Forgiveness, Dr. King and Osama

Given much of the readership of this blog, I am probably about to not make many friends. I came across this website today that is basically an open letter that one can sign saying that “I forgive Osama for attacking America.” This is the kind of thing that makes me sigh, look at my fellow lefties and say, “I know you mean well and want to do the right thing, but honey – you’re just not helping.”

If forgiveness were not such a central tenet of the Christian faith, I’d let this lie and not say anything, because I really do think that whoever started the website and those who signed the letter have excellent intentions. The whole not walking around seething with hatred thing – I’m on board with that. But I think that the website, good-hearted as it is, demonstrates a misunderstanding of forgiveness.

We can only forgive people for the ways that they have harmed us. We CANNOT forgive someone for the harm they have done to another person. If you had a loved one die on 9/11, then okay, you get to sign that letter. Otherwise, I think that kind of forgiveness is cheap. I could say that I forgive Osama, but that would require nothing of me. Truth is, he didn’t hurt me all that much. I didn’t know anyone who died, and I already knew the world was bloody and unfair, so it didn’t even shake the way I see things. For me, the biggest effect of 9/11 was how the funding for non-profits took a nosedive afterwards. I don’t hate him, but I do believe he should be found, imprisoned for the rest of his life, and all his assets confiscated. I also think he’s a pretty evil man, although like all of us, not beyond redemption.

I can’t forgive Hitler either, because my ancestors were not Jewish – they were mostly Presbyterians, and precious few Calvinists went to the gas chamber. Or let’s take a more local example. Let’s say that I dropped by the house of Deliesh Allen’s family and told them that I forgive the man who shot her. I figure there would be about 30 seconds of stunned silence and then somebody would kick my stupid butt out of the house. If they were exceptionally decent people, maybe no one would beat me. Whether her family will enter into the slow and torturous process of forgiveness is their choice to make. I have nothing to do with it, and I have nothing to do whether or not the families and friends of victims of 9/11 choose to forgive Osama. They are the only ones whose forgiveness means anything.

I dig pacifism and the power of forgiveness. I really do, but forgiveness and non-violence is a hard road that will make you bleed. If it doesn’t, it probably just means that your life hasn’t touched much suffering yet. Many of the students that come through the program I work for trumpet their commitment to non-violence. This is a good thing, but there are days that I want to look at some of them and say, “Well, of course, you believe in non-violence and forgiveness – you grew up in Santa Barbara! How hard is it to be non-violent six blocks from the beach?”

The students read Dr. King’s autobiography and some of his other work, wherein he lays out his philosophy of non-violent resistance. The students all admire that, as they should, but it is very important to remember that it is one thing to talk forgiveness sitting in your living room. It is quite another to talk forgiveness in front of dogs and waterhoses or from a jail cell or from the beat-down end of a billy club. Non-violence cost something then, and so did forgiveness. You might say it cost him everything, since they shot him dead in Memphis. People DIED in the civil rights movement. They were beaten, and they were jailed. King took many of his idea about non-violence from Gandhi. Gandhi ate fruit and nuts for 20 years, went on multiple hunger strikes, and watched 8,000 Indians die in the fight for independence from the British.

It’s a hard cold world sometimes, and if you have never wanted to take a hand grenade to certain parts of it, then you have not been paying attention. I used to work at a center on child abuse & neglect, and I was a foster care social worker for a year as well. Some parents do horrible things to their children, and when I was confronted with a six year old with gonorrhea, I did not want to be non-violent. I wanted a very sharp knife and the perpetrator’s testicles in a Ziploc bag. I’ve known a number of young teenage girls over the years, and when men in their twenties decide to prey on some fourteen year old who is in the 8th grade, I never wanted to see the image of God in those young men. I wanted to stand on that girl’s front steps with a shotgun, and when that predatory fool swaggered up, I wanted to point that gun right between his eyes and tell him to turn around, keep moving, and stay the hell away from girls in middle school. I have friends who have lived through some very bad things, and when I hear about those things, there is a part of me that wants to mess those individuals up with a baseball bat. I don’t feel repentant about feeling that way, because never feeling outrage scares me more than the anger.

And letting go of anger at other people’s pain is easy compared to letting go of anger at mine. That is hard, and it takes forever, and devious forms of revenge frequently feel like an excellent option. The road to forgiveness leads through the anger, and I have to walk through it over and over again. Forgiving the big stuff is a long, slow, bloody process that means experiencing the full magnitude of the damage that someone else caused and feeling all the devastation. It means looking down into the shadows I carry and feeling the full force of just how angry I am. It has to hurt first, and only then can I start to move beyond that towards healing and forgiveness.

So sign the letter if you like – but only if writing your name down will cost you something.

Comments

[Heather]

May God give me the grace to forgive those whom I need to forgive. I suppose the wrestling with it-- not really wanting to forgive-- is part of the process of forgiveness 70 x 7.

[Chris T.]

This is a wonderful post. And I think the impulse toward cheap forgiveness is all the more dangerous because it less us off the hook for forgiving people where it costs us a great deal—after all, we've already done our part, we say.

I suppose the flip side is that one should not necessarily feel "cheap outrage," either. When I see "Kill a Jihadist for Jesus" banners on the web and things like that, I wonder, what have jihadists really done to that person? Are they outraged because Middle Eastern society has subjugated countless women and the jihadists have taken over one of the world's great religions? That might be useful outrage. Or are they outraged because it's nice to have an enemy, and people who look and talk like the jihadist they're outraged at today killed some Americans yesterday? I don't think that's useful.

