to move on. In that way we continue to affirm the truth and the good and don't write them off as somehow irrelevant or not quite right, somehow.
14 April 2004
Forgiveness as openness to relating
I warmed to this page because it pretty much gives a definition of forgiveness that I had come to a few years back when wrestling with the issues raised by what forgiveness would be in relation to situations faced by parishioners: "It means being willing to take the initiative in dealing with any barriers that I may be raising towards a restored relationship. It means that I am willing to have a relationship with the other party that is based on Christian love and not on what has happened in the past, if the response of the other person makes that possible."
I felt [and feel] that forgiveness is a point in a journey to reconciliation -but since reconciliation is two-way, then forgiveness may be as far as we can get. I seem to recall some fo the issue for me was reflecting on God's forgiveness of us human beings: it's not the whole story; we need to be prepared to be reconciled by, firstly, accepting that forgiveness. However, for us as opposed to God, it is important to be able to lay aside the un-wholeness that lack of forgiveness brings into our lives. I'm not sure how far that could apply to God, if at all. Though it may be interesting to linger with that isssue a while longer.
Of course even desiring to make a relationship possible may be hard to face, and that seems to me to be the value in those things that have been mentioned in some of the previous blogs in this series: finding a common humanity, empathy, excusing and so on. They all make it easier to make the possibilty of reconciliation [of some kind] envisionable and even desirable.
But of course -it takes two and we are not the only ones in the equation. We may have to live with the impossibility of relating positively because of death or other incapacity on the part of our 'enemy'.
I felt [and feel] that forgiveness is a point in a journey to reconciliation -but since reconciliation is two-way, then forgiveness may be as far as we can get. I seem to recall some fo the issue for me was reflecting on God's forgiveness of us human beings: it's not the whole story; we need to be prepared to be reconciled by, firstly, accepting that forgiveness. However, for us as opposed to God, it is important to be able to lay aside the un-wholeness that lack of forgiveness brings into our lives. I'm not sure how far that could apply to God, if at all. Though it may be interesting to linger with that isssue a while longer.
Of course even desiring to make a relationship possible may be hard to face, and that seems to me to be the value in those things that have been mentioned in some of the previous blogs in this series: finding a common humanity, empathy, excusing and so on. They all make it easier to make the possibilty of reconciliation [of some kind] envisionable and even desirable.
But of course -it takes two and we are not the only ones in the equation. We may have to live with the impossibility of relating positively because of death or other incapacity on the part of our 'enemy'.
20 April 2004
10 guidelines for forgiveness
I'm not normally one for '7 steps to ...' or similar programmatic approaches to things. However, this is not so much a programme as a set of hints and I'm pretty impressed. I like what it included in this page especially the ideas of educating yourself, spending time each day 'clearing out' your thinking and weeding out the 'shoulds'.
In particular: this set of definitions of what forgiveness is not -most of them we've already seen over the last couple of months on this blog:
"Forgetting. If the hurt wounded you enough to require forgiveness, you may always have a memory of it.
Excusing or condoning. The wrong should not be denied, minimized, or justified.
Reconciling. You can forgive the offender and still choose not to reestablish the relationship.
Weakness. You do not become a doormat or oblivious to cruelty"
The one that hasn't been picked up before, at least in this kind of way is the last of them about weakness -not becoming a doormat to cruelty. It is part of the whole issue about forgiveness needing not to condone wrongdoing and applies it to oneself. I know some people shy away from forgiveness because they -rightly- shyy away from allowing evil/wrongdoing to continue and for that continuance to be given permission by their forgiveness.
Also the idea of spending time each day identifying and releasing wrongs seems eminently sensible -it would be part of everyone's life who prayed the Lord's prayer daily and thoughtfully: "forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us".
I haven't seen anywhwere else on the subject of forgiving the idea of challenging the shoulds in our thinking. This is important as it gets to the roots of why we get cross with others and move on to resentment and/or grudge-bearing: we have views about how we and others should act/think. When others violate those unspoken standards our sense of righ/wrong is violated. SOmetimes [as we have discussed already] those standards are fair enough; sometimes, however, they are inappropriate and we need to recognise that fact and 'debug' our thinking. In that way we can remove, over time, some of the occasions that can generate lack of forgiveness in us.
Definitely a bookmarkable page.
In particular: this set of definitions of what forgiveness is not -most of them we've already seen over the last couple of months on this blog:
"Forgetting. If the hurt wounded you enough to require forgiveness, you may always have a memory of it.
