Penny Mawdsley writes about forgiveness.
Forgiveness is such a key Christian concept that it is unsurprising that scripture is full of it. Looking afresh at familiar quotations I find myself wondering whether we have accepted them too uncritically. Well-known public figures and ‘influencers’ over the last century have given their take on the subject. For example, Einstein is alleged to have said ‘Weak people revenge. Strong people forgive. Intelligent people ignore.’ Mahatma Gandhi said ‘The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong.’ Mother Teresa said ‘If we really want to love we must learn how to forgive’ and Ophra Winfrey wrote ‘It’s not an easy journey, to get to a place where you forgive people, but it is such a powerful place because it frees you.’
None of these quotations appear to question whether the one to be forgiven is genuinely sorry for their offence, nor whether it is reasonable or fair always to expect the one doing the forgiving to take this step without knowing the answer.
The New Testament abounds in passages stressing the need to imitate God as a loving and merciful father. There’s the Parable of the Prodigal Son and the words of the Lord’s Prayer in Matthew 6 v.9, if more nuanced in verse 14, which states that if you do not forgive others, then the wrongs you have done will not be forgiven by God. In the account of the dying Christ, we of course have a more compassionate insight displayed towards ‘those who know not what they do’. Genuine ignorance of – or failure to – understand the significance of – a wrong action should be forgiven.
I’ve always had a niggling problem with for giving a wrong without being fully convinced of the genuine regret of the perpetrator. When I was teaching, and a pupil had committed a mis demeanour against another I instructed the child in the customary way to apologise to the one he or she had upset. I was loath to accept a sullen ‘sor-Ree!’ from the perpetrator and to let the matter rest without querying the response. And it was often obvious with our own children that an apology was not heart-felt but given in order that equilibrium could be restored and there was no danger of missing out on a treat!
Now fear of a wrathful God’s displeasure has abated, the contemporary Christian is more likely to be influenced by modern psychological thinking around the importance of forgiveness for both parties to be able to ‘move on’. I see this a bit like a Non-Realist view of prayer, where the value is as much, if not more, to the one praying than on expectation of a good outcome directly from the prayer itself.
Another angle on forgiveness we might consider is the current trend for political and church leaders to make speeches apologising for wrongs committed by the ancestors of those they represent to the ancestors of the people they are addressing – designed of course to be covered favourably by the media. Apologies have been made variously for a range of things ranging from sexual abuse, drowning villages to supply water to cities, to the Crusades and slavery. Do they expect that their fine words constitute more than a diplomatic if positive gesture towards making recompense? They certainly have no right to expect forgiveness from their audience. And what about restorative justice or the original perpetrators being let entirely off the hook?
The same perhaps goes for individuals publicly forgiving on behalf of others who for one reason or another are unable to do this themselves and have not given their permission for this to happen. The shocking 1986 Ealing Vicarage Rape comes to mind when the Rev. Saward initially forgave the gang in front of the TV cameras apparently on behalf of his deeply traumatised daughter. Later, admirably, Gill Saward herself was ready and able to forgive those who had hurt her and ’move on’ by founding a rape charity for which she worked until her death in 2017.
Further, is it realistic always to expect someone ‘to forgive and forget’? Traumatic experience can’t easily be expunged from memory. In short, forgiveness is a thorny business.