There is a wonderful couple who live in the house behind
us. Even over the short period of the
past nine months that we've lived in our home, they've become friends. In the past two weeks, Shirley has shared two
things with me, inviting me to read them.
One was an article in the magazine, The
Hidden Child. This semi-annual
journal publishes stories about some of the Jewish children during the
Holocaust, and the families who hid them from the Nazis. The article she asked me to read was
entitled, "Do We Always Have to Forgive," written by Rabbi Leo Michel
Abrami, who was himself a "hidden child" in Normandy, and is now
teaching at the Jewish Studies Institute in Phoenix, AZ. In his article he shared a bit of a story
related from the experiences of Simon Wiesenthal. This was the tie, naturally, to the book that
Shirley also invited me to read, which was Wiesenthal's work, The Sunflower. Both works led me to ponder further my own
thoughts about sin, forgiveness, repentance, and reconciliation. Both works affirmed the traditional Jewish
teaching on forgiveness, which, briefly, is this: "...the Talmudic Sages
held that God absolves all of our sins against Him, but not the offenses
committed against our fellow human beings, until we have sought reconciliation
with them and made peace with them.
(Why?) It is because only those who
have been wronged can forgive." I
affirm the Sages' wisdom and beliefs about forgiveness.
However, I believe there is something more... at least one
other element to the whole, complex issue of forgiveness. I believe that when someone has wronged me, I
need to offer them forgiveness so that I can move past the hurt and anger I
feel, and then move on. If I hold on to unforgiveness,
it usually does not affect the person who wronged me, and therefore only
affects me.
From my perspective, when I forgive someone it does not mean
that I've forgotten, nor does it mean that I think everything is now okay. For me, forgiveness is one part of the
process of reconciliation, but reconciliation can take place only if the one who
committed the wrong asks for forgiveness and demonstrates some degree of
repentance. In other words,
reconciliation is a two-way street; both parties have a role to play in
sincerity if reconciliation is to be even a possibility. However, forgiveness
is one-way; I offer it as a way of opening the door to the other person, but also
as a way for me to let go of feelings that otherwise could become
all-consuming.
Let me offer an example.
A congregation I served had a treasurer who stole a little over $120,000
from the church. He was a 4th-generation
member of the church, and most of his family and friends were very active in
the church. I was asked by a couples' group
in the church to talk with them about their hurt and anger and sense of
betrayal by this man who had been a valued member of that group for some 40
years. In the process of our
conversation, I talked about what I see as the difference between
reconciliation and forgiveness. As a
Christian, I do believe that I have a responsibility to forgive someone who
comes to me and asks for my forgiveness for some wrong they have done to
me. As a Christian group, we had a
responsibility to forgive that man if he came and asked, demonstrating a sense
of culpability, contriteness, and repentance.
However, I told them that whether or not he ever came to us in that way
(he never did, by the way), we had to get to the point where we could forgive
him in our hearts, because otherwise the hurt and anger would eat away at
us. We had to forgive him, whether or
not he asked, because we needed to be able to be healed and to move on.
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