Forgiveness

Last night in our group we talked about 'forgiveness'. We based our conversation around Matthew 18. I found it really hard. Because I am reading about self-harm and all that it entails and when I think of my own story and the story of others I begin to worry that my own wholehearted approach to forgiveness could be seen as immoral. I sometimes think that my behaviour is immoral.
We talked very openly and very diversely about the centrality of forgiveness to the Christian Faith. We talked about how we marry these ideas to real life situations.

We all have known unforgivable things. All of us had slightly different take on the practical application of the commandment to forgive to our own situations, the people involved and those of others. One person, whom I shall call Penelope had a wonderful, moving story which made the hairs stand up on the back of my neck. She had a Godfather, a Jewish man who embraced Christianity. He had been in Dakau Concentration Camp until the end of the war. I don't remember at what point he was imprisoned there. I think it was towards the beginning because I think he remained there for three, possibly four years. At the end of the war he was handed a gun with which to shoot his persecutors. He handed back the gun. He had told his God-daughter that revenge and unforgiveness is the beginning of hate. He didn't want his tormentors who were full of hatred to turn him to hatred. His forgiveness of them was a way of preventing the hatred from perpetuating. Penelope therefore grew up with a passionate commitment to forgiveness and reconciliation. She had even worked in Germany with various people who during wartime did terrible things to others and had terrible things done to them. She sees no way out of a commitment to forgiveness for any Christian. For her the distinguishing feature of a Christian is his or her determination to be open to forgiveness in any given situation. She extended this to being open to forgive those who are not repentant and indeed even forgiving them in our hearts regardless of their awareness or contrition. We all have a central tenet around which all aspects of our religion move. This is her immovable point. Forgiveness. She says none of the other religions have this concept as a central commandment. For me, this is what makes us complicated, I am ashamed of our decision to forgive unforgivable things, she declares it as the single thing that keeps her publicly proclaiming herself as a Christian.

This was a helpful revelation. What one woman can see as a shameful theology, another can prize as her salvation. She had an abusive Mother with psychiatric issues, mental health problems triggered by wartime circumstances. Penelope forgave and continues to forgive because she sees this as a consequence of her Mother's experience of life. She employs the 'to understand is to forgive' motto.

I did this for years, I had the same conviction for years. My family has been described by my sister-in-law as 'the most forgiving family' she ever knew. What she loves about my family, who are actually also her family, is that infinite capacity to forgive unforgivable behaviour. I think it is our downfall. The interpretation of the commandment to forgive in our family is that 'everything and anything will be alright.' It has been applied to eradicate rules of conduct. When everything is forgiven then nothing really matters and consequences are not considered.
We have an elderly man in our group, I'll call him Frank, who keeps us on our toes. He thinks it is all baloney, Christianity full stop is just total nonsense. The aspect of Christianity he most despises is the emphasis on forgiveness. He thinks it is immoral to forgive unspeakable acts. 'Why', he argues, 'should they get away with it'?

Our Priest, lets call him Bob, had some fascinating arguments. Forgiveness in the Jesus stories of Matthew is concerned with relationship, with the Church community, with unity and accountability. It is a corporate and not an individual matter. It is also concerned with justice and witness. Forgiveness is contextual. Forgiveness also includes an attitude of the heart, and a readiness to forgive should repentance ever be apparent. Not only this but he argued that we depend upon the grace of God to give us the capacity to forgive. In God's time, God will make it possible for us to forgive. It is not a quick fix and can be a lifetime commitment to be open to forgiveness and the possibility of it. He also argued, with Penelope, that we cannot forgive on behalf of another person or community. Their resentment, pain or experience is theirs alone or together and we cannot make that decision for them.
Bob has thought through the possiblity of going to the Palestinian border when he retires (although he hasn't talked it through with his wife!). There is a group of retired priests (mostly men I would imagine, since women have only been ordained for just over a decade...but we forgive them of course!) who stand between Israel and Palestine, taking no side simply being there as a witness. This is a unique opportunity for the Christian Church because of our theology of forgiveness in place of revenge. This presence leaves an openness to reconciliation an example of the choice which can be made.