Excusing or condoning. The wrong should not be denied, minimized, or justified.
Reconciling. You can forgive the offender and still choose not to reestablish the relationship.
Weakness. You do not become a doormat or oblivious to cruelty"
The one that hasn't been picked up before, at least in this kind of way is the last of them about weakness -not becoming a doormat to cruelty. It is part of the whole issue about forgiveness needing not to condone wrongdoing and applies it to oneself. I know some people shy away from forgiveness because they -rightly- shyy away from allowing evil/wrongdoing to continue and for that continuance to be given permission by their forgiveness.
Also the idea of spending time each day identifying and releasing wrongs seems eminently sensible -it would be part of everyone's life who prayed the Lord's prayer daily and thoughtfully: "forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us".
I haven't seen anywhwere else on the subject of forgiving the idea of challenging the shoulds in our thinking. This is important as it gets to the roots of why we get cross with others and move on to resentment and/or grudge-bearing: we have views about how we and others should act/think. When others violate those unspoken standards our sense of righ/wrong is violated. SOmetimes [as we have discussed already] those standards are fair enough; sometimes, however, they are inappropriate and we need to recognise that fact and 'debug' our thinking. In that way we can remove, over time, some of the occasions that can generate lack of forgiveness in us.
Definitely a bookmarkable page.
06 July 2004
Reflections: On Enemies [- Christianity Today Magazine]
We too often have difficulty in loving our enemies precisely because we are afraid they might repent. Such was Jonah's problem . …Jonah is unable to cope with the loss of his enemies . …He would rather die than face a gracious God and the Ninevites as potential friends.
Gregory Jones, Embodying Forgiveness
This links with earlier reflections on forgiveness. Our anger wants to blame the other, their repentance exposes our unwillingness to forgive. We then need to understand our reasons to hold on to anger and unforgiveness. Or do we? In the Jonah story, God confronts Jonah with a bigger picture of mercifulness and invites repentance rather than introspection. Perhaps this is more a life coaching model than a counselling model for spiritual direction?
Gregory Jones, Embodying Forgiveness
This links with earlier reflections on forgiveness. Our anger wants to blame the other, their repentance exposes our unwillingness to forgive. We then need to understand our reasons to hold on to anger and unforgiveness. Or do we? In the Jonah story, God confronts Jonah with a bigger picture of mercifulness and invites repentance rather than introspection. Perhaps this is more a life coaching model than a counselling model for spiritual direction?
08 March 2006
Vicar who cannot forgive tube bombers quits pulpit
I think that this is very interesting when we think about forgiveness; it brings home the cost of forgiving and healing.The Rev Julie Nicholson, 52, has felt unable to celebrate communion for her parishioners since her daughter, Jenny, was killed at Edgware Road on July 7 last year. Unwilling to be a hypocrite, she has resigned from the parish of St Aidan with St George in Bristol.
"It's very difficult for me to stand behind an altar and celebrate the Eucharist, the Communion, and lead people in words of peace and reconciliation and forgiveness when I feel very far from that myself, So for the time being, that wound in me is having to heal. In terms of my ministry, a colleague and a friend recently said priesthood begins in the world, not in the church, and I was very relieved to hear that; because what I am trying to do now is redefine my priesthood. I am looking for a way in which I can still have priestly ministry when there are some things I can no longer practise, or I can't currently practise, and for me that's about integrity."
It's important that she is clearly not saying that she will not forgive, rather that she "can't currently". Forgiveness means we have to pay a price: we have to forego revenge, we have to empathise to some degree with the perpetrator or at least be able to assert a common humanity and understand in some way, we have to learn to love the sinner while hating the sin. And none of that is easy when the hurt goes deep. It is harder too when the act was committed or is perceived to have been committed with malice aforethought. To forgive we have to bear the pain rather than inflict it on another. We have to move beyond retribution to restoration and that costs.
I am currently, still, thinking about the cross as an icon of God's pain to forgive us ...
10 April 2006
Bereaved vicar struggles with forgiveness
I saw Mrs Nicholson on Breakfast news this morning. She is the clergyperson whose daughter was killed in the London bombings. In her interview she said something like:I can't forgive the killers for my daughter's death. I can forgive for my own pain and loss...