[reverendmother]

Hmm. Very interesting. I'm really pondering this.

I would never sign such a petition, and I think you're right that there's something facile about it (however well-intentioned the folks behind it might be). And your points about cheap forgiveness are well taken.

But in this post I am hearing echoes of what I hear all the time in the church I serve, when people are faced with suffering and grief in their own lives: "Oh, who am I to complain? So many people have it so much worse than I do. I lost my father to cancer, but I had him for so many years, think about those people who lose children."

As if grief is a competitive sport.

Or, as if we only have cause to forgive someone, as long as there isn't someone who's been hurt worse by them.

I'm not saying all suffering is equal either, or all broken relationships are on equal footing. I agree that you walking in to the Allen home and announcing your forgiveness of the shooter would be stupid. But not for the reasons you suggest. Rather, it's an interpersonal issue, a pastoral issue (what on earth would be gained by you going?). The inappropriateness of sharing one's forgiving attitude with someone who's been hurt doesn't necessarily make the need to forgive any less urgent. If there is resentment and anger, if it is eating away at the soul, then a spirit of forgiveness may be required.

[jon]

Good post!

[anj]

I'm too jaded today to comment meaningfully. But - I wanted to say, I so am with you on the cheap forgiveness issue, and rev mommy, with you on the grief competition. Forgiveness is so misunderstood, and so cheaply given, and so harmfully withheld...Thanks for the post.

[Stuart Berman]

Well said Christy.

In Judaism we consider that you ask God forgiveness against our sins against Him, but you seek forgiveness from people you have sinned against after you have performed restitution. Forgiveness isn't cheap.

In Christianity I believe it is said that there is no forgiveness without repentance.

So far I haven't heard much in the way of repentance from Osama. I don't hate him - or even the other foul creatures you mention, but we are to blame if we fail to prevent further atrocities.

[Christy]

Heather - Sometimes it does take 70 x 7 times, doesn't it?

Chris - Kill a jihadist for Jesus? Is that for real or did you make it up? If it's for real, that's just disturbing. I agree with you on the cheap outrage thing - I think most of that is free-floating anger looking for an outlet - if it wasn't jihadists, then it would be something else.

Reverend Mother - I agree with you on the "grief as a competitive sport" thing. I think we usually use that as a way of not facing our own grief and pain by spiritualizing it or disguising it as care for others. I hope I didn't communicate that forgiveness should work that way - little wounds become big ones if they are faced and dealt with. Mostly I just had a bug up my butt about what passes for forgiveness in most Christian circles, where we smile sweetly and say we forgive someone, whether it's for something small or large, as a way of avoiding looking at the damage and walking through it.

Jon and Anj - glad you liked it.

[Chris T.]

Sadly, I did not make that banner up. Dwight over at Religious Liberal blog found it and was commenting over at the guy's site for a while. There's a quote from Erasmus (Praise of Folly) that I think is apropos:

"[W]hen the Christian church has been all along first planted, then confirmed, and since established by the blood of her martyrs, as if Christ her head would be wanting in the same methods still of protecting her, they invert the order, and propagate their religion now by arms and violence, which was wont formerly to be done only with patience and sufferings."

That was written a little less than 500 years ago. The more things change...

[Rick]

Christy - I had seen that petition mentioned on a few blogs and wanted to say something along these lines, but I'm glad you wrote this. It's more thoughtful and less argumentative than anything I would have said. In fact, it earns you a spot in my blog roll :=)

[reverendmother]

Yeah, I'm with you on that particular bug, Christy.

I enjoy your blog very much.

[Anthony]

I agree that forgiveness could be appropriated in a cheap way through a website soliciting forgiveness of Osama. But I think to interpret the website in the fashion in which you have you have given a very reductionist account of forgiveness. Forgiveness is not only a interpersonal issue between two individual parties. Forgiveness is also a communal practice. What transpired on 9/11 deeply affected the country on various levels. What I see in this website is a call for Christians to develop the virtues necessary to be a forgiving people. I think it is much larger than Osama. It is about reminding people that Christians (and others I suppose) are supposed to be a people that resist the seductions of collective rage and violence. I think such websites are a remedy for the jingoism and hatred that has poisoned the psyche of many Americans.

Anthony

[dave paisley]

Awesome post. I think your hypothetical Allen family example really puts it in perspective.

As for rage, I've always loved the line from Sarah McLachlan's Fumbling Towards Ecstasy,

"If I feel a rage I won't deny it".

It doesn't mean that it defines our entire response to a situation, but trying to deny it's there is simply not helpful.

[Christy]

Anthony -
Thanks for your input. I absolutely agree with you that forgiveness is both interpersonal and communal. I think I was reacting to a tendency that I frequently see in some of my fellow lefties, particularly those who are white and middle-class. Possibly I was projecting that onto the creators of the website, which may not be fair. At any rate, I hear a lot of talk of forgiveness or anti-war rhetoric or non-violence that doesn't really grapple with hard realities or the evil in the world - kind of a "why can't we all just get along?" approach to the world - except for the Bush administration, which comes in for a fair amount of vitriol.

Of course, I live in L.A., spend a lot of time in the non-profit world, and practically everyone I know is left of center politically or apolitical. I do find the jingoistic tendencies of many Americans quite disturbing, but the truth is, I hardly ever meet anyone who views the world that way because of the circles I run in. I have a lot more contact with the inconsistencies of the left, so that bugs me more. If I were still living in my home state of Oklahoma or attending a conservative evangelical church, I might have had a completely different response to the website.

Given your comments and Reverend Mother's, maybe I should do some further thinking and write an addendum.