A woman we shall call Pru, a good friend of mine, who knows many of our stories, spoke of the propensity of society to see those who forgive as easy targets. She spoke of the vulnerability involved in that decision. How easy it has been for us to become doormats. This led us to a view from another friend that the converse was true. We agreed that although this might be the case, we are still viewed as 'weak', as Jesus was when he refused to fight back and argued that those who killed him 'did not know what they were doing'. A lengthy discussion ensued as to the legitimacy of forgiveness when the person concerned does not understand that they have committed an act of cruelty. How do we forgive those who are not sorry, or are not aware? We were brought back to our attitude of mind and to prayer, to commitment to the potential of the human to forgive. Penelope even equated her humanity with her capacity and willingness to forgive. Inhumanity stems from the unforgiveness of communities who have never let go of old resentments. Inability or unwillingness to forgive led to war, she said. There was no justification in pullng people from current day into previous conflict. Controversially, given recent discourse around the Holocaust and the need for apology from people who were not there, she argued that we cannot legitimately apologise for something we did not do or forgive what we did not experience.

For me the prevailing question is what to do when a culture of abuse is living with abuses from the past which are dictating our behaviour in the present, and threatening through the continual forgiving of unrepentant abusers, to continue in the future? If I forgive the abusers, what becomes of the abused? Bob helped with Penelope by arguing that forgiveness can be important in our healing, in 'letting-go'. Here the healing of new relationship can take place. Any forgiveness is not an act of an individual in isolation but both a confrontation of an offence, an acknowledgement of that offence and a decision and willingness to start again. It is about new beginnings. The person forgiven must agree not to commit the same offence again, must acknowledge their own wrong and be willing to find new ways of being in relationship in the future. If this cannot happen then the relationship must be left in the past but we must continue to pray for our offender.

Our own relationship to our own personal behaviour was then examined. If we have 'sinned against another', which we inevitably have, we are called first to remorse, second to repentance and thirdly to new relationship and reconciliation. This is the pattern of the Christian life and is linked to the Crucifixion. Our own sin is forgiven and this sets us free from the life bound by the cruelty of our common humanity into a life which acknowledges human cruelty but tries not to participate in it.

I saw this as my own identification with the abuses and cruelties of others. We had a corporate responsibility to forgive, because we sin corporately too. Christian Theology will argue that we are set free by Christ's death from that pattern of revenge and hatred which binds us to war. Forgiveness as demonstrated on the cross is an unarguable part of this. I need to find ways in which I cherish and am grateful for Christ's action in my life which has given me a different way. I cannot judge people who have not been given another way. We concluded with the well-known idiom 'there, but for the grace of God, go I'

