Forgiveness and Justice!
Recently I was reading about Darfur in New Internationalist magazine . The UN calls it “the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.” An estimated 400,000 people have been killed there in recent years, with incredible acts of brutality. The smaller heading says:
My baby boy was thrown on the fire in front of me. My daughter was older. They thought she was a boy so they slaughtered her too.
Unfortunately this is not unique. It seems like this sort of thing is happening all over the world. Whether it’s Africa, or Burma, Afghanistan or Latin America.
For many, life is intolerably cruel. Human rights abuse and ethnic cleansing have been happening for millennia. Very often in the name of God, going right back to Joshua’s invasion of Canaan, recorded in our Scriptures.
Closer to home, this week marked the anniversary of the Hoddle St killings, and we’ve seen victims interviewed on TV saying Julian Knight should rot in jail, or similar. ‘A man who so cold bloodedly killed so many and showed no remorse deserves to die in prison’.
And then we come to church and we hear the words of Jesus:
“Love your enemy…do good to those who hate you… pray for those who abuse you…
forgive and you will be forgiven”
How can one possibly forgive when someone has indiscriminately killed your child or your husband?
I don’t know if I could, I pray I never find out. But today I want to talk about forgiveness, and I want to talk about justice, because I believe the two must go together.
There is a saying that we should ‘forgive and forget’. My view is that we should forgive and not forget.
Nelson Mandela is an outstanding example for this, I think. After he had been in prison many years he made a decision to forgive. He said that if he came out of that jail still hating them then they still and power over him. So he made a decision to forgive, and to go forward in his life, and the rest is history. He forgave, he let it go, but he didn’t forget. If we forget something we risk repeating it and there are things that should never be repeated.
That was the whole point of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa. So many stories needed to be told, they needed to be out in the open, they needed to be acknowledged and remembered before healing could happen. When things are swept under the carpet healing doesn’t happen.
I want to put it to you that if we have been hurt we need to forgive, for our own sake, for our own health and well-being. But that does not mean you can’t still pursue justice. That’s a different issue.
(Show video clip, ‘Forgiveness’)
A couple of years ago our home groups watched a video on forgiveness by Lewis Smede. I found it very helpful when he identified 4 steps to forgiving:
- Acknowledge the hurt
- Blame the person (explain – e.g. ads on TV, “It wasn’t their fault”)
- Surrender your ‘right’ to get even … (give up the desire for vengeance. What happens to the other person then does not control you.)
4. Revise your feelings… etc
In 1987 Gordon Wilson was attending a peaceful memorial service in Northern Ireland with his daughter Marie when a terrorist bomb exploded killing 10 people. Gordon’s daughter was trapped in the rubble and died while holding his hand. Only hours after the bombing he told BBC reporters, “I have lost my daughter and we shall miss her but we bear no ill will. I bear no grudge … that will not bring her back”. He gave up his ‘right’ for revenge. Incredibly, the local Protestant para-military leadership felt so convicted by his courage they didn’t retaliate. His words broke the cycle of violence – at least temporarily.
The key point of this is the third point – surrendering your perceived ‘right’ to get even. Forgiveness eliminates retribution. It cuts across that deadly cycle of escalating violence. Non-retaliation is a crucial point of the Christian ethic. John Stott says that retaliation and revenge are absolutely forbidden to the followers of Jesus.
But this does not preclude justice. Justice is not about getting even, it’s not about getting your own back. Justice is about reform, it’s about seeing that the violence doesn’t happen again. It’s about preventing other people from being hurt. And it involves punishment. It is even-handed, and normally dished out by an independent authority.
Gordon Wilson forgave the people who took his daughter’s life, even though he knew they were not remorseful, but he maintained they should be punished and imprisoned.
Forgiveness can go hand in hand with justice. But we must forgive – for our own sake and for the sake of the other. That, I believe, is the message Jesus lived and died by. That is the gospel message we take to the world.
“Love your enemy…do good to those who hate you… pray for those who abuse you…”
That, I believe, is the only hope for this world. It is the only way to break the cycle of violence. Now I know it’s cheap for me to say that when I’ve never been the victim of significant violence, however many have lived out this forgiveness in extreme circumstances. Their stories need to be heard.
The South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission made many who had committed crimes under apartheid face their former victims. A white security officer, Mr Van der Broek, was brought before a frail, almost blind lady in her 70’s. He was convicted of going to this woman’s house and murdering her son, then several years later returning and taking her husband away. She was later forced to watch while they beat him to death.
The representative of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission asked the woman what she wanted, “How should justice be done to this man who so brutally destroyed your family?”
“I want three things,’ she said. “First, I want to be taken to where my husband was burned so that I can gather up the dust and give him a decent burial. Secondly, my husband and son were my only family, therefore I want Mr Van der Broek to become my son. I would like him to come to my township weekly and spend a day with me so that I can pour out whatever love I still have remaining in me. Finally, I would like Mr Van der Broek to know that I offer him my forgiveness because Jesus Christ died to forgive. This would also have been my husband’s wish.”
Then she said, “Would someone lead me over to Mr Van der Broek so that I may embrace him and let him know that he is truly forgiven.”
At this, Mr Van der Broek collapsed to the floor, overwhelmed, while friends and supporters of the woman – all victims of decades of oppression – sang softly, “Amazing Grace”.
Forgiveness is not just something you must do for your own healing, it is a wonderful gift for the other person. It is the power that can change the world.
12th Aug ’07
Glengarry, T’gon 10:30
Luke 6:27-37 |