Monday and forgiveness

Reading the Sunflower, a collection of essays on the concept of forgiveness, subttitled “On the Possibilities and Limits of Forgiveness”.  The context of the book is Simon Wiesenthal’s story of his encounter with an SS officer, while Wiesenthal was still a prisoner.  The SS officer was dying , and had asked to speak with a Jew so that he could confess his crimes– which included setting a building on fire, and watching the building’s occupants– a mother, father, and children –jump to their deaths to escape the flames.  The SS officer wnated to confess to a Jew– any Jew—- and request forgiveness.   Wiesenthal remained silent, but later, after the war, he visited the officer’s mother in Germany.  She, a widow who had lost her only son, spoke of the good child her boy had been, and how it had broken his father’s heart to see him go first into Hitler Youth, then the SS.  Wiesenthal only told her that her son had asked him to bring her greetings.  He did not tell her about the circumstances, and did not tell her what her son had confessed, as he did not want to add to her suffering.  In his book, Wiesenthal has posed the question of whether he should have forgiven the SS officer, and he has gathered a wide range of answers from people like Desmond Tutu, the Dalai Lama, and other politically and socially well known persons.

 Forgiveness is one of my personal philisophical bugaboos– in practice, I have been to both extremes.  I have held certain grudges for.  I have tried too hard to forgive someone who had actively and enthusiastically backstabbed me and caused real emotional and economic harm. 

 I recently had a bit of a dialogue with a friend on the subject of forgiveness.  We were discussing someone who had committed an enormous wrong– but the wrong- doer seemed not only blithely unaware of having done wrong, but had gone further, and blamed his own ugly actions on the person he had most wounded.  My friend told me there was a concept called “radical forgiveness.”    I was taken aback.  What is the purpose of “radically forgiving” someone who was not even willing to admit what he was doing was wrong? The easy answer is, well so, you yourself, the forgiver,  may experience the healing power of forgiveness.

But I don’t think forgiveness is necessarily an end in itself.  Healing the world is the object of my religious, spiritual path.  But healing doesn’t necessarily mean deconstructing experience, or understanding.  Personally, and I struggle with this, I think forgiveness is over-rated and misplaced.  What we need is to let go of recriminations and retributitons.  One of the most powerful things we can do is not to say “I forgive you”, but to say “Let’s start over, from here.”  Can you imagine what the Middle East would be like if today, right now, people of good faith came together at a negotiating table , and said, “Let’s find a way to live together in peace? ”  No more suicide bombings, no more air raids.  Just set the ground rules for tomorrow and the day after.  I am convinced it can be done– Throughout history, enemies have been able to put aside their differences, and live in peace. International relations are not much more complicated than family relations, and can be managed the same way. 

But does that mean all is forgiven?  I don’t think so.  

I once extended normal, human sympathy to a woman who suffered a terrible loss.  She had made a difficult, but absolutley ethical and moral decision, and was suffering deeply.  I told her I had learned what she had done, that I knew she was suffering, and that I knew she had made the best choice available, and that her action was the highest, most loving course she could have taken under the circumstances handed to her.  She looked at me, and said nothing.  This was pretty much what I expected– this woman hated me, and I knew it.  In fact, she had invented extremely creative ways of expressing her hatred for me– she had mocked my physical looks, my manners of speech, and my pathetic lack of athletic ability.  I didn’t forgive her for any of this stuff when I decided to speak words of sympathy to her in her grief.   I just didn’t let it stop me.  A few months later, she approached me, and told me she couldn’t believe what I had done, how I could have chosen to comfort her in when she was in such agony.  She began to detail all the awful things she had said and done over the many years of our acquaintance, and to explain why she had come to despise me so deeply.  I stopped her. 

 ”Look”, I said.  “Let’s just call that water under the bridge.  I don’t need to understand.  We can just go on from here. ”  And we did.   We did not go on to become great friends.  But we were civil, and coexisted quite nicely without all the drama.  It simply wasn’t necessary to  go back, and re-visit every time she felt I had looked at her the wrong way, or parked in her spot, or whatever I had done to prompt her abusive behavior.  I was just relieved that it stopped.  I never said to her “I forgive you.”    The words were unnecessary.   

But, back to Sunflower.  In the book, Wiesenthal poses the question of whether he should have granted the dying SS man the absolution which he begged.  There’s no easy answer.  (Unless you are an idiot.  It’s easy to say– oh yes you should have done this or that.  But if you really reflect on this situation, no one reply is right or wrong.) 

But Wiesenthal went beyond the concept of forgiveness when he showed such sensitiivity and compassion to the SS man’s mother.  She was able to go to her grave, never knowing that her son, her little boy, whom she had raised, taken to Church, and lovingly nurtured, had destroyed another woman’s family with such unspeakable cruelty.  Wiesenthal didn’t have to forgive anyone– when presented with opportunity to do harm, he comforted. 

This is the key to peace– we do not need to turn our hands from the work of justice, but we need to make the choice to live in peace.  We are not innocent beings, we people.  We have the knowledge of good and evil, and every day, we choose.  Over and over again.  Like the rain drops, beating down.