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Friday, January 14, 2011

Should We Ever NOT Forgive?

Recent killings by deranged gunmen bring up the question of forgiveness for people who commit terrible crimes of that kind.

When a similarly deranged shooter killed innocent Amish children at the Nickle Mines School in southern Pennsylvania in October, 2006, that religious community instinctively responded with grace and kindness. Everyone saw their actions and attitudes as amazing examples of Christian forgiveness.

I wonder if their response shouldn’t simply be considered an incredible form of “give-ness,” the giving up of any revenge or hate and the demonstration of a truly Christlike and unconditional love for an enemy who had harmed them in the most terrible way possible.

I prefer to call that cross-like love. The forgiving part is up to God.

Jewish writer Dennis Prager questions the notion that we “should forgive everyone who commits evil against anyone, no matter how great and cruel, and whether or not the evil doer repents.” He also believes we can only forgive those who have sinned against us, not those who have sinned against others.

“If we forgive everyone (unilaterally) for all the evil they do,” he says, “we have substituted ourselves for God.” Even Jesus, he adds, when interceding to God to forgive those who crucified him, “never asked God to forgive those who had crucified thousands of other innocent people.”

As a Jew, Prager does affirm Jesus’ idea of having us forgive those who wrong us based on their repentance, just as God surely does. He just wonders whether many of us have trivialized forgiveness, turned into something that’s about making us feel better rather than, like the God of the Bible, being concerned with both justice for evildoers and compassion for them when and if they repent and commit themselves to genuine change.

What got Prager to thinking about this was seeing a news article and photo of some students in West Paducah, Kentucky, some years ago displaying a large banner with the words “We forgive you, Mike!” referring to the 14-year-old who had just  shot and killed 3 teenagers at Heath High school. He believes they/we have neither the power or the right to forgive on others’ behalf.

So, should we distinguish between loving evildoers versus pronouncing them forgiven? The first is an initiative toward even the unrepentant, the second is a response based on a complete 180 degree turn on the part of  the one seeking forgiveness.

Please understand, I strongly agree that we should forgive our debtors. But a debtor, by definition, is one who is fully aware of what he or she owes and is unable to repay. A person who denies having committed an offense is not a debtor. Nor is the person who insists the offense is not really their fault, as in, “The devil (or my temper, my addiction, or my bad upbringing) made me do it.”

I have a book in my office with two title pages, one on the front and another on the back. It’s actually two books in one, written by David Augsburger. The first title is “Caring Enough to Forgive” which takes up approximately half of the pages, and the other, reading from the reverse side of the book, is “Caring Enough Not to Forgive.” 

The latter is a jarring title for those of us who’ve been taught that forgiveness is something we grant everyone unilaterally, no strings attached, just proclaim them off the hook. But Augsburger believes the implied condition for all of our “forgiving others their trespasses as we ask God to forgive us our own” is one clearly stated in Luke’s gospel, which says, “If others sin against you, and if they repent, forgive them.”

Meanwhile, for all who choose not to repent, we continue to love, do good to, and pray for them without question. All the while remembering that we are always in need of plenty of forgiveness of our own.

I'd love to have you respond with your thoughts below.

3 comments:

Daniel D. Robayo-Hidalgo said...

Dear Harvey,

Thank you for this posting. Your thoughts invite much thinking and soul searching. Thank you for inviting my response.

I completely agree that forgiveness may only be granted by the offended. The Amish community of the Nickle Mines School did have every right/jurisdiction/power/authority to grant [or to withhold] forgiveness. For anyone else to utter the words “we forgive you” would be not merely an audacious usurpation of God’s prerogative but also a meaningless gesture with empty words, not to mention a sacrilegious act [for those of us with a sacramental theology]. The sign in West Paducah, Kentucky would be meaningful only if parents, siblings and kindred of the slain children held it. No one else could do it.

However, I am less sanguine about the notion that forgiveness objectively requires the offender’s remorse or at least admission of guilt. For me, the act of withholding forgiveness hardens my heart into stone. And a hardened heart is an imprisoned soul. That’s the perspective from which I offered my meditation on forgiveness at the Lenten luncheon yesterday. Do I have to wait for my offender to repent? Then I cannot leave the prison of my hardened heart unless the offender lets me. I will forever be a victim—unless the offender repents. That gives the offender way too much power over the offended. Or to put it another way, God urges me to forgive my brother or sister from the heart for the sake of my own soul. Whether the offender wants forgiveness or not: I need to forgive him or her.