I may not have a very word-accurate recollection but the impression I came away with was that she seemed to be hesitating to forgive the actual death of her daughter. The damage to herself seemed to be forgiven or on the way but it seemed like she was saying that she did not have the right to forgive on behalf of her daughter. And in a sense, I think she's right. The sins against others, those others have to forgive for themselves. However, I also wondered whether she was getting at the issue of what such a forgiveness might seem to say. That is, she could not forgive the actual death of Jennifer because if she did so it might seem to condone or too lightly accept the wrongness of that death. She needs to have the perpetrators acknowledge that what happened was a wrong, an evil. Without that acknowledgement, to simply 'give up' her daughthers death would violate a sense of right and wrong; it would feel tantamount to saying that it was alright for Jennifer to die.
I don't believe that it is wrong to insist the death was wrong and that those who engineered that death were evildoers. Forgiveness here must not condone the wrong. It must, however, enable those left behind who are mourning the death to move on without bitterness polluting their lives and to build the possibility of understanding any mitigations and were it possible in this life, to hear and to begin accept the sincere repentance of the wrongdoers. She may not be there yet, but I do hope and pray that she is making progress towards the latter things.
And I wonder; does this give us an insight into the meaning of forgiveness for God? That God cannot forgive unless it's personal. That's the point about incarnation and cross. If God just 'forgave', without having God's own hurt, grief and pain to forgive, it would just be without any real meaning. We can 'forgive' all manner of things if they do not touch us personally. But for it to be real forgiveness, we must be personally involved; we must have a hurt to put to one side, a pain to refuse to impose back onto the perpetrator, the possibility of forgoing revenge, the acceptance and determination that for us love, grace and mercy trump strict justice.
So as we view Christ accepting to be harmed, vilified, mistried, misunderstood, betrayed and killed, we are seeing God personally imaging the cost of forgiveness; playing out in spacetime the personal price of forgiveness. This is not so much the price of our sins, first and foremost, but bearing the pain of forgiving of not passing on the hurt or passing back the wrong to the perpetrators. It is living out the prayer to 'forgive them for they do not know what they are doing'.
And more than living out. It is the event where it actually happens. It is not illustrative but performative. God accepts to be harmed by humanity so that forgiveness is actually personal. God is not condoning wrong but putting God's own being in the way of harm so that God may work through the hard task of forgiving in God's own person not as some kind of blithe and untouched benevolence making easy pronouncements of forgiveness because the hurt is not personal.
Without the cross we only have karma: an impersonal principle of Justice. The cross tells us that there is something about ultimate reality that is personal, that personal love [and therefore apathy and malevolence] do matter in the grand scheme of things; that forgiveness is the way to life where strict justice will lead to death.
11 October 2006
forgiving sin is not the same as dealing with it
While there may be some question on the part of some people about whether forgiveness really should include reconciliation, the referenced post argues that it does.Real forgiveness is not pretending that there is no sin, it is not pretending that everyone is okay and that no one got hurt. Jesus knows, God knows, and we know, that every action has consequences. Reconciliation is not about covering up sin, it is about dealing with it so that the person affected is healed as much as possible – and that the person who did it can try to make amends, and then deal with it so that (to the best of our ability) it does not happen again.
He is in the business of reconciliation. That means he is the business of getting people on good terms with each other. Reconciliation is the goal, the end product, of forgiveness.
I think I tend to agree.
06 January 2008
Forgive: improve Well-Being -and Atonement?
A brief reminder of the tangible health benefits of forgiving. And, happily, a good brief definition of forgiving which covers some of the pitfalls commonly made by people thinking about forgiving. "Forgiveness doesn’t mean forgetting, condoning or excusing whatever happened. It’s acknowledging hurt and then letting it go, along with the burden of anger and resentment."There's also a nice four-step guide to forgiving that we could do well to make use of.
four steps that are included in most approaches to learning forgiveness.
* Acknowledge the pain and anger felt as a result of someone else’s actions. For forgiveness to occur, the situation needs to be looked at honestly.
* Recognize that healing requires change.
* Find a new way to think about the person who caused the pain. What was happening in that person’s life when the hurt occurred? Sometimes, the motivation or causes for the incident have little to do with those most affected. For some people, this step includes saying, “I forgive you.”
* Begin to experience the emotional relief that comes with forgiveness. It may include increased compassion for others who have experienced similar hurt.
Now, to confess my further interest; what happens if we consider that these processes also may apply to God in some way? What if these are what is taking place on the cross. Is this a forgiveness model of the atonement emerging?
I think so, and I've been mulling it over, hoping to find some time to write more ...
