In the first of a two part article, NILS VON KALM looks at the concept of forgiveness…
In late 2021, I had a major conflict with someone who I had been very close to for decades.
It was so bad that the deep rage I felt inside me told me that I knew I had to get professional help. I saw a therapist who agreed that it was best to cut off contact with this person for a while.
A fresco showing Jesus forgiving Peter as recorded in the Gospel of John by SG Rudl in the Church of St Václav, Prague, Czech Republic. PICTURE: Renata Sedmakova/Shutterstock
The person who I was in conflict with had inflicted severe emotional abuse on me many years beforehand and I realised I still hadn’t processed it properly. I cut off contact with this person for the next six months, all the while receiving therapy about my anger and hurt.
While I felt guilty cutting off contact, I knew it was the best thing to do. It was healing.
“The divine nature of forgiveness is shown in the wonderful fact that it has universal relevance. Forgiveness applies to our personal relationships as much as it does to business and international relations.”
After some months, I was able to get to the point where I just didn’t want to be angry anymore. It all came out when, one day, with people supporting me, I spent about 15 minutes sobbing uncontrollably, after which I felt lighter emotionally than I had for many years.
It was then that it hit me that the abuse this person had inflicted on me should never have happened, but it did, I can’t change it, and I can move on. It was only later that I realised that this was the moment that my forgiveness of this person became real.
The brilliant Australian cartoonist Michael Leunig says, “Love one another, and you will be happy. It’s as simple and as difficult as that.” Forgiveness, as a particular expression of love, is simple in principle but difficult when we are the ones who need to do the forgiving.
None of us go through life without being betrayed at some level. We all need to learn about forgiveness for our relationships to prosper.
The beauty and difficulty of forgiveness is what we see in Matthew 18:21-35, when Peter asks Jesus how often we must forgive someone when they hurt us. Jesus then proceeds to tell a story that has universal implications.
The divine nature of forgiveness is shown in the wonderful fact that it has universal relevance. Forgiveness applies to our personal relationships as much as it does to business and international relations.
But what does forgiveness look like? Well, it looks something like what I had to go through a couple of years ago. But what it doesn’t look like is the cliché of ‘forgiving and forgetting’. The notion of “forgive and forget” has been misused by Christians and others to the point that it has seriously hindered relationships and reconciliation.
On the surface, the notion of “forgive and forget” implies that to forgive is to say that the wrong inflicted wasn’t that bad, that we can just move on and forget about it. But try telling that to the woman in Sudan who has just been raped and forced to watch her son be killed in front of her. Tell that to the wife who has just found out about her husband’s infidelity – again – and who doesn’t know whether or not she can go on living with him. And tell that to the races of people all across the world who have been oppressed for hundreds of years and “who need just to be patient, and things will eventually change.”
To “forgive and forget” is to deny the reality of the wrongdoing. It is actually giving evil a power it doesn’t have.
Christian author Miroslav Volf explains clearly why forgiveness is not about forgetting in the sense described above: He says, “Forgiveness names the wrongdoing to let go of it. The thrust of forgiveness is the letting go of it. That’s why you need to name the wrongdoing.” To name the wrongdoing, we need to remember it.
In Luke 23:34, we see Jesus uttering probably the most powerful words of forgiveness ever spoken while He is hanging, about to die, on a Roman cross. The fact that He utters these words in the moment of His greatest and most unbearable agony shows the power of what true forgiveness really is. He doesn’t say these words after His resurrection when He is about to ascend back to the glory of Heaven. He does so when his pain is at its greatest. There is no forgetting in Jesus’ forgiving.
Forgiveness has no qualifiers. It is unconditional. For Jesus, forgiveness is all about the restoration of relationship. And he calls us to follow in his footsteps. Here’s how Martin Luther King, Jr, explained it: “Forgiveness does not mean ignoring what has been done or putting a false label on an evil act. It means, rather, that the evil act no longer remains as a barrier to the relationship. Forgiveness is a catalyst creating the atmosphere necessary for a fresh start and a new beginning. It is the lifting of a burden or the canceling of a debt.”
“As Volf says, forgiveness is a central element of reconciliation. The reconciling of relationships through forgiveness must contain an element of remembering. Otherwise, it’s not true forgiveness; it is denial which does not triumph over evil.”
As Volf says, forgiveness is a central element of reconciliation. The reconciling of relationships through forgiveness must contain an element of remembering. Otherwise, it’s not true forgiveness; it is denial which does not triumph over evil.
Desmond Tutu is another great leader who knew the reality of forgiveness. In his book, No Future Without Forgiveness, he says: “Forgiving is not forgetting; it’s actually remembering – remembering and not using your right to hit back. It’s a second chance for a new beginning. And the remembering part is particularly important. Especially if you don’t want to repeat what happened.”
Forgiveness – and the remembrance of wrongs committed – must be central if we are to avoid the mistakes of history. This is true whether it be in our homes, our churches, or in the halls of political power.
The only form of forgiving and forgetting that the Bible endorses is when it is not an impediment to the beauty of restored relationship. As Volf goes on to say: “Non-remembrance is the outcome of successful forgiveness and reconciliation. As long as we remember, we have chiseled in the perpetrator that they are a wrongdoer. You will always see them as a wrongdoer, and we give evil a power it doesn’t have. True forgiveness sees the wrongdoer as someone made in the image of God, loving them unconditionally, as God does. Non-remembrance is a crowning gift of new life.”
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Throughout Scripture, God leads by example in forgiving us. God passionately desires relationship with us, and God’s continual action, as described so eloquently by Isaiah, is that “though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be like snow; though they are red like crimson, they shall become like wool” (Isaiah 1:18).
It is in forgiving as God has forgiven us in Christ (Ephesians 4:32) that we help bring in the new world that Jesus has inaugurated. It is only in recognising and acknowledging the hurt we have caused God that God’s forgiveness of us is real. And it is in the pain of our oppression that our forgiveness of our oppressors has its greatest impact. To paraphrase I John 4:19, we forgive because God first forgave us. This is how God transforms the world.
Forgiveness is also not just pushing wrongdoing under the carpet. That is denial and is codependent. It is not Christian because it’s not loving to the person who has been hurt. It’s invalidating. We all need to be heard and understood.
On the other hand, while forgiveness is not pushing the wrongdoing under the carpet, it is to be the ultimate goal. NT Wright says that if you’re still counting how many times you’ve forgiven someone, you haven’t forgiven them; you’re just postponing revenge.
There is also a misconception amongst some Christians that God’s mercy and God’s justice are at odds with each other. To explain this, we often use the verse that says ‘mercy triumphs over judgment’ (James 2:13).
God’s mercy and justice are not at odds with each other. They complement each other perfectly. This is because the justice of God is restorative, not punitive. It’s about restoration, not about punishment.
We see this played out in the world, especially in prison systems. Research shows that in those countries where doing time in prison is only about punishment and treating people with less dignity than the rest of the population, the reoffending rate is higher when those people are released back into society. But if we consider the example of Scandinavian countries, where the prison system is about rehabilitation of the prisoner, the reoffending rates are much lower. The question in those instances has to be asked, “who is being soft on crime?”.
Forgiveness is healing in every aspect. What the Christian Gospel says is that absolutely no one is beyond redemption. Anyone can be transformed. And it really is love that can do it. But it is not a weak, mushy, sentimental love that implies that the wrong-doing was not that serious. That is not love and it is not Christian.
