The complexities of forgiving: Part 2 August 6, 2011
Posted by Hampton Morgan in Evil, Healing.trackback
“What would you do?” asks Simon Wiesenthal as he finishes the account of his experience in Karl’s hospital room. Forced to hear the confession of Karl’s atrocities against Jews — and his request to be forgiven — Wiesenthal leaves the room without speaking a single word. (For background, see my previous post — here).
The remainder of The Sunflower contains the responses of over 50 contributors of different religious and philosophical persuasions. Many endorse Wiesenthal’s silent response to Karl; all recognize the enormity of the challenge he faced in Karl’s hospital room and the very important questions raised by Karl’s deeds and his request to be absolved so that he could die in peace.
One of the most compelling reasons not to forgive Karl is the legitimate concern that forgiving such heinous deeds will serve to diminish the horror of the crime and very possibly encourage other people of ill will to perpetrate similar deeds. It has been of urgent importance to many Jews who survived the Holocaust to work tirelessly to keep alive the world’s collective memory of what happened in Nazi Germany. Moreover, many Jews have steadfastly maintained that forgiving those who initiated and participated in such genocidal crimes is unthinkable and would be an unspeakable moral wrong.
I remember Elie Wiesel’s passionate urging in an oval office meeting with President Reagan that he not visit and lay a wreath at the cemetery in Bitburg, Germany because members of the SS were buried there. Reagan did so anyway, an action interpreted as an official declaration of forgiveness by America of Germany’s Nazi past.
The Holocaust was such a searing experience for its Jewish witnesses and survivors that their faith in God was shaken to the core.
Some have answered Wiesenthal’s question by affirming that he was in his right to not forgive because he did not have “standing” to forgive. Karl’s sin that day in Dnepropetrovsk was against the innocent men, women and children who were locked in the house and incinerated. Only they have standing to forgive Karl’s sin. But since they are all dead, no human has the right to forgive Karl.
(One responder suggested that even God did not have standing to forgive Karl, presumably because God could have prevented the Holocaust, but did not).
Other responders suggest that the only possible response to Karl would be to say that he should seek forgiveness from God and God alone. A few would have offered to tell Karl that they would pray to that end.
Back in 1996 I attended a pastor’s Promise Keeper’s event in Atlanta. On the second or third day into the event, a racial reconciliation session was held. As part of it a well-known white Christian leader stood at the podium and confessed, on behalf of his race, many sins committed over several centuries against black Americans. Next, an Hispanic church leader made a similar confession of sins committed by Hispanics against indigenous peoples of Latin America. It is possible, but I do not recall it, that another white Christian leader confessed the sins of white European immigrants against the native American population of the United States. In all cases, the confessors asked for forgiveness of their race.
I do not recall 15 years later that there were any responses made by any representatives of the impressive number of black or native American pastors present. I am almost sure there were not. The confessions were met with silence. Who has the right to speak for his/her race and offer absolution for sins committed by many against many over several centuries? One can also ask if the white and Hispanic leaders who made confession for their races really had standing to do so.
Forgiveness and reconciliation ought not to be easy or done on the cheap. I argued in a previous blog that forgiving is a bloody business. “Without the shedding of blood, there is no forgiveness of sin,” said the writer of Hebrews. The immediate reference, of course, was to Jewish altar rituals and to the bloody death of Jesus on the cross. It helps me, however, to apply it more broadly to all acts of forgiveness. Human sin wreaks enormous havoc and damage on individuals and communities. Lives are ended; others tragically shattered. Wounds are deep and, for many, lifelong.
Forgiving ought not to be easy. It needs to be a bloody business.