29 November 2008
Historicisation of God's being
I've just recently come across this article (and it's worth noting that this site makes a number of academic articles available in full). It is an examination of Some of Karl Barth's thought in relation to resurrection and God's eternity. I was drawn to it because the title "The Resurrection of Jesus Christ: Karl Barth and the Historicization of God's Being" seemed to offer some help with my own project of interpreting the atonement as a historicising of God's being -those weren't the words I had been using to describe the insight I was trying to develop, but there was a sense of recognition when I saw it.Here's a quote from Barth which seems to go to the heart of the matter:
in the resurrection of Jesus Christ we have to do with a movement and action which took place not merely in human history but first and foremost in God Himself, a movement and action in which Jesus Christ as the Son of God . . . [is] a pure object and recipient of God [the Father's] . . . free and pure grace which as such can only be received, and the historical fulfilment of which is the resurrection of Jesus Christ.and
'the resurrection . . . took place . . . not merely in human history but first and foremost in God himself'
Now that is very helpful in making a case for events in the history of the Christ being out-showings of God's 'inner' being. What I want to do, I think, is a bit harder: that the cross is an out-showing of God's forgiving. This may be harder because it is something that is more fully dependent on contingent being; fallen humanity needing forgiveness.
I think that my approach will be to start with the human experience of forgiveness, practical theology style; to analyse some of the more important aspects of forgiving and to relate those to divine forgiveness (including, wrath, love, mercy, compassion and pain-bearing). The end to which I am heading in this thinking is, in effect, to say that the cross is the space time eikon of God's forgiveness. I think I mean eikon rather than 'icon' in the sense that I'm drawing on what I understand to be the Eastern understanding of a quasi-sacramental thing: an outcrop into ordinary spacetime of divine or spiritual reality such that our interaction with is is a real spiritual interaction.
Obviously, there are a lot of gaps to be filled in on this, but I think it could be sound. And finding out Barth was saying this stuff, really helps.
21 January 2009
Words of forgiveness
An article in last week's Church Times (I think that means the link under the title of this post won't 'deliver' to non-subscribers for another week or 10 days) with lots of perspectives on forgiving, a lot based on the work of Liz Gulliford (whose book on the topic has gone out of print and is now at horrific prices -if you can find a cheaper copy -say less than £20- let me know).There are a few helpful and significant quotes I'd like to draw to your and my future attention.
“For most, though, forgiveness is a hard-won process, and in that process it is not unusual to feel mixed emotions. Everyone who goes on a journey of forgiveness will have times when forgiving is hard to hold on to.That certainly chimes with pastoral and personal experience. It is useful to understand forgiveness as a process.
“As Christians, we do not have to forgive from our own strength. The commitment to forgive may be all that we can put on the table, and hope and pray that it will be deepened. We pray that God will help us.”
And when we deal with the issue of forgiveness, we have to be careful because there are lots of misunderstanding which have the effect of short-circuiting the process. One of those seems to be that forgiveness amounts to saying that the wrong is actually 'okay'. As Gulliford says,
Understanding the motive of the person who has injured you will only take you so far — forgiveness is not about condoningAnd further down in the article Desmond Tutu is quoted as saying;
“Forgiveness does not mean condoning what has been done. It means taking what has happened seriously and not minimising it; drawing out the sting in the memory that threatens to poison our entire existence. In the telling of stories like these [in the Forgiveness Project website] there is real healing.”I find this sentence by Gee Walker to be a good framing perspective:
Forgiveness is my survival tool. If I hadn’t, it would have brought anger and resentment into my soul, and I hadn’t got room for that. Forgiveness frees me up to love; it brings me peace and helps me today.It helps us to understand that not forgiving is giving house-room to a set of attitudes and emotional baggage that may cripple us and that the decision to (learn to) forgive is a decision to make room for love and peace (and, I think, joy).
And a clear example of how what we think forgiveness is affects how we approach things comes in the quote relating to Julie Nicholson who resigned as active clergy following her daughter's murder as part of the London bombings in July 2007 because she didn't feel able to forgive and felt she was in a contradictory place to the ministry she was supposed to exercise.
Her definition of true forgiveness involves establishing a relationship between the injured party and the attacker — a relationship that she found impossible to have.. This alerts us to different dimensions of the term. I think that when we are talking about God forgiving us, then Julie's definition is very important. However, God is always present but in human affairs death, geography or sheer weight of emotional work mean that relationship may not be possible. However, letting go of bitterness, coming to a position where a relationship might begin to be possible in appropriate circumstances, may be. And I wonder whether the issue of condoning lurks here too in Julie's words,
I think I will be angry for the rest of my life for what happened. [But] when a life is cut down, then you should be angry.