Surrendering their own power to the perpetrators is precisely why some people remain victims who never move to becoming survivors first and then thrivers. One of my life mentors, Doug Frank, was fond of reminding his students that while one has absolutely no control over the choices and actions of other people, we each had not only personal responsibility but also actual control over our own actions. No excuses, as you say in your post. So Doug would point to his chest (heart) and say, “I’m in charge in here.” Not in the Pelagian sense of pulling ourselves up by our own bootstraps but in recognition that our humanity cannot be taken from us, that only we ourselves may surrender it. I’m mindful in this context of Victor Frankl’s writings of survival and death in the concentration camps in his great book Man’s Search for Meaning. And so, the option to forgive exists for me as a grace by which my humanity may be preserved and enhanced. Forgiving my offender helps me become more Christ-like, part of the journey in which I am invited to grow up to full maturity, to the full measure of the stature of Jesus.

I do connect very much with your summary statement, “Meanwhile, for all who choose not to repent, we continue to love, do good to, and pray for them without question. All the while remembering that we are always in need of plenty of forgiveness of our own.” If we can live like that, we can live in freedom.

Thank you, Harvey, for inviting me into your conversation. I look forward to further talks.

Yours in Christ,

Daniel D. Robayo

harvspot said...

Dear Daniel,

I feel so honored to have you take the time to respond, and in such a gracious and helpful way. I actually feel we are in total agreement here if we distinguish the kind of 'not forgiving' that is an act of hardening one's heart against those who have sinned against us (which was the sole point of your excellent Lenten meditation last Wednesday, and with which I am in full agreement) from that of 'not forgiving' as in not clearing another of the debt they have incurred, simply because they have not yet acknowledged that a debt exists. In other words, they feel no need to repent of anything, and/or refuse to do so.

In my post, I'm simply asking whether there is a loving form of withholding forgiveness that is not only possible, but sometimes mandated, and one which is totally opposite of turning ones heart into stone and becoming a victim of ones own bitterness. This Christ-like response would require having one's heart transformed to being full of amazing grace and unconditional love, a heart that stands ready to offer full and free forgiveness at the moment the offender acknowledges his or her debt.

To me, this would be to take literally the teaching of the apostle Paul, "Forgive one another as God in Christ has forgiven you." Following that example (God's) would mean radically loving everyone on earth, just as God causes the warm sun and refreshing rain to bless the repentant and unrepentant alike--and just as God pours out his life blood for all, then waits, lovingly, for the kind of response on our part that results in our forgiveness.

But Calvary is not, in my understanding, an act in which all of us are forgiven, but is one in which each of us is loved into a repentance that makes forgiveness possible (Unless God might also forgives on the basis of a sinner's ignorance, as in Jesus interceding to the Father to have his tormentors forgiven "for they know not what they do.") In either case, love is unconditional, whereas forgiveness is based on repentance (or depending on how we interpret Jesus' words on the cross, granted on the basis of ignorance).

I know that with our typical use and understanding of the concept, 'not forgiving' equals not loving, pure and simple. As you know, I totally disagree with any kind of 'not loving,' believing as I do that Christ teaches unconditional love toward even our worst enemies.

Here are a couple of scriptures we could discuss further:

John 20:23 "Whoever's sins you remit they are remitted, and whoever's sins you retain they are retained."

Matthew 16:19 I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven; whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven."

Matthew 18:18 "I tell you the truth, whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.

Leviticus 19:17 "Do not hate your brother or sister in your heart. Rebuke your neighbor frankly so you will not share in his guilt."

Luke 17:3 "Watch yourselves! If another sins, rebuke them, and if they repent, forgive them."

So, to summarize, we both agree that hate is never an option for followers of Jesus, that love is always to be unconditional. That rules out any hardness or any bitterness of heart. The question is whether one can withhold the actual clearing of another's debt (which is what I understand forgiveness to mean) based on whether there is or is not an acknowledgement of that debt.

Again, thanks for taking the time to respond. You are indeed a blessing.

BrotherBrendan said...

No repentance, no forgiveness. I fear some people, sincere and loving, want to be better than God. We are not forgiven without repentance/turning/ change of mind and heart to the living God.
Thanks, Gary Cummings