NILS VON KALM continues his look at the Biblical concept of forgiveness…
Melbourne, Australia
If ever the idea of forgiveness was relevant to the world, surely it is now as we witness the war between Israel and Hamas.
Part of a broader conflict that has been going for 75 years, the latest outbreak of violence began when Hamas carried out atrocities on 7th October. Israel then saw its only reasonable option as responding with force, but it has done so with what Norway’s Prime MInister Jonas Gahr Store and others have called “disproportionate” attacks.
PICTURE: e.backlund/Shutterstock
As I write this, I am reminded of Desmond Tutu’s words that there is no future without forgiveness. This is certainly the case in the Middle East right now.
While the war rages however, the power of forgiveness goes on behind the scenes. I saw this first-hand when I was in the Middle East in 2018 as part of a group visiting Israel and the West Bank and seeing the suffering that Palestinians were experiencing.
“While the media focuses on the violence, what we do not hear about is the many groups of Jews and Palestinians there working together for peace. One of these groups is the Parents’ Circle Family Forum. This is a group of a few hundred Jews and Palestinians who have all lost loved ones in the conflict over the decades and who are now working together to spread the message that peace is what is required for the future of the region.”
While the media focuses on the violence, what we do not hear about is the many groups of Jews and Palestinians there working together for peace. One of these groups is the Parents’ Circle Family Forum. This is a group of a few hundred Jews and Palestinians who have all lost loved ones in the conflict over the decades and who are now working together to spread the message that peace is what is required for the future of the region.
Our group met with a Jewish man named Rami and a young Palestinian man named Arrab. Rami had lost his teenage daughter to a suicide bomber about 25 years earlier, and Arrab had lost his sister to an Israeli sniper about 10 years prior.
Rami described how he was full of rage when his daughter was killed. He just wanted to kill all Palestinians. Eventually though, he realised that nothing he did was going to bring back his daughter. So, he decided to work for peace.
In a move that brought tears to our eyes, after he told his story, Rami put his arm around his young Palestinian friend and said, “he is my son”. I could imagine Jesus looking at this and saying, “today, salvation has come to this place”. It was truly a move of the Spirit of God that brought these two together in reconciliation.
One of the most inspiring books I have ever read is about forgiveness. It is simply called, Why Forgive? and is a compilation of stories of forgiveness from all around the world put together by Johann Christoph Arnold of the Bruderhof community. The introduction to the book lays out the reality of what forgiveness is. It says the following:
“What does forgiving really mean? Clearly it has little to do with human fairness, which demands an eye for an eye, or with excusing, which means brushing something aside. Life is never fair, and it is full of things that can never be excused. When we forgive someone for a mistake or a deliberate hurt, we still recognise it as such, but instead of lashing out, we attempt to see beyond it, so as to restore our relationship with the person responsible for it. Our forgiveness may not take away our pain – it may not even be acknowledged or accepted – yet the act of offering it will keep us from being sucked into the downward spiral of resentment. It will also guard against the temptation of taking out our anger or hurt on someone else.”
This is where the point about forgiveness is that it is ultimately something we do for ourselves, as the person we are forgiving may not want it or accept it or even acknowledge the hurt they’ve caused, or they may be long dead.
On the other hand, because we are social creatures, it is also never just something we do for ourselves. Nothing we do in life ever just affects ourselves. When we forgive, we are healed and that inevitably changes the way we relate with those around us. We can only bring across who we are. As St Paul said, we either have the fragrance of life or the fragrance of death (II Corinthians 2:15-17).
FOR PART ONE: Sight-Seeing: The raw beauty and difficulty of forgiveness
Forgiveness is also not something that you just decide in your head to do. If it is merely an intellectual decision, it won’t be real. We have to enter into the pain of the hurt we have experienced; we have to feel it. And it can’t be forced. We need to let it happen to us. In my case, I had to grieve what happened to me. I had to face the pain and feel the rage at what the other person had done to me.
This of course takes time; it is a grief process. Grief takes as long as it takes. For me it was that six month period of no contact. In that time, a number of things happened. I talked about it with someone who heard and understood me. I did a lot of work on myself, had good support and realised that I needed to do this for myself.
In the end I didn’t even realise I had forgiven the person until I realised one thing: I had come to the point where I could accept that what happened to me should never have happened, but it did and I can’t change it and I can move on. It reminded me of the best definition of forgiveness I’d ever heard: forgiveness is giving up the demand for a better past. Thinking about that person now doesn’t bring up the resentment it once did.
All of that took time. Telling someone that the Christian thing to do is forgive, and then expecting them to do that straight away is not just unrealistic; it is abusive. It just worsens the pain for the wronged person, bringing a deeper sense of guilt for thinking that they should have forgiven the person by now, not to mention a sense of shame that, because they haven’t forgiven yet, they are therefore somehow not right with God.
The amount of shame this produces in the church is awful. What we hear from pulpits about that is often shallow, doesn’t get to the heart of the problem and therefore makes the problem worse. True forgiveness takes time, deep work through facing your pain (often through tears), and ruthless honesty with yourself.
The fact is that our pain will come out either way. It will come out in destructive ways if it isn’t dealt with, through violence or addiction or some other very hurtful way, or it will come out in rivers of healing tears, a smooth embalming oil of healing that will leave us settled with an inner restfulness that is hard to put into words. When we are ready and don’t force it but let it come, it will be life-transforming.
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After my experience, I am also now convinced that forgiveness does not require a response from the person you have forgiven. The person I forgave is still totally oblivious to the hurt they caused me, and has been in complete denial about it when I’ve brought it up in the past. I don’t see myself ever getting an apology from this person. But I’m not going to sit around waiting and let that stop me living my life.
My experience has also cemented my ideas about the nature of God’s forgiveness of us. God does not require repentance to forgive us. When Jesus lay hanging on the cross, He prayed for forgiveness for the people who put Him there. We are not told that any of them had repented. Forgiveness comes first. It is God’s kindness that leads to repentance, not the other way ‘round.
“Forgiveness also doesn’t necessarily mean that there will be a reconciled relationship with the other person. You might still need to enforce boundaries for your own self-care or safety.”
Forgiveness also doesn’t necessarily mean that there will be a reconciled relationship with the other person. You might still need to enforce boundaries for your own self-care or safety.
This all relates to Jesus’ command to love our enemies. This most difficult command of Jesus was not an idealist, hopelessly unrealistic, utopian idea. He knew it was the only thing that can heal our world. Martin Luther King expressed it well when he said the following: “We must develop and maintain the capacity to forgive. whoever is devoid of the power to forgive is devoid of the power to love. It is impossible even to begin the act of loving one’s enemies without the prior acceptance of the necessity, over and over again, of forgiving those who inflict evil and injury upon us.
It is also necessary to realise that the forgiving act must always be initiated by the person who has been wronged, the victim of some great hurt, the recipient of some tortuous injustice, the absorber of some terrible act of oppression. The wrongdoer may request forgiveness. They may come to themselves, and like the prodigal son, move up some dusty road, their heart palpitating with the desire for forgiveness. But only the injured neighbour, the loving father back home, can really pour out the warm waters of forgiveness”.
Is this really possible as conflict rages in the Middle East today? It has happened before. It happened in South Africa, Northern Ireland, and Rwanda, just to name a few places. We must continue to believe that forgiveness is not only possible, but is the only sane and reasonable response in a world of conflict.