. I think she is right. And I suspect that at the heart of forgiving lies the acts of recognising that anger, discerning what 'belongs' with the perpetrator and what doesn't and then forbearing to direct that anger to the perpetrator in punitive fashion, but rather to bear the pain ourselves. Make no mistake, to forbear punitive reaction is painful because it is not condoning or excusing or making light of a misdeed and/or an injustice. It is recognising the wrong, recognising that it deserves a reaction but choosing to forego that reaction. Obviously that is easier to do if there is love, respect, understanding and a sense of common humanity. It is very hard to do when those things are not present in the first place and a stranger is the mis-doer. It is often (but not always) easier to forgive someone we love. Though sometimes a sense of betrayal makes it even harder. Harder too to forgive an act done in malevolence than one out of ignorance or weakness. Perhaps it is the malevolent acts that are those that particularly invoke the need for personal relationship reconciliation?
I'm inching towards a fuller understanding of forgiveness, with the awareness that a lot of the theological debate about atonement is probably too detached from the realities of forgivness. I have a suspicion we would do better to start with forgiveness and reflect on that as a way to theologise about God's forgiveness. I'm still captivated by the idea that the cross is an eikon of the pain that God bears to forgive.
I'm inching towards a fuller understanding of forgiveness, with the awareness that a lot of the theological debate about atonement is probably too detached from the realities of forgivness. I have a suspicion we would do better to start with forgiveness and reflect on that as a way to theologise about God's forgiveness. I'm still captivated by the idea that the cross is an eikon of the pain that God bears to forgive.
30 January 2010
How she forgave her daughter's killer
Some readers may suspect that my interest in forgiveness in these extreme circumstances has roots in our life and a road traffic incident two years ago which deprived our daughter of one of her legs. Surprisingly, perhaps, (as a search through this blog for 'forgiveness' with attention to dates, will show). That's not to say that I don't find connections. A lot goes back to a sense that we talk a lot about forgiveness but we often don't think that clearly about what's involved. My interest comes more from trying to wrestle pastorally with the issues presented by grieving families and the rough-and-tumble of everyday miscomprehension, unthinking uncare and/or malice.So it's good to see the topic aired here: How I forgave my daughter's killer | Life and style | The Guardian: I still find the writer focuses on isses which flit the surface; the presenting issues of anger and pain without examining the relationship between those things and love and feelings around justice, punishment, revenge and counter-transference of such things. It is also a bit short on just what is forgiveness and what excusing and then what the costs are.
Let me, however, pick out of the article the things that I think are really important for helping us to learn forgiveness.
'When Charlotte was murdered, �forgiveness did not enter my mind. For a long time, I wanted to know, who is this wicked girl that took my daughter? Who did this evil? My baby was gone. I was just coming to terms with the loss. I had to weigh things up, to really allow my emotions to take their course.' ... I kept staring over at her. I wanted her to look at me, to look at the pain she had caused me, for her to see that Charlotte had a mum who loved her. I wanted her to show me how sorry she was. ... I wanted her to feel a bit of my pain at losing my daughter. ... Mary came to understand more of Beatriz's background. "I learned about all the bullying and intimidation she had received, about all the things that had happened to her at home and at school.
"So I wrote back to her and said, 'I forgive you, I believe you didn't mean to do it, although there is a price to pay for the choice you made.' ... Certainly she wishes her "an emotionally stable life, a good life. I hope she turns out to be a wonderful mother. I don't wish her any evil. I don't wish her to lose a child. I would not wish that on anyone."
I think all the elements that I have come to recognise as necessary are there. The one issue that isn't clear in this account is the relationship between excusing (which is recognising where there are factors that relieve the perpetrator of culpability) and forgiving (which is foregoing vengeance or 'counter-transference' whilst recognising the genuine culpability of the perpetrator). In this telling most of the weight falls to excusing -and that is right and proper and can make forgiving easier. The account as we have it here doesn't help us to understand how she did the harder work of letting go of the 'residual' culpable wrongdoing and its entails. That's a shame because that's where most of us need the most help and support: to forego just anger and its successor events and to re-open the possibility of a positive relationship with the perpetrator.
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