Evil

The worst thing about evil is the way in which it seeps underground and nourishes its plants, watering its roots. Evil doesn't kill things before it comes into bloom itself. It fosters its own growth until it kills healthy plants suffocating them with its tendrils.
Evil attempts to pervade healthy things, it desires to infect healthy people, tries to seep away nourishment from healthy landscapes poisoning the rivers as it does so. Evil stops at nothing. It spreads underground in a network of open sewers leaking effluent into our taps and the very food that we eat, it tries to enter our bloodstream. Before we can understand how or why our relationships begin to falter, evil has begun its attempt to ensure that trust is destroyed, it seems we betray each other but we don't know why. The worst thing about evil is you cannot see where it came in and you cannot make any claims with any evidence about where it started. It is deception and delusion and calculated dishonesty. We do not see where the contamination starts, until it seems as though it is too late. It has crept in stealthily through the back door, tried to steal your friends. A convivial gathering in warmth and safety, and now the room has gone cold, the warmth evaporates but you can't find the draft, can't blame an unclosed door for the dispersal of all that joy.
Evil is known by its successes, by the triumphant theft, it gains its joy from the demise of others. It gloats over futures thwarted, talent supressed, relationships destroyed and delights in depriving people of their own happiness. It will soak into our shared existence without us knowing. It is invisible until the lines show, the faces crease, the bitterness and resentment begins to develop. We have bile in our mouths instead of sweetness. We notice it when we start to look at people differently. We are shocked to realise what has become of us.
Hannah Arendt speaks of the banality of evil. I am rarely so persuaded by theological arguments so wholeheartedly. Evil is banal. Evil breeds in the most ordinary places. It is made from the stuff of our lives and what people choose to do to them without our consent or knowledge.
We shouldn't ever berate ourselves harshly when we come close to evil. Most people would have run from it if it didn't wear such friendly disguise or such a banal demeanour. Evil decieves us by hiding behind something innocuous. If something creeps up unexpectedly upon us in disguise as a friend or a lover, a parent or a priest, a teacher, or any person we respect then we cannot be expected to know that here is the leak in the vessel. This can be the open door, the cold wind blowing. How can we know where trust is in danger? We leave it exposed because that is the nature of trust. It thrives in open places. We risk everything when we trust and that is why we honour trust left in our safekeeping.
If our trust is almost destroyed, its lifeblood nearly drained we have not chosen this. It is removed, snatched from our possession without our permission. What can we do with evil. How do we point at it and say it started here, this is the hole through which it crept?
Sometimes we do find the leak, we do see, we realise. When our eyes are open and the evil becomes transparent it often looks so ordinary, so well-meant, so charming.
But evil is not charming. Evil is pernicious, vile and banal. It is there in the middle of an ordinary day waiting for us, in a phone call, a devious lie, an anonymous letter, a tiny theft which is the precursor of another. Evil is a thief. Evil is a common or garden thief. It is so hard to acknowledge it that mostly we don't. I have never been keen to discuss evil before. Hannah Arendt knew about the Holocaust and she knew about the evil use of banal things. You can, after all, foster evil by refusing someone food, by stopping them from drinking. You can choose evil by ignoring an injustice. You can steal a letter, write libelous things under the guise of a kind warning. You can choose to believe a liar by ignoring your God-given instincts because you choose the fantasy first and the reality second. Evil is on our doorsteps. Evil appears in anything as simple as a bottle of milk. A poisoned bottle of milk; a stolen milk bill which leaves it unpaid and the person without milk and labelled irresponsible. It is a sharp knife deliberately left in the washing up, a severed tendon, a careless stitch, a tetanus infection and an invisible culprit.
This invisible poisoner, thief, planter and cruel plotter has followers who do the same, this kind of evil depends upon denial and accusations which distract. To you: "Who would do such a thing? Poisoned milk? Are you sure? You must have left it in the heat. "Poor you, how sad, you have been poisoned!" and to another "poor thing, she thinks she's been poisoned!" and to a group, "I must look out for her, she is poisoning herself, How needy she must be that she is deliberately going to hospital.". To you: "I must buy you a special box for your milk!", to the group "I have bought her a box for her milk, poor thing!, to the public: "Don't praise me for buying the box for the milk" I am only an ordinary person, looking out for a vulnerable soul." To you: "there you can see, you are not being poisoned, your box has been protecting it from intruders, it has a key and everything!". All the time the box is contaminated by poison by the poisoner themselves. To you: "poor thing you are in hospital"; to the group:" she is vulnerable, even though she has a special box she still thinks she is being poisoned.", to the public "paranoia is a terrilbe thing'. And so on, and so on, until this sustained poison does indeed poison us, we no longer know who is poisoning us, we think perhaps we are imagining it. We had thought we knew our adversary but we cannot be right, this person is so kind. Soon, everyone pities you for your madness, they no longer trust your judgement and you no longer drink milk though it sustained you for all of your life. You stop eating anything at all, no longer able to trust it, you become frail, weakened, the people around you stop eating too, they become frail and weakened. The poisoner starts to sell these milk boxes in bulk. To you: "I have paid with my own money for some more boxes, you never know where or when the poisoner might strike". As the poisoner sells the boxes, they are taken as gifts, taken in trust, their milk is poisoned. To the group: "you can never be too careful, when people are delusional", the public "a mad person is on the loose, the devil is at work'. slowly all the milk is poisoned, we have been deprived of our life blood, our sustainance. We no longer eat together, in case it has been poisoned, in case one of us is the poisoner. The giver of gifts at least cannot be the poisoner, and so we join the poisoner, sure of our safety, they at least know where it began.
Whole communities are starved slowly, allegiances to the poisoner formed, innocent people secretly, covertly, invisibly violated in public in an apparently legitimate way for apparently legitmate reasons. They have been played with, lied to, stolen from, they have been cleverly manipulated because of their trust, power has been abused.
All evil starts with this tiny banal deliberate innacuracy, the slight intonation, the tiny double-meaning which can be taken anyway you choose. Evil makes us think we have chosen it. But it has poisoned us.
So far, so bleak, but the banality of evil is nothing next to the triumph of the human spirit, the courage of faith, the insistence that we should foster trust, truth and feed each other regardless of the risk. We should never honour evil with claims that it is powerful. There is no power so strong as a shared human desire to trust again and to point at the evil in all its weak, self-concerned despicable stench. Evil violates us, it takes us to places that we have not chosen to go and gives us no way out. Human love gives us a way out of that imposed exile from our homeland. Love thrives with truth, honesty and trust, seeking the joy of others, the fruition of lives, the unity of communities. Evil is banal in comparison.

Good news

Jan is coming out of hospital probably today. I was so relieved when i heard that I burst into tears and couldn't stop crying.
We have more time.
Relief