From Scott. In an airport. Again.
Like Eric, I’m still processing the great experience we had at Wild Goose. Unlike Eric, my bicycle didn’t get stolen. I took a ride across the Missouri River yesterday to see how the flood waters have risen. Have a look on my Facebook page. Omaha, according to Darkwood Brew sax dude Matt Wallace, looks like a port city. Today I’m on a plane again. This time off to Tampa for the General Synod meeting of the United Church of Christ. I’ll be working in the newsroom.
This week we’re thinking about forgiveness. My non-theistic leanings make the idea of any sort of divine forgiveness a bit challenging. I experience forgiveness as a constant state of grace vs. an incident-oriented one at a time kind of thing. I don’t really think much about the concept of forgiveness as it is typically conceived. I especially veer off from the idea that we can, or ought to, forgive and forget. I’m just not sure we’re wired that way.
I believe that our basic humanity is a positive, but conflicted state. I don’t buy doctrine that puts humans in a negative relationship towards the divine or towards each other from the start and then demands that we experience some kind of ultimate forgiveness. I do believe that we are brought forth in grace, which means, to me, that we start from a sort of blessed position. Being human and imperfect, we can easily run off course. I know it happens to me all the time. Some times I know what I’m doing, some times I don’t and very often I make a choice between options. How many times in life do we have to make that hard choice where someone isn’t going to be happy with the results? Trying to commit the lesser of two trespasses.
Our question this week asks when we can give unconditional forgiveness. I’m more interested in restoring a relationship that, rather than wiping out the memory or the imprint of the “wrong,” can integrate and live with a whole view of another person recognizing that they are imperfect and loving them anyway.
Now, let me say that I think this works in situations where there is a basic respect between parties. People who are trying to do the right thing. I don’t see a need to forgive someone who is abusive or purposefully hurtful. I suppose if they are contrite at some point it could be worth exploring, but I think putting the weight of expected forgiveness on a victim is just heaping on more injustice. So I’m fine with the idea that we won’t always forgive. Fortunately in my life I’ve had great relationships…so I haven’t had this added strain. However, for people who have, I can’t imagine how arrogant it is to ask them to forgive and forget.
For me, in my relationships, I focus on recognizing the hurt or offense, reconciling the situation and moving on together.
From Aramaic, FORGIVE,[washboqlan] may also be translated “return to its original state,” “reciprocally absorb,” “reestablish slender ties to,” and “embrace with emptiness.” The change contained in these concepts restores original relationship with the non theistic origin,the Unity,the One both for petitioner and others we connect with. Reciprocity here proceeds from assisted proactive change. IMHO
Raymond, thanks, thanks for this genealogy. It is especially appropriate in light of Scott’s essay. Forgiveness in the sense you point to would not require “forgiving and forgetting” but something more akin to reconciling with one’s made-in-the-image-of-God origin through relationship with the other, self, and God.
This has practical implications. Liberals often get charged with coddling the sinner, “forgiving” the unrepentant and giving a free pass for abuse. This is actually a cogent criticism. The both progressive and ancient orthodoxy you present (of which I would list myself an adherent), solves this problem, for if someone continues to take a perverse joy in being wrong, and being abusive, it is THEY who are preventing forgiveness, preventing completion of the forgiving act.
Forgiveness is a relational act. Reciprocity is necessary. Even God and Jesus cannot effectively forgive us unless we accept that forgiveness.
Unconditional forgiveness depends upon no “thing” to make it happen, no cause to generate its initiation, but its success is still built upon the completion inherent in some form of acceptance, reciprocity, heartfelt grace in its small and big senses.
One who is forgiven for doing something wrong or even monstrous, must accept the grace and transformation and new responsibility that comes with such unconditional grace. This has happened concretely in a number of examples in the transformative reconciliations between murderer and parent of those who have been murdered.
If the murderer instead said, “Yeah, thanks for letting me off the hook. I have no remorse whatsoever for what I’ve done. Your son/daughter was in the way of something I wanted when I killed them while robbing them,” I doubt anyone would call that effective forgiveness.
We can acknowledge the imperfection of human beings, and we can understand that we can, by our imperfection, prevent faith and forgiveness from transforming us, and leading us back to our divine origins. We can know that these unsuccessful forgivenesses are temporary in the grand scheme of things. We can know we will be reconciled and learn to know. And we can also know that unconditional forgiveness is necessary in our growth and as a perfect act of faith in an imperfect world. But we cannot delude ourselves that this act, by itself, can transform the world.
That takes choice, cooperation, and reciprocity. Perhaps the best term to describe incomplete, though unconditional forgiveness, would be “unrequited forgiveness”. As with love, God can love us perfectly and still be turned down, much to our loss, much due to our hubris and imperfection.
Nonetheless we are still of spirit. Unconditional forgiveness, grace, and love, give us our only real chance to return to the divine in ourselves again, and “know it for the first time” as the poet T.S. Eliot said:
“We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.”
T.S. Eliot — “Little Gidding” (the last of his Four Quartets)
Forgiveness can be like that. Grace can be like that, love can be like that. It is the turn of grace, forgiveness, and love through faith and by our recognition of our divine spark, and our agreement to return with that energy to its source, that we are redeemed and truly forgiven in a way that completes forgiveness.