COMMENTARY: The Centrality of Forgiveness

c. 2004 Religion News Service (David P. Gushee is the Graves Professor of Moral Philosophy at Union University in Jackson, Tenn.) (UNDATED) The couple sits in front of me, weary with life and with each other. They barely glance at each other as we talk. Their problems are many, but their most central issue is […]

c. 2004 Religion News Service

(David P. Gushee is the Graves Professor of Moral Philosophy at Union University in Jackson, Tenn.)

(UNDATED) The couple sits in front of me, weary with life and with each other. They barely glance at each other as we talk.


Their problems are many, but their most central issue is forgiveness. Bill has wronged Jill and Jill is unwilling to forgive. Jill has wronged Bill and Bill is unwilling to forgive. So there they sit, stewing in their anger, withholding from each other what each most needs _ forgiveness. It is a scene I have witnessed many times in my ministry. It is a scene undoubtedly witnessed many times this week in pastoral offices and counseling suites.

In 1999, the South African Christian leader Desmond Tutu published a book with the stark title, “No Future Without Forgiveness.” The book is a memoir of his experience chairing the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa. It was charged with the extraordinary task of sorting through the crimes of the apartheid years, telling the truth about these crimes, and facilitating forgiveness for them, thus moving the nation toward internal reconciliation.

His conclusion is embodied in his there is no future for South Africa without forgiveness. There is no future for any of us without forgiveness. There is no future for any relationship without forgiveness. So why is it so incredibly difficult to forgive? We need to understand forgiveness with precision if we are to make progress on this issue. When we do think more deeply about it we realize that this everyday concept is actually surprisingly complex. I propose that forgiveness is a four-dimensional reality. In one sense, forgiveness is the act of pardoning an offense against you. If I scream at you in a fit of anger, you will feel that you have been wronged. To forgive me, you must decide to pardon my offense of screaming at you. If you do so, the act is put behind us, forgiven. This helps us understand a second dimension of forgiveness _ the decision to cancel the debt that has been created by another’s wrongdoing against you. When you are wronged, at least in any significant way, you sense the other person owes you something to make it right. The intuitive sense that a wrong act creates an imbalance in relationships is nicely symbolized in the classic image of the justice system as a blindfolded woman holding a set of scales. When someone is wronged, the scales become unbalanced. They are only balanced again when something is put in the second scale to even the weight. The wrongdoer must pay a price to balance those scales. Even in intimate interpersonal relationships, those who are wronged at least begin the forgiveness process needing the scales to be balanced. The wrongdoer must at least acknowledge they have done you wrong and ask for forgiveness. When you accept that apology and grant forgiveness, you are acknowledging the apology and request for forgiveness have themselves balanced the scales _ or at least they have eased your sense of resentment enough that you can then simply cancel the rest of the debt. The third dimension of forgiveness is the dissolving of angry, resentful and bitter feelings toward the wrongdoer. When you forgive someone, you are set free from the need any longer to hold onto the anger that you have felt toward that person for their offense against you. This anger is a natural reaction to being wronged. But if such anger is left to fester in the human spirit it is desperately corrosive, both to the soul of the angry person and to the relationship itself. This leads to the final dimension of forgiveness _ the full restoration of relationship. When you are wronged you must forgive not only the offense but also the offender. The harm that has been done is not just that a wrong act has been committed but that a valued relationship has been damaged. If the forgiveness process is successful, not only is the particular act put behind you, the relationship is also restored. You are reconciled. Because people are fallible, sinful creatures, each of us harms, offends, and wrongs someone else on a daily basis. The more intimate and regular our contact with someone, the more likely we are to sin against them, and them against us, just because we are both human. And when we are harmed we get angry. It is the most natural thing in the world to damage and then ruin our relationships because we are unable to forgive either the sins or the sinners that harm us. This is why forgiveness is emphasized so constantly in the Bible. It is the decisive fact of the Christian message _ God forgives sinners. No one is worthy of it. Everyone needs it. Forgiveness is difficult because we wound each other daily and such wounds hurt. Forgiveness is necessary for the very same reason. No relationship can survive without it. DEA/JL END GUSHEE

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