The theme of forgiveness is central to the Christian faith. Through the atoning death of Jesus Christ, humans are offered heaven’s forgiveness. Then, on the basis of forgiveness received, we are called to forgive one another. Yet few subjects are so misunderstood as this one.
It is not part of forgiveness to deny or minimize what happened. “I know he didn’t mean to hurt me,” she says, “so I’m going to forgive him and go back home.” Many an abused woman has suffered still more abuse – or death – because of her desire to save her marriage or maintain a home for her children because of that understanding of forgiveness. Putting reasonable protections in place or insisting that someone get help with anger is in his best interest.
Neither does forgiveness cancel the need for justice, punishment, or reparations. Someone who stole from another still needs to make the victim whole by some appropriate form of restitution. I can forgive someone and still insist on getting back my jacket, automobile, or credit card charges.
Perhaps the most common idea about forgiveness is the tendency to link it with forgetting. To grant that “forgive and forget” go together as an alliteration is not to admit they go together in the moral act of forgiving someone. How many people berate themselves for their inability to forget a wrong they have pledged to forgive? Is it true that memory of an offense means one has not forgiven it?
With a form of selective amnesia (i.e., forgetting bad things someone has done to you), forgiveness would be a piece of cake! The real challenge to forgive someone is that you do remember the wrong you suffered and the harm it did, but you name that offense, reflect on it, and make a conscious decision not to retaliate in kind or to seek revenge. At a personal level, you close the book on it.
That is what happened, for example, when God forgave David for adultery and murder. He didn’t forget it – for the biblical account of the deeds was written well after Israel’s king was forgiven. Neither did it keep David and the people he led from some terrible consequences that followed from what had happened.
The same thing may be said about someone’s embezzlement of company funds or molestation of a child. The once-trusted bookkeeper may be forgiven by her boss or father or friend; those same people will nevertheless still need to fire her or give true testimony about events or hold her accountable as she tries to make amends and get past her crime. The child molester must be punished, put on a registry of sex offenders, and prohibited from working around children.
One may forget after a time, but forgiveness is choosing to turn loose of hostility and efforts to even the score with someone who has done you wrong.
Anne Lamott puts it this way: “Forgiveness means it finally becomes unimportant that you hit back.” And that is the start of returning good for evil.
by Rubel Shelly–