TO SAY that Christianity is a pro-forgiveness religion would appear to be an understatement. Christians worship a God whose mercy towards sinners is a defining characteristic. Jesus often pronounced forgiveness, spoke of the necessity to forgive your brother or sister, and offered as a model for prayer a type of words that sought forgiveness of sins “as we forgive those that sin against us”. And when dying in excruciating agony on the cross, he was heard to talk words of forgiveness.
Towards the top of the past century, Archbishop Desmond Tutu promoted forgiveness inside South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), each as amnesty for perpetrators and as a private expression of the victims. In the years that followed, he travelled the world together with his universal message. Many have followed his lead in promoting forgiveness for its spiritual merits, psychological benefits, and its contribution to conflict resolution and reconciliation.
But, wonderful though forgiveness might be, I even have found myself increasingly burdened by the query: Has Christianity got forgiveness right?
I used to be starting to wonder about this before the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse within the Church of England and the Church in Wales identified how the understanding and practices of forgiveness contributed to a culture where abuse was not properly addressed. But I used to be also apprehensive about Tutu and the TRC.
One of the problems to surface with hindsight is the pressure to forgive that was placed on those that had experienced the gross violation of their human rights under apartheid. The Commission praised those that forgave, and dismissed or ignored those that refused. And, in its first six months, every victim was asked whether or not they had forgiven the perpetrator. In her recent book Failures of Forgiveness, Myisha Cherry (no relation) sees this as “a subtle type of coercion” that “created inappropriate pressure to forgive”.
In her book On Repentance and Repair, which introduces Maimonides’s teaching to a recent world, Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg has written of the Christian tendency to weaponise forgiveness, stating how pressure to forgive can serve the interests of the powerful. She takes her examples from appeals for forgiveness within the immediate aftermath of the American Civil War that didn’t begin to attach with the depth of suffering which had been inflicted on those that had been enslaved.
Ruttenburg also calls out the best way during which the trail of repentance is deprecated in Protestant theology, and sees this a way of shifting responsibility from the harmer to the harmed.
Ruttenberg also recounts the story of Sarah Stewart Holland, who, as a fervent young Christian, was amongst those that, the day after a student opened fire on prayer circle at her school, killing three, made posters that proclaimed: “We forgive you because God also forgave us.” She was interviewed on television, Bible in hand, proclaiming how God’s love had fuelled her forgiveness.
A decade later, she realised that that was overreacting to any death she encountered, and sought counselling. Quickly diagnosed with PTSD, she only then began the work of genuinely freeing herself from her trauma.
IT IS often stated that Jesus forgave his crucifiers from the cross — and even that he commanded his followers to forgive. But these are oversimplifications of words in St Luke’s Gospel. The word “forgive” was on his lips, but Jesus didn’t say “People of the crucifixion party, and those that perpetrated the injustice that’s laughingly called my ‘trial’, let me use my last breath to forgive you, every body.” No, he offered a prayer that his Father might forgive them, since they didn’t know what they were doing.
Such words are clearly not vengeful, nor are they indignant or bitter. On the contrary, they’re eye-wateringly generous and beautifully exemplary. But they’re a prayer for forgiveness, not an act of forgiveness.
We can pray for the forgiveness of those whom we don’t ourselves forgive, just as we are able to pray for our oppressors and abusers without condoning them. When we do, we step into the space between bitter and hateful responses and a warm and forgiving embrace. And it’s into this intermediate space, between the extremes of harsh unforgiveness and full forgiveness, that we should always invite people once they have been harmed.
This could be very different from urging people to forgive. Indeed, it would often mean suggesting that the harmed person hold back from forgiving until the harmer changes in such a way as to turn out to be potentially forgivable.
Some will say that that is to transfer forgiveness from the realm of undeserved gift to something that a one who has inflicted harm must earn. I might argue that forgiveness is rarely earned and is at all times a present, since the forgivability gap after harm, while it could be narrowed, can never be closed, or bridged, from the side of the harmer. But let’s be clear: to say that forgiveness is a present shouldn’t be to say that the whole lot is forgivable.
The query after harm shouldn’t be “To forgive or to not forgive?” This is a polarisation that risks heaping anxiety on those already burdened by harm and trauma. Victims and survivors need to understand that they’ve a wide selection of possible responses available, and that types of non-toxic, non-violent, non-vengeful unforgiveness might sometimes be best.
It shouldn’t be true that there is no such thing as a future without forgiveness. The truth is that there is no such thing as a future unless peaceable ways of abiding in unforgiveness might be found.
To return to Sarah Stewart Holland and her poster: had it read, “May God forgive you,” she may need been in a more realistic psychological space — in addition to following a biblical example.
CHRISTIANITY has not got forgiveness right. It sees the downside of unforgiving reactions to having been harmed (that are real), but fails to see the downside of forgiving too easily or rapidly. It is positive about stories of forgiveness, but reluctant to inform of occasions where, for instance, people proceed to like and look after those whom they are going to never forgive.
Many of probably the most celebrated stories of forgiveness are of a perpetrator who’s now incarcerated, or dead. Under such circumstances, it could be transformative to place all thoughts of retribution aside, and good to point the overcoming of resentment and the restoration of excellent will by saying “Yes, I forgive.” These are sometimes stories of so-called “unconditional” forgiveness, which has sprung from the guts of the harmed with none expression of acknowledgement, regret, apology, or repentance by the harmer.
Such forgiveness has its own value, but it surely is incorrect to present it as exemplary to those that are hated or whose abuse is unrecognised and unhealed, and maybe being perpetrated by someone who lives under the identical roof. The best query in such situations shouldn’t be: “Can you discover it in your heart to forgive?” It is: “What do it’s essential to make you secure, to assist you to get well, to regain your dignity and freedom?”
Victims and survivors might want to make their very own peace with the legacy of what they’ve experienced. For some, it can mean letting go of each last drop of resentment and re-embracing someone whose betrayal was devastating. For others, it would mean getting the assistance that they should overcome the debilitating consequences of their mistreatment, and making their enduring resentment non-toxic.
The first priority after serious harm, then, shouldn’t be forgiveness however the well-being and health of the harmed and the restoration of their freedom. This won’t ever be achieved by presenting forgiveness because the only strategy to an honest future after harm, or by coercing people, nevertheless subtly, to forgive.
Forgiveness might be astonishing, wonderful, and transformative, but provided that it flows from freedom. When that freedom is constrained, because it often is by the impact of trauma, then the harmed should be helped towards the space between forgiveness and retribution, the territory between acceptance and resentment. That is the space during which reality — and God — is to be found, and to which the dying Jesus pointed us.
The Revd Dr Stephen Cherry is Dean of Chapel at King’s College, Cambridge, and the writer of Unforgivable? Exploring the bounds of forgiveness, published by Bloomsbury Continuum at £16.99 (Church Times Bookshop £15.29